Murther Will Out: Uncovering the Truth

Example of a Providential Event

Unknown artist, “Marsillia killd / a letter found,” copper engraving, in John Reynolds, The Triumphs of God’s Revenge […] (London: Printed for R. Gosling, and Sold by J. Osborn, 1726), History XVI, 217 (edited excerpt).

Uncovering the Truth in The Triumphs of God’s Revenge

“[…] [Altho’] Murther be for a time concealed, yet the Finger of God will in due time  detect and discover it; for he will make inquisition for Blood, and will severely and sharply revenge the death of his Children.”  
(Reynolds, The Triumphs of God’s Revenge, History I, 11) 

In Reynolds’ tales, each malicious act of murder is destined to be revealed to the public, heavily aided by divine intervention. The early modern reader of The Triumphs of God’s Revenge likely understood that each murderer would inevitably be identified and brought to justice; despite this minimized mystery or suspense, every story reaches its resolution after a dramatic series of revelatory events.

Other providential injuries involve symbolic, almost poetic allusions to the crime, often as physical reminders on the murderer’s body. In History XV, Maurice pushes his mother down a well to her death; he later sustains an injury on the arm that pushed her. The wound quickly rots before being amputated; this divine manifestation of Maurice’s guilt drives him to insanity and an eventual confession.

The truth about murder is not always revealed by sudden miracles or the spontaneous injury of a guilty party. God sometimes intervenes more subtly by directing the events of criminal investigations, allowing characters to arrive at the truth by their own actions. In such stories, city officials begin criminal investigations after the bodies of murder victims are discovered by passersby or animals, or if a bereaved character suspects foul play in their loved one’s death. These investigations are generally secular in nature; the officials utilize physical evidence and community testimony to arrest suspects. Most evidentiary objects are extremely specific and damning, such as personal items of clothing or letters in which the guilty parties discuss their crimes. In History II, Christeneta stuffs a monogrammed kerchief into her victim’s mouth to hasten his death, and the eventual discovery of this item in his corpse ensures her arrest. Other investigative techniques are remarkably modern: the family of a murder victim in History XI requests an autopsy to determine if the death was caused by murder, which helped to identify one of the guilty parties: 

“In the mean time he being wholly ignorant of her poysoning, and yet the old President her Father, and the rest of her friends suspecting it, they cause her body to be opened : and although they find no direct poyson, yet remarking a little kind of yellow tincture on her heart and liver, as also some shew thereof through her frozen veins; They cause Michaele to be apprehended and imprisoned, and so procure a Decree from the Parliament to have him rack’d […]”  
(Reynolds, The Triumphs of God’s Revenge, History XI, 149) 

Example of an Arrest

Unknown artist, “Alibius is apprehended,” copper engraving, in John Reynolds, The Triumphs of God’s Revenge […] (London: Printed for R. Gosling, and Sold by J. Osborn, 1726), History V, 45 (edited excerpt).

Murder Investigation in Early Modern England

As popular early modern English literature indicates, many other murder stories involved in miraculous events that lead to the discovery of murders, suggesting a widespread belief in such providential events. Throughout the seventeenth century, pamphlets were distributed during or after scandalous local murder cases or executions in urban England; many such pamphlets described God as an active player in the resolution of the crime.¹ In the 1688 pamphlet A True Relation of a Barbarous Bloody Murther, the author describes Philip Standsfield, the murderous son, helping to carry his dead father to his coffin when blood spontaneously “sprung out upon [the son’s] hand.”² The inclusion of this phenomenon reflects a wider fascination in cruentation, or an act of God in which a corpse spontaneously reacts to the presence or touch of its murderer as an indication of their guilt;³ stories revolving around cruentation were commonly told throughout early modern England and continental Europe.⁴ Although Reynolds did not include such bleeding corpses in The Triumphs, each of his stories emphasizes divine events that also reveal the truth about murder.

This pervasive notion in the providential discovery of murder did not always define the process of murder investigations in Elizabethan and Stuart England. Investigations of violent deaths were typically conducted by the community coroner, a professional who not only assessed the bodily state of the deceased but assembled a jury and collected testimony from witnesses to ascertain a cause of death.⁵ Most violent deaths of this era were accidents or the results of unplanned acts of aggression, and therefore most were public and/or had witnesses; thus, testimony from family members, friends, and bystanders was often the most influential factor in determining whether a murder had occurred and, if so, how.⁶ Extant coroner’s inquests indicate that testimony and forensic findings were often based on concrete observations, suggesting that the discovery of a murder was not exclusively interpreted as an act of God.

Nevertheless, some early modern English murder trials involved witness testimony that included impassioned descriptions of divine intervention and providential events similar to those in the murder pamphlets.⁷ Whether or not such accounts were considered factual by court officials or members of the jury, they may have communicated “moral truths”⁸ shared by the community, perhaps influencing the outcome of the trials. However, the primary goal of murder trials was to determine whether or not the accused had committed their crime with malicious intent;⁹ the courts thus sought evidence and testimony to determine if the murders were premeditated, a process that did not exclusively evaluate testimony of a religious nature. (Extant trial books provide a thorough record of such court proceedings; for an example of an early modern English murder trial book, see the trials of Edward Earl of Warwick and Holland, and Charles Lord Mohun (Trials 51 F34t 1696), in Pritzker Legal Research Center’s Special Collections.)

An Example of the Rack

“Rack – torture,” archives of Pearson Scott Foresman, unknown date, Wikimedia Commons (public domain), last modified November 10, 2020, online.

Understanding the degree to which early modern English officials used judicial torture is complicated in no small part by the historical taboo surrounding torture and, subsequently, the likely unreliable records regarding its occurrence. Torture devices like the rack may have been introduced to England as early as the 1440s,¹⁰ but it is difficult to ascertain how frequently such devices were used, and why. In the early seventeenth century, prominent figures like Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke and Attorney General Sir Francis Bacon wrote about the illegality of torture in England, and often denied or minimized its domestic occurrence; still, many historians believe that judicial torture regularly occurred in England and may even have been administered by these very officials.¹¹ The notion that judicial torture was used much more frequently in continental Europe than in England was common during this era;¹² whether or not this was true, records indicate that judicial torture indeed occurred in early modern England, especially in the Elizabethan era (during the 1580s and forward).¹³ As the crown reinforced Protestantism as the dominant sect in England, persecution of Catholics rose, and the most widely documented cases of torture during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were targeted at Catholics. Ostensibly performed to obtain information and confessions of crimes, this judicious torture of Catholics appears to have based on largely unsubstantiated grounds and likely served to terrorize/intimidate this community, or to punish the religious difference.¹⁴

Considering these factors, Reynolds’ descriptions of torture as a means of producing a murder confession may have been easily accepted by early modern English readers. If judicious torture was more commonly associated with continental Europe during this era, and domestic torture was publicly known to be used against Catholic individuals, Reynolds’ frequent descriptions of torture in Catholic-majority countries in continental Europe (like Italy and Spain) may have seemed accurate or convincing to his original audience.

For This Bloody Fact: Punishment for Murder →