The Damnation of John Donellan (2 page)

‘She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby
Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.'

William Shakespeare, ‘Sonnet XI'

IN 1780 THE BOUGHTON FAMILY
occupied an enviable position in Warwickshire society. Lawford Hall stood near the River Avon, surrounded by meadows and its own formal and informal gardens – a graceful and imposing house built on three sides of a square, the longest side facing the meadows and with a curved wall protecting the garden. Tall chimneys flanked each end of the Hall; relics, perhaps, of an earlier building on the site, with a whisper of the Elizabethan about their design. The land on which Lawford Hall stood had once belonged to Pipewell Abbey, but Henry VIII had ordered the abbey's closure and, in 1542, had given its lands to Edward Boughton and his wife Elizabeth Willington.

Today, the village close to where Lawford Hall once stood, Newbold-on-Avon, is surrounded by nineteenth- and twentieth-century housing, a drawn-out extension of the industrial sprawl of Rugby. In 1780, however, both Newbold and Rugby existed in rural idyll: a quiet, undulating county of newly enclosed fields, and of farms and cottages. The fine church predominated, rebuilt
on the site of a much earlier Anglo-Saxon building on top of a hill within walking distance across the fields of Lawford Hall.

Since the death in 1772 of Sir Edward Boughton, the Sixth Baronet Boughton, Lawford Hall had been the residence of his widow Anna Maria, and their children. Now, in at the end of August 1780, Theodosius Edward Allesley Boughton had just celebrated his twentieth birthday. His sister Theodosia, who was three years older, had married at the age of eighteen and, since the summer of 1778, had also lived at the Hall with her husband, Captain John Donellan. In 1780 their two children were two-year-old Maria and newborn baby John.

August had been extraordinarily warm, but it had been a peculiar year altogether for weather, more unpredictable than most. Seventeen-eighty was the year of the Great Hurricane in the Atlantic and Caribbean; eight different relentless storms had battered the American coast. The turbulent forces in the Atlantic by the end of the year, reached their peak in October, when 22,000 people were to die as the Great Hurricane raced through the Antilles, and a hundred British merchant ships and the 74-gun HMS
Cornwall
would sustain heavy casualties. On 22 August, Captain Cook's ship, the
Resolution
, had at last sailed into Stromness harbour, Orkney, after a four-year voyage round the world, in the teeth of a fierce gale which had prevented the vessel from entering the English Channel. Scapa Flow proved to be the only shelter that the
Resolution
could find.

By the end of the month, however, Warwickshire was enjoying a belated period of summer calm, sheltered in the heart of England. On the afternoon of Tuesday 29 August, a young servant boy, Samuel Frost, returned from running an errand for Theodosius: he had been sent to the local apothecary, Mr Powell, some three miles away, for a bottle of medicine. Powell had visited Lawford that same morning for the second time in three days and prescribed a different physic for Theodosius, one designed not to be as nauseating as the draught that had made him sick the previous Saturday. Samuel Frost swore later that this new bottle had been delivered to Theodosius directly, and that he had seen him put the medicine into his pocket.

It was about five o'clock when Lady Boughton and her daughter, who were walking in the garden, saw Theodosius; he was on horseback and passed by the wall of the garden not far from them.

‘Where are you going?' called his mother.

‘A-fishing,' came the reply.

As the evening darkened, Lady Boughton and Theodosia went to the parlour; John Donellan entered later. He drank a bowl of milk that had been prepared for him, and left the room. His wife followed him.

There was a staircase outside the parlour which led directly up to the Donellans' bedroom and to two others, which were not used; there was no connecting landing or staircase to any other part of the house. Theodosius's room was on the other side of the building, along an 80-yard passageway. Anna Maria would have been able to hear, firstly, that the Donellans were in the room above her and, secondly, that no one came down the stairs again and along the passageway.

By now it was dark in the house; candles were lit. Theodosius returned around nine o'clock, after Lady Boughton had sent word to him to come home. He was seen by his mother, but not by his sister or brother-in-law, and he went to his room. Lady Boughton went up to hers soon after. In the stables William Frost, the coachman, would still have been occupied for a few minutes attending to Theodosius's horse (unless Theodosius had done it himself, which was unlikely). Night fell, and silence.

It was six o'clock when Anna Maria woke the next morning. By her own account she did not move from her room until seven, when she intended to go and visit her son.

There was much of his father in Theodosius. Edward had been only fifty-three when he had died ‘of apoplexy' eight years before; he had not been, like so many of his ancestors, a man of high government or ministerial office, but a country gentleman. He had been fond of the traditional country pursuits of hunting, shooting and fishing, and his son likewise. However, the boy preferred to adopt the least strenuous methods for all three. He hunted the
old-fashioned way, driving the game into nets and then taking a few pot shots at whatever had been caught; and as for fishing, a contemplative few hours sitting on the river bank was not for Theodosius. His main purpose in fishing was to net his catch as soon as possible, then split open the fish and bait them with arsenic for the rat traps around the house.

At six o'clock that morning, Theodosius was awake like his mother. Samuel the servant boy (who was probably a relation of the coachman William) knocked on Theo's door. When called in, he asked if the young master had the straps to some nets which were to be used later in the day.

Theodosius jumped out of bed and went into his inner room, bringing out the straps. He was, according to Samuel, ‘in a very good state of health'. Theo was looking forward to the visit that day, or perhaps later in the week, of a friend of his, Fonnereau. Perhaps he spoke to Samuel about the fishing trip they had both undertaken the night before – Samuel would later testify that he had met his master at the river.

That morning, other members of the household would also have been awake at six. Certainly the cook, Catharine Amos, who had been helping with the household wash the evening before, would have already been in the kitchen, checking that the fire was still in place in its huge hearth and asking one of the gardeners or maids to bring a further stock of coal. The fire in a Georgian kitchen had to be kept going twenty-four hours a day, even if one of the new-fangled ranges had been installed.

It was also likely that William Frost was once again busy. He knew that Lady Boughton and John Donellan intended to go riding that morning, and would have been back at the stables attending to the horses. No one would have eaten yet. Breakfasts were not usually eaten in the house until nine o'clock or so, and the servants would have taken the opportunity to have theirs at the same time.

It is hard to be sure how many other servants were in or around Lawford Hall that day. Anna Maria kept a very tight ship, employing a surprisingly small staff. Of those servants who were certainly in the house that morning, we know only seven by name: William
Frost and Samuel Frost; Catharine Amos, and the gardener Francis Amos; the maid Sarah Blundell; the nursemaid Susannah Sparrow; and a footman, John Yateman.

The family's bedrooms were on the first floor. Theodosius may have inherited his late father's suite of rooms, which would have reflected his masculine, even boyish, tastes: in the main room a plain four-poster bed and probably pale green walls (the colour of most earlier Georgian interiors). His personal effects would have been in the inner room, which also contained a washstand and a chamber pot. The function of the inner room was as a place to keep valuables under lock and key, but Theodosius was not renowned for being careful with his belongings. He probably had keys to the inner door, but rarely would have bothered to know where they were.

His mother had a separate suite, which would have consisted of a bedroom and at least one other room, but more probably two. The dressing room and washing room would have been intricately decorated with all the fashionable clutter that mystified most Georgian gentlemen. She would have had a wash cabinet and a four-poster bed, or perhaps the more fashionable ‘tester' bed. A tester was to die for in 1780, the more ornate four-poster curtains having been truncated to become heavily festooned drapes above the head of the bed. She may well have had a ‘Turkey' carpet on the floor, probably made in the new Wilton factory. And, aside from these practical elements, the room would have been heavily furnished with her porcelain and ‘treasures', including her own needlework and craftwork.

Theodosia did not rise at the same time as her mother. Although her husband John was due to go out riding with Anna Maria, she was not seen downstairs until almost nine, when there is the first mention of her standing on the steps of the house. Nothing at all is known of the whereabouts of the children, and the nursemaid is not mentioned in any account of the day.

Anna Maria finally left her room an hour after waking, and went to see Theodosius. It was seven o'clock.

Anna Maria knew that her son was not well – and certainly not
in the ‘very good state of health' that Samuel Frost later described under oath. If pressed, however, she would only ever refer to Theo's illness as ‘a particular complaint'. For Theo had contracted venereal disease at Eton when he was only fifteen and, to Anna Maria's revulsion, did not seem to be clear of it even now. She had employed a local apothecary to prepare physics for the lad, which Theodosius took with bad grace, often forgetting where his medicine was, refusing it entirely or leaving it to stand on a chimneypiece alongside a mixture of other bottles. For the last month or so, John Donellan had been warning Anna Maria ominously that Theodosius was ruining his health, and her son-in-law was plainly anxious. The apothecary had been called back and had prescribed a concoction of medicines – which seemed to have at least brought down Theo's florid, flushed appearance – and then, after a gap of a fortnight, another purgative.

That summer Anna Maria had bought Theodosius a book about family health which she had encouraged him to read – to very little apparent effect. Even more recently, Donellan had told her that Theodosius's health seemed to be getting much worse, and rapidly so: the boy had lost weight and now had a swelling in his groin. Only the previous Saturday, Donellan had told the local priest, the Reverend Newsam, that Theo was skeletally thin and would not be long for this world if he did not mend his ways. The boy had become reinfected even since coming back to live at Lawford.

Anna Maria probably did not want to think too much about either the complaint or the way it had been caught. But the one thing she could do, even if she could not control her irrepressible boy, was to make sure that he took his medicine.

According to her later testimony, while Theodosius propped himself up in bed, Anna Maria asked where the medicine bottle was.

‘On the chimneypiece,' he replied.

After hunting through the various bottles there, she found it and took it down.

‘Read the label,' Theodosius told her.

She did so. ‘Purging draught for Sir Theodosius Boughton.'

Theodosius seemed satisfied. ‘Get me a piece of cheese,' he said.
‘The stuff tastes vile.' Anna Maria cut him a piece, and then poured some of the medicine into a glass.

‘You did not shake the bottle first,' Theo pointed out.

Anna Maria shook the rest of the bottle and, in doing so, spilled a little on the table. She noticed a grainy residue in the bottom of the phial. Then she handed the glass to her son.

He swallowed half of it. ‘My God,' he exclaimed, pushing the glass away from him, ‘it tastes sickening. I won't keep it down.'

Anna Maria was probably wise to this ruse. The previous Saturday, Theodosius, when pressed to take the physic, had vomited it straight back up. This new mixture, only brought from the apothecary the night before, was designed to be less nauseating.

Theodosius ate another piece of cheese, but after a moment spat it out. His mother probably guessed that she had a fight on her hands. She smelled the medicine; the odour reminded her of bitter almonds. Nevertheless, she made Theo drink the remainder.

Grimacing and complaining, her son washed out his mouth with a little water, then lay back down on the bed. A report published the following year said that he ‘fell back on the bed with his arms extended', but that was not verified by any other testimony.

By now, it was ten minutes past seven.

Two minutes later, as Anna Maria hovered by the bed, Theodosius began to groan. His stomach heaved. It was to be said later in court that he seemed in a ‘very considerable degree of agony'
¹
and that ‘his eyes seemed much affected'. But the mother stood by. She did not call a servant or her daughter or Donellan. In fact, she claimed that she took ‘no further notice of him at that time'. In another ten minutes or so, Theodosius seemed calmer. So calm, in fact, that his mother thought he was going to sleep. Satisfied that the medicine had been taken, she left the room.

Returning five minutes later, at about twenty past seven, she found a scene of horror. Theodosius was heaving, groaning, his hands clenched. He was frothing at the mouth and unable to speak. Anna Maria ran out on to the landing, calling out for the maids. When Catharine and Sarah appeared, she told them to send William for the apothecary, Powell.

‘William is at the stables,' she was told.