The Damnation of John Donellan (16 page)

Donellan was arrested at Lawford Hall and taken via the outskirts of Coventry and Rugby to Warwick. He was, according to the chronicler of Rugby School, Matthew Bloxam, at first conducted on foot by two constables from Long Lawford to Rugby. Bloxam paints a humiliating picture:

As [Donellan] approached the town, many of its inhabitants …
went out on to the Lawford Road to meet him; amongst them were several members of the School, for there existed a feud between him and the School on account of his having prohibited them from fishing in the Avon near Lawford Hall and with them he was no favourite … among those was a poor idiot lad who had been much tormented in the town and was well known in Rugby by the taunting name of Taffy White. As Donellan approached, walking between his guards, the poor idiot with apparent glee ran and danced before him exclaiming, ‘Who's Taffy now? Who's Taffy now?'
²

It is debatable whether this is an accurate account of Donellan's journey, as someone of his social rank would have been expected to ride in a cart or a carriage; but perhaps Anna Maria had forbidden the use of one from Lawford. Constables were not paid by the county, so in this instance they probably saw the progression of Donellan through the various villages as an opportunity to allow the public to gawp at the man that the county had been gossiping about so freely. It would have been a fraught journey for Donellan, to say the least.

And what of the gaol where Donellan was to spend the winter?

The centre of Warwick had suffered a large fire in September 1694; 450 buildings had been destroyed. The cost of rebuilding it had virtually crippled the town corporation, and the Shire Hall in Northgate Street was only begun in 1753, with the adjoining gaol still in the process of reconstruction when Donellan arrived there.

An undated plan of the gaol now in Warwick Records Office shows a lodge and main entrance on Barrack Street (then Bridewell Lane) with buildings marked ‘Debtors' to the east and ‘Misdemeanours' to the west. Running alongside Northgate Street was a building marked ‘Clerk of the Peace'; next to the Governor's House were a series of courtyards, and below these to the east and west were the ‘Women's Prison', a ‘Day Room' and a ‘Felons' Prison'. South of the Felons' Prison was a small courtyard with a treadmill building in its centre.

An account of 1815 also describes a ‘bridewell' – probably a
house of correction where beggars and vagrants were set to work – at the north-west end of Barrack Street: ‘a strong and handsome building with a good stone front and a garden before it'.
³

Gaols at this time were primarily places where people were held for only a short while before trial, not the six months that were in prospect for Donellan. Those who did languish for years were normally debtors.

As it was later reported that Donellan shared a cell with the debtor John Derbyshire, it is probable that he was taken to the Debtors' Prison on the east end of Barrack Street, which would have offered more comfortable accommodation than the Felons'. Here Donellan would have been able to pay for extra luxuries such as bedding, food and alcohol, as a prison warden then counted the payments for such things as part of his salary; nevertheless, Warwick Gaol provided a rather stark contrast to his home for the last two years.

Fourteen miles away, at Lawford, Anna Maria Boughton had much to occupy her mind. Most pressing was who had the authority to administer Theodosius's estate and collect the rents that formed the majority of their income.

On 21 october, Theodosia independently sought counsel's opinion on her legal position, asking whether her husband's arrest would affect her inheritance of her brother's estate; in the same month, Anna Maria applied to the Archbishop of Canterbury for ‘letters of administration' covering Theodosius's affairs.
⁴
Permission was granted on 31 October, making Theodosia an heiress, as Theodosius's income from his estates was released.
⁵

Theodosia visited her husband in Warwick Gaol at the beginning of October, taking their son John, then aged only three months, with her. (She would visit John four times in all, according to the
Nottinghamshire Gazette
.) Accompanying her was her maid, Susannah Sparrow (referred to later as Sukey).

In his
Defence
Donellan reported a conversation which the gaoler Mr Roe had had with Susannah. The girl was in the kitchen belonging to Roe, which was ‘adjoining the gaol', with three others: John Derbyshire, the debtor who knew Donellan; a Thomas Bayly, also a debtor; and Mary Douglas, a servant girl of Mr Roe's.
Derbyshire asked Susannah if the rumour he had heard was true: that she had said ‘something against Mr Donellan at a country wake'. She replied that she had said nothing against him, and that she believed that Donellan was as innocent of the charge brought against him ‘as the child she then had in her arms' – Donellan's son. She then added that she had been sent for several times by the local JPs, ‘and threatened by them unless she disclosed what she said at the country wake; and she told them she said nothing against Mr Donellan there, nor knew anything against him'.

Bayly was also reported to have heard this conversation and added that, once Susannah was seated in the garden outside, she had said, ‘She was sure her master was innocent, and wondered much at Lady Boughton's conduct towards him.' Mary Douglas also reported a conversation with Susannah: ‘She was sorry to her soul for her master, and was surprised at Lady Boughton's cruel and inhuman behaviour.'

Neither Roe nor Susannah nor Bayly nor Mary Douglas were ever called to testify at the trial. It was thought by Webb, Donellan's barrister, that they would ‘not be favourable witnesses'.

John Derbyshire, however, was called. His evidence would work against Donellan.

Meanwhile, October saw the publication of various letters in local newspapers about the conduct of the coroner's court. The
Coventry Mercury
published an article on 16 October purporting to be by a friend of Donellan. In it, the author denounced various pieces that had already been published, saying that they were designed to ‘deprive him of that candour and impartiality characteristic of an English jury'. The reports, it said, were untrue; especially the rumour that Dr Wilmer had been to see Donellan after Theodosius died and was ‘closeted up' with him for some time.

But more significantly, it absolutely blasted the coroner's jury, claiming that they were tenant farmers who had been annoyed at Donellan for persuading Lady Boughton to raise their rents. The countryside was ‘prejudiced' and that prejudice had extended to Warwick Gaol, it claimed, where Donellan had been ‘refused
comforts' and ‘deprived of the assistance of his lawyers' and where all his personal papers were being read by the gaoler. The article was signed ‘A Friend to Justice'. It drew an immediate reply from the members of the coroner's jury.

On 21 October, a letter was published which rebuffed the ‘scandalous libel' that had been levelled against them. The article of 16 October was ‘uncharitable, cruel, impious, false and rash', the letter stormed. None of the jurymen were Lady Boughton's tenants, except one; the coroner had given them no reason why he could not meet with them the day after the depositions were taken except to say he was busy, and they had later found out that he was busy ‘stopping at Lady Boughton's that evening'. It was, the letter said, strange conduct – and the reason was that the coroner had wanted to see John Donellan. While the members of the jury had been kept waiting, the coroner had called Donellan into the garden and talked with him for fifteen minutes. Worse still, one of the jurors, William Crofts, claimed that he had seen Donellan pull on Lady Boughton's sleeve during the depositions ‘in a very unbecoming passion'. The letter flatly asserted that Donellan and Wilmer
had
met several times, and that the coroner knew this to be true. The jurors signed their names: Edward Boddington, John Alebone, William Robbins, William Cave, Joseph Richardson, William Cornish, Samuel Pace, Edward Greenaway, John Norman, William Norman, William Liggins, William Crofts, William Townsend, Richard Pell, Robert Line, Richard Webb and Robert Onely.

Both John Donellan's
Defence
and legal documents from these months demonstrate an unbearable tension that had arisen between Theodosia and Anna Maria. In Warwick, Donellan regularly received letters from his wife, so he said, in which she complained about the ‘cruel behaviour of her mother'. Responding to them, he told her to quit Lawford Hall ‘lest she should fall a sacrifice to the fate of her brother'.

Unknown to him at this time, however, his letters were being intercepted and read by the gaoler; Roe admits as much in his statement for the prosecution brief. Donellan would later use this in a desperate ploy to bring public opinion around to support him,
but for now he wrote what he thought was a private appeal: ‘In a letter sent by Captain Donellan when he first came to Warwick,' Roe reveals, ‘before he suspected I would examine his letters, he desired Mrs Donellan to speak to Lady Boughton to say nothing about the phial and then all would be well.' The prosecution notes that the letter was given to Theodosia, and that before the trial she was asked to produce the original – but she never did.

Presumably Donellan is talking about the washing of the bottle here. He seems to be suggesting that if Anna Maria kept quiet about it, he would be acquitted. When he received no such assurance, his attitude changed dramatically.

Only a matter of weeks into his incarceration, Donellan felt free to express his opinion that Anna Maria was a dangerous, even lethal, opponent. He wrote of his fears for his wife's safety, and referred to the fact of ‘sudden deaths having happened in the family … the late Sir Edward Boughton died suddenly'. He spoke of the ‘neighbourhood knowing Lady Boughton's cruel disposition' and finally revealed that Anna Maria had once admitted to poisoning all her husband's pack of hounds, ‘which she confessed to Mr Donellan as a fact, but told him at the same time that nobody ever knew who did it, and begged him not to mention it to his wife'.

The gloves were off. Whether Donellan had suspected Anna Maria of poisoning her own son while he was still at Lawford, or whether it was a conclusion he had come to after she delivered her altered depositions to the coroner, which cast such a suspicious light on him, is hard to say. Sir Edward Boughton, who had ridden post-haste from Herefordshire on Theodosius's death, was now jointly paying for Donellan's prosecution with Anna Maria. Nor could Donellan count on the support of the local aristocracy – the Whelers, the Denbighs, the Shukburghs. The ranks had closed, and he was alone.

On 8 December, Donellan wrote a letter to Theodosia. It was addressed to her at ‘Lawford Hall – or elsewhere'.

My Dear,

I am now informed that [her solicitor] Mr Harris's clerk is here
and hope by this time you have removed to the friendly roof I last recommended to you; and no longer remain where you are likely to undergo the fate of those who are gone already by sudden means … [Donellan seems to allude to both Theodosia's brother and father here.]

In my first letter to you from Rugby 14th Sept. last I mentioned a removal, I had my reasons, which will appear in an honest light in March next, to the eternal confusion of an unnatural being,

I am, dear Wife, your affectionate Husband, John Donellan.

The letter was delivered into the hands of the gaoler, Roe, unsealed. In Donellan's
Defence
this is referred to by his solicitors, Inge and Webb, as an oversight due to ‘his hurry and confusion'. They note that ‘his adversaries had obtained a copy of it'. In the same paragraph, they claim that Donellan was misrepresented in his accusations about Anna Maria; he had merely stated facts – sudden deaths
were
a feature of the Boughton family. Lady Boughton had once told him, he maintained, that she had poisoned a pack of hounds belonging to her husband (presumably after she found him in bed with the maid, or after hearing of his mistress); her conduct on the morning of Theodosius's death ‘did induce him to believe that she was the perpetrator of it'. However, they make the point that Donellan had never accused Anna Maria in so many words of being a murderess. The distinction is a rather fine one, presumably made because of the horror with which such an accusation might be greeted. And it was indeed seized upon by the prosecuting counsel at the trial.

According to the prosecution brief, however, Donellan left the letter unsealed deliberately. They claimed that he had told the gaoler that he had ‘left it open so that it might be read and made public'. They said that the solicitor's clerk had copied it, and then sent it to Theodosia; the original was not available because Theodosia had burned it.

Within a few days, Anna Maria had fallen dangerously ill. Whether
because of the publication of Donellan's letter is a matter for conjecture.

It was just before Christmas, and soon Donellan received the news that was to spur him into action. He was, he wrote in his
Defence
, told by the gaoler Mr Roe and ‘others' that ‘she [Anna Maria] had taken poison and was then upon point of death from its effects'.

Donellan dashed a letter to Theodosia, telling her to beg Anna Maria to confess to poisoning her son, and to bring Sir William Wheler to hear the confession ‘as the most respectable person in the neighbourhood'. Donellan's lawyers noted, when publishing his
Defence
, that this desperate letter implied a consciousness of his own innocence and ‘a natural desire of having his character justified to the world by the only positive and expiring opportunity'.

It is indeed a good moment at which to take stock of Donellan's reactions. Anna Maria was a religious woman who had already told Theodosius's cousin Edward Boughton that she feared that ‘poor Sir Theo was ill prepared for so early and sudden a summons into Eternity'. Her son's death without the benefit of confession of his sins and the absolution of the Church would have weighed on her mind. Donellan knew her and her beliefs; he had, after all, lived at Lawford Hall for two years and had been – in his words – privy to at least one of her secrets, the poisoning of the dogs. And if she was about to die, then Donellan believed that she would confess her own crimes, and he wanted Sir William Wheler to be there to hear them. So if he had committed the crime, he would have known there was no hope of Anna Maria confessing to something she had not done. However, if
she
had committed the crime, he would have believed that she would confess it now rather than be damned for eternity.