Part 26

In the Cornwall Gazette, 17th April, 1840, the portraits of the murderers were given. Mention is made of the tragedy in C. Carlyon's Early Years, 1843. He gives the following story. At the time of the murder, Edmund Norway, the brother of Nevill, was in command of a merchant vessel, the Orient, on his voyage from Manilla to Cadiz. He wrote on the same day as the murder:--

"Ship Orient, from Manilla to Cadiz,

"Feb. 8th, 1840.

"About 7.30 p.m. the island of S. Helena, N.N.W., distant about seven miles, shortened sail and rounded to, with the ship's head to the eastward; at eight, set the watch and went below--wrote a letter to my brother, Nevell Norway. About twenty minutes or a quarter before ten o'clock went to bed--fell asleep, and dreamt I saw two men attack my brother and murder him. One caught the horse by the bridle and snapped a pistol twice, but I heard no report; he then struck him a blow, and he fell off the horse. They struck him several blows, and dragged him by the shoulders across the road and left him. In my dream there was a house on the left-hand side of the road. At five o'clock I was called, and went on deck to take charge of the ship. I told the second officer, Mr. Henry Wren, that I had had a dreadful dream, and dreamt that my brother Nevell was murdered by two men on the road from S. Columb to Wadebridge; but I was sure it could not be there, as the house there would have been on the right-hand side of the road, but it must have been somewhere else. He replied, 'Don't think anything about it; you West-country people are superstitious; you will make yourself miserable the remainder of the passage. He then left the general orders and went below. It was one continued dream from the time I fell asleep until I was called, at five o'clock in the morning.

"EDMUND NORWAY, "Chief Officer, Ship Orient."

There are some difficulties about this account. It is dated, as may be seen, February 8th, but it must have been written on February 9th, after Mr. Norway had had the dream, and the date must refer to the letter written to his brother and to the dream, and not to the time when the account was penned.

From the Cape of Good Hope to S. Helena the course would be about N.N.W., and with a fair wind the ship would cover about eighty or ninety miles in eight hours. So that at noon of the day February 8th she would be about one hundred miles S.S.E. of S. Helena, i.e. in about 5° W. longitude, as nearly as possible. The ship's clock would then be set, and they would keep that time for letter-writing purposes, meals, ship routine, etc.

Ship, long. 5° 0' 0" W. Bodmin " 4° 40' 0" W. --------- Difference 20' 0"

The difference would be twenty minutes of longitude, and the difference in time between the two places one degree apart is four minutes. Reduce this to seconds:--

4 × 60 × 20 ----------- = 80 sec., i.e. 1 min. 20 sec. 60

Therefore, if the murder was committed, say, at 10h. 30m. p.m. Bodmin time, the time on the ship's clock would be 10h. 28m. 40s. p.m. An inconsiderable difference.

The log-book of Edmund Norway is said to be still in existence.

One very remarkable point deserves notice. In his dream Mr. Edmund Norway saw the house on the right hand of the road, and as he remembered, on waking, that the cottage was on the left hand, he consoled himself with the thought that if the dream was incorrect in one point it might be in the whole. But he was unaware that during his absence from England the road from Bodmin to Wadebridge had been altered, and that it had been carried so that the position of the house was precisely as he saw it in his dream, and the reverse of what he had remembered it to be.

Another point to be mentioned is that one of the murderers wore on that occasion a coat which Mr. Norway had given him a few weeks before, out of charity.

Both brothers protested that they had not purposed the murder of Mr. Norway but of the Rev. Mr. Molesworth, parson of S. Breock, who they supposed was returning with tithe in his pocket. This, however, did not agree with the evidence that William Lightfoot had watched him counting his money at Bodmin, and then had made off.

On the occasion of the discovery of the murder, Sir William Molesworth sent his bloodhounds to track the murderers, but because they ran in a direction opposed to that which the constables supposed was the right one they were recalled. The hounds were right, the constables wrong.

SIR WILLIAM LOWER, KNT.

Sir William Lower was the only son of John Lower, and was born at Tremere, in S. Tudy, about the year 1600.

The Lowers were a very ancient family in Cornwall, seated in S. Winnow parish, and at Clifton, in Landulph, at which latter place lived Sir Nicholas Lower, the brother of John, whilst the eldest brother, Sir William, settled at Treventy, in Carmarthen, having married the daughter and co-heiress of Sir Thomas Pescott, of that place. John had two other brothers knights, Sir Francis and Sir Thomas.

William was not educated at Oxford, but, as Wood says, "spent some time in Oxon, in the condition of hospes, for the sake of the public library and scholastical company." He exhibited a "gay fancy," and a mighty aversion from the dry and crabbed studies of logic and philosophy.

Leaving Oxford, he spent some time in France, where he became a master of the French tongue, and acquired a great admiration for the dramatic compositions of Corneille, Quirault, and Ceriziers, and in after years amused himself with translating some of their plays.

When the troubles broke out in England he took the King's side, and in 1640 was a lieutenant in Sir Jacob Ashley's regiment in Northumberland's army against the Scotch Covenanters, and was then appointed captain, but lost his company, that proved mutinous and deserted. "It was a marvellous thing," says a writer of the time, "to observe the averseness of the common soldiers to this war. Though commanders and gentlemen of great quality, in pure obedience to the King, seemed not at all to dispute the cause or consequence of this war, the common soldiers would not be satisfied, questioning, in a mutinous manner, whether their captains were papists or not, and in many places were not appeased till they saw them receive the sacrament; laying violent hands on divers of their commanders, and killing some, uttering in bold speeches their distaste of the cause, to the astonishment of many, that common people should be sensible of public interest and religion, when lords and gentlemen seemed not to be."

Pub May 21 1800 by W Richardson N^o 31 Strond]

In June, 1644, being a lieutenant-colonel in Thomas Blague's regiment and lieutenant-governor of Wallingford, Lower received orders from the King to raise £50 a week from the town of Reading. Lower at once laid hands on the mayor and carried him to Wallingford as a hostage; he then plied the corporation with demands for the money, without which their head would not be restored to them. The corporation, however, did not value their mayor so highly that they were disposed to pay £50 per week for the privilege of having him restored to them. Lower was taken prisoner by the garrison of Abingdon on 19th January, 1645-6, and Charles rewarded him for his zeal by conferring on him knighthood.

He remained in England for nearly ten more years and saw the ruin of the Royal cause, which he did care for, and of the Church, for which he cared not a rush. In 1655 he quitted England and went to Cologne, which was full of refugees, and there he was cheered with the tidings that Oliver Cromwell was failing in health and had not long to live. Leaving Cologne, after a brief residence there, he "took sanctuary in Holland, where in peace and privacy he enjoyed the society of the Muses," says Langhorn.

His The Phœnix in Her Flames, a tragedy in four acts, had been published in 1639. The Innocent Lady, or the Illustrious Innocence, translated from the French of R. de Ceriziers, was published in 1654. Now in Holland he worked hard at other translations, and he was the more able to do this at ease, as the Princess Royal Mary of Orange seems to have taken him into her retinue at the Hague. If the Court was anything like what it was when James Howell was there, it must have been vastly dull for the lively and dissolute Sir William Lower. But his stay was enlivened by the arrival of Charles and the intrigues there carried on with the well-affected in England.

At the Hague he issued a thin royal folio, with many plates, entitled "A relation in form of Journal of the voiage and residence which the most excellent and most mighty Prince, Charles the II, King of Great Britain, etc., hath made in Holland, from the 25th of May to the 2nd of June, 1660, rendered into English from the original French. By Sir W. Lower, Knt. Printed by Adrian Ulack." This was published in Dutch, French, and English, and at the end of the volume Sir W. Lower inserted his poems, and an apology for the "tardive appearance (of the book) due to those men who grave the plates."

Such "poems" as he has given as his own show conclusively enough that he was not a poet, but a mere hammerer together of rhymes.