John Murrel once conducted a trade in cattle and horses throughout Yorkshire on a scale sufficient to warrant nearly one hundred pounds a year in rent. He possessed a wife, children, a modest estate brought by his spouse, and a business pursued from his earliest youth. Yet, when his fortune was squandered and his commerce decayed, he departed for London alongside his son, took a new mistress, and estranged himself from his first family. It was only later, after listening to a horse-dealer named Brown recount his robberies and subtle knaveries, that Murrel laid hands upon a brown mare belonging to Jonathan Wood. This final venture delivered him unto Newgate and the gallows.
His parents enjoyed a repute for honesty. They instructed him in reading, writing, and the tenets of religion, then bred him to their own calling: the pasturing of horned cattle and horses before bringing them to market. Arrived at manhood, Murrel took up the trade himself and leased a grazing farm in Yorkshire, personally managing a substantial traffic in livestock. He wed a young woman possessed of a modest portion; several children issued from their union, of whom five yet survived at the hour of his execution. These remained with their mother upon a small freehold belonging to her family.
For several years, Murrel preserved a tolerably fair reputation in the country. The chronicle reproaches him with excessive expenditure: his prodigality swallowed both his own substance and his wife’s estate, until his affairs fell into ruin. He thereupon determined to journey up to London, taking his son with him. In the metropolis, he consorted with new companions and attached himself to a woman whom he fancied capable of maintaining him. The record does not make clear whether a second marriage was ever solemnized; it observes merely that Murrel wedded her, or lived with her as though they were wed, for a considerable space of time.
Tidings of this manner of life reached his lawful wife. Though her kinsfolk endeavoured to dissuade her from a journey which, in their view, could only augment her grief, she nevertheless travelled to London, trusting that her presence might reclaim her husband. Murrel denied that she was his wife, and prevailed upon their son likewise to disown her as his mother. The youth complied out of dread and confusion. The wretched woman was forced to return into the country, crushed beneath the weight of this rejection. Murrel continued to cohabit with his second companion.
In the months that ensued, he resumed some traffic in horseflesh, though the record does not establish with precision what manner of income sustained him. The first incident that brought him into immediate collision with justice was his riding off with a mare belonging to a Londoner. Murrel contended that the beast had formerly been his own, and that their agreement had been merely verbal; he thus claimed the right to repossess and resell the animal. The chronicle mentions no conviction in connection with this affair, nor does it attest to any prior dishonesty before that theft. The narrative then shifts to Newcastle Fair, where Murrel fell in with horse-dealers who knew how to buy without ever satisfying the original owner.
Among their company was a Yorkshireman known as Brown, an old acquaintance of Murrel’s. Brown entertained the gathering with a relation of his exploits, which demonstrated to his auditors the lengths to which the traffic in stolen cattle might be carried. An army officer had newly purchased a mount which he intended to ride to London. Brown seized the animal, led it into the West Country, altered its mane and tail, and sold it to a parson for thirteen guineas—some seven guineas beneath its true value. The clergyman had charge of a second living at some distance, and was wont to leave the horse in a small stable by the churchyard wall during divine service.
Brown returned with an altered stratagem. Having procured a red coat and the accoutrements of a trooper, he forced the stable door and rode away upon the beast while the congregation was at prayer. He made all haste for Worcester, threw off his military habit, and resumed the guise of a horse-dealer. He then sold the creature to a physician, advising him to turn it out to grass for a fortnight—a precaution intended to stave off any immediate inquiry. The physician readily complied with this counsel.
On the morrow, Brown espied the parson and his serving-man on the outskirts of the town. Fearing they were in pursuit of him, he dared not re-enter the place, but repaired instead to the physician’s paddock, retook the horse, and stole a saddle and bridle from the inn where he had lodged. Mounted thus, he made for Essex. There he lay concealed until Northampton Fair, where he resold the horse for twenty-seven guineas to an officer belonging to the very regiment from which the beast had originally been bought. Having newly returned from Flanders, the officer recognized the horse and furnished the most exact description possible of the seller, being unwilling to forfeit his purchase-money.
Another officer inserted an advertisement describing both the man and the mount, offering a reward of five guineas for the apprehension. The notice caught the eye of both the parson and the physician, who joined in the hue and cry after Brown. He was ultimately apprehended in Cornwall, brought to trial, and convicted. The captain who had first owned the horse was so diverted by the rogue’s address that he procured his reprieve and carried him beyond the seas. Brown remained abroad until the Peace of Utrecht; returning to England, he resumed his trade in stolen horses, purchasing five or six beasts from the southern shires with intent to dispose of them at northern fairs.
This chain of fraudulent sales, disguises, and recognitions had begun in theft and proceeded beneath the very eyes of multiple claimants. Murrel heard Brown relate every turn of the history at Newcastle Fair. Approving the precedent, he immediately set about imitating it; yet his enterprise was not attended with the like fortune. The brown mare he stole belonged to Jonathan Wood. Murrel was speedily apprehended and committed to Newgate. At the following sessions of the Old Bailey, the evidence against him was held to be entirely plain, and the jury brought him in guilty. He was condemned solely for this horse-theft, and not for the exploits of Brown, nor for the former mare he claimed to have repossessed under a verbal pact.
Under sentence of death, Murrel professed remorse for his sins, yet repined against the rigor of the law which condemned him to die for the stealing of a horse. The chronicler notes that the penalty appeared to him overly severe, and that he fancied he might have escaped it. What tormented him most sorely was the estrangement of his son and kindred, who avoided all concern in his affairs. When the ordinary heard his complaints, he reminded Murrel of how he had used his own wife and child when they sought him out in London. The prisoner then began, according to the account, to perceive in the abandonment of his family a grievous transgression, the consequence of which was now brought home to him through his utter desolation.
When first brought up to receive his sentence, Murrel counterfeited death so perfectly that the keepers carried him back to Newgate as a corpse. This artifice gained him but a brief respite. At the following sessions, sentence was pronounced, and he was ordered for execution. He suffered on June 27, 1726, being aged between forty and fifty years. The chronicle thus closes the life of a drover who had lived for years in lawful commerce, abandoned his first hearth, and delivered himself over at last to a horse-theft established by conclusive proof.