Alice Arden had prepared the milk for her husband’s breakfast. She had engaged a painter of Faversham, so the chronicle relates, to furnish her with a swift poison and instruct her how to mingle it with the broth. Thomas Arden took a spoonful or two; its flavour and colour displeased him, and he demanded what had been set before him. Alice overturned the bowl, reproaching him with never being content. Arden took horse for Canterbury. Upon the road, he fell into such violent retching that he escaped this first design, laid against him under his own roof.
The motive ascribed to Alice by the chronicle combines her adulterous commerce with Thomas Mosbie and the bitter land disputes that divided the town. Thomas Arden had obtained a parcel of ground formerly belonging to the Abbey of Faversham, which John Green claimed had been wrested from him. Green, a retainer of Sir Anthony Ager, bore a deep grudge against Arden and knew all the local enmities. Alice began to confer with him on the means of dispatching her husband. They promised ten pounds to whomsoever would undertake the deed. Poison having miscarried, they resolved henceforth to hire hands to strike the blow.
At Gravesend, Green fell in with a ruffian known as Black Will, an old soldier from the Boulogne garrison, of whom Bradshaw, a goldsmith of Faversham, related that he had committed divers robberies and murders upon the passage to France. Green perceived that the fellow might serve his design. Bradshaw remained wholly ignorant of what passed between them; he had merely named the man he recognized and recalled his former outrages. Green, however, fancied he had found his hired assassin. This chance conversation was to cost Bradshaw far more dearly than the journey he had undertaken in his company.
Green treated Black Will to meat, wine, and sugar, and thereupon offered him ten pounds to murder Arden. The rogue consented. On the morrow, Green was to point out his quarry in London. In Saint Paul’s Churchyard, Black Will espied Arden walking in company with a servant. He would have slain them both, but Green dissuaded him. Black Will was unable to approach his mark amid the knot of gentlemen who surrounded him. Green then wrote to Alice that an instrument had been found, and that Bradshaw had aided them therein. Bradshaw took charge of the letter to deliver it to its recipient, knowing nothing of its contents.
Their next essay was to waylay Arden at a house wherein he lodged in London. Michael, his servant, was instructed to leave the doors unbolted. Arden, being already abed, asked him whether all had been secured; Michael answered in the affirmative. Yet when he found himself alone, terror overcame him: he rose, shot the bolts, and made all fast, fearing lest Black Will should butcher him along with his master. The assassin arrived, found the doors barred against him, and withdrew in a fury. Michael excused himself to Green by asserting that Arden had risen in the night to lock up the house himself. The pretext pacified the confederates; it did not shake their purpose.
Another ambuscade was laid upon the highway near Rainham Down. Michael was charged with delaying his master, and when his horse began to limp, he feigned ignorance of the cause. Arden bade him have the beast examined and rode forward. Sundry gentlemen joined company with him before he reached the spot where Black Will lay in wait. A third attempt was concerted near Faversham, in a broom-close chosen for the assault as Arden returned from a visit. Black Will mistook his way; Arden took another road. At every turn, the murder had been contrived with care; at every turn, a passing stranger, a barred door, or an errant step caused the blow to miscarry.
As the fair of Saint Valentine drew near, the conspirators altered their design. Mosbie was to pick a quarrel with Arden and draw him into a fray, but Arden refused to take up the provocation. At first, Mosbie himself showed a great reluctance to engage in a butchery he accounted base and cowardly. Alice sent for him. The narrative relates that she fell upon her knees, beseeching him to keep his oath, and assuring him that none would weep for Arden nor pursue his slayers. He returned. The confederates settled their plot: they would strike within the house itself, while Arden believed himself to be spending an ordinary evening by his hearth.
Black Will was secreted in a closet at the rear of the parlour. Such servants as were not privy to the plot were sent abroad on errands; Michael was to act as accomplice and hold the candle. Mosbie waited for Arden in a nightgown. When the master of the house returned from visiting a neighbour, Alice was in the room, though she scarce returned his greeting. The street door was chained fast. Arden proposed a game of tables with Mosbie while supper was preparing. Michael took his stand behind his master’s chair, holding the light in such wise that it cast the closet into shadow.
The play seemed to proceed without event. At length, Mosbie uttered the appointed signal; Black Will sprang from his hiding-place and cast a towel about Arden’s neck to strangle him, whilst Mosbie dealt him a heavy blow upon the skull with a pressing iron. Arden was heard to groan. The assassins, deeming him dead, dragged him into the counting-house. When he groaned afresh, Black Will slashed his face with a knife. He rifled the dead man’s purse, took his rings, and demanded his hire. Alice paid him the ten pounds. He took horse and fled from Faversham.
Alice entered the counting-house in her turn and struck her husband’s body repeatedly with a knife. The confederates wiped away the blood from the parlour floor, strewed fresh rushes, and cast the bloody clout and the knife into a tub beside the well. It was necessary to transform a shambles into an orderly parlour, and thereafter give out that Arden had walked abroad. Alice sent for two London merchants, Prune and Cole, who had previously been bidden to supper. She entertained them as though she still awaited her husband’s return.
After the repast, she bade her daughter play tunes upon the virginals, and the guests danced with the rest of the company. Several times Alice remarked that Arden tarried very late. The two merchants at length took their leave, fearing to be locked out of their lodgings. Such servants as were innocent of the plot were sent out into the town to seek their master. Thereupon Michael, a maidservant, Mosbie’s sister, and Alice’s daughter carried the corpse out through the garden and laid it in a field adjoining the churchyard wall. Snow was falling. When they reached the garden gate, they found they had forgotten the key, and one had to be dispatched to fetch it. The body was laid on its back, in nightgown and slippers; one or two rushes had lodged between a slipper and the foot.
This clumsy contrivance failed to efface the marks of guilt. The neighbours and the Mayor set out in search of Arden, and Prune was the first to spy the body. In the snow, footsteps ran in a direct line between the field and the garden gate. The rushes found in the dead man’s slipper belonged to the parlour; blood and hair were discovered near the house, followed by the stained linen and the blade in the tub. Confronted with these damning proofs, Alice at last confessed and denounced her confederates. At Mosbie’s lodging, traces of blood upon his hose and purse tied him to Arden. He too confessed.
The affair did not conclude with an equal measure of justice meted out to all. At the Faversham assizes, Bradshaw was indicted for having procured Black Will, upon the sole ground that he had pointed him out to Green upon the road. The other condemned felons declared that they knew nothing of him and had never had speech with him. He affirmed that he had merely related to Green what he knew concerning the soldier from Boulogne. Borrow’s chronicle maintains that he was nevertheless convicted and put to death. Years later, Green confessed before his own execution that Bradshaw had known nothing of the plot; the admission came too late to restore the dead to life.
The sentences were executed in divers towns. Alice was burned at Canterbury; Mosbie and his sister were hanged at London; Michael and a maidservant suffered at Faversham. Green was apprehended years afterwards and executed near the town. Black Will had fled into Zeeland, where he was burned at Flushing. A dice-bag, a bowl of milk, a barred door, and footsteps in the snow had each swayed the fate of the actors; for Bradshaw, truth arrived only when the grave had closed over the sentence.