In London, Ann Bond was standing upon the threshold of her lodgings when an unknown woman offered her a place in service. She was told her master would be a certain Colonel Harvey. Three days after her arrival, she learned that she served Colonel Charteris. The following day, she sought to depart; the door was barred. The chapter by William Jackson, published in a criminal calendar, relates the accusation brought by Ann, the trial, and the colonel’s pardon. His portrait of Charteris is fiercely polemical; these biographical episodes derive from Jackson, and not from the minutes of the trial.
Before Ann appears in these pages, Jackson traces the narrative back to the army. Charteris was, in his telling, a consummate gambler. During winter quarters, he stripped brother officers of their means at cards and dice; when their purses were exhausted, he lent to them at an interest of one hundred per cent, taking their commissions as security. Argyle and Stair, young officers who dreaded the ruin of their comrades, laid the matter before the Earl of Orkney, then in Brussels. Orkney apprised Marlborough. The court-martial convened an equal number of English and Scottish officers. It sentenced Charteris to disgorge the sums obtained through usury, cashiered him from the regiment, and stripped him of his commission. His sword was broken; drums beat him out of camp.
Upon the road from Brussels to Mechelen, Jackson further relates, the colonel cast his breeches into a ditch. Arriving at the inn, he kept his scarlet cloak buttoned to the knee. On the morrow, he rang violently: his breeches, he declared, contained a diamond ring, a gold watch, and a substantial sum of money. He had himself shattered the window to feign an intrusion; he insinuated that the innkeeper might have robbed him, threatening to have him put to death as an accessory. Friars from a neighbouring convent ultimately furnished the host with the means to discharge the alleged loss. The man who, the evening before, had discarded his own garment now converted the inn into a theatre of crime.
He subsequently returned to Scotland. Jackson states that submission and money procured him a new commission in a troop of horse, and later the rank of colonel. In Edinburgh, amidst the debates surrounding the Union of the kingdoms, he was said to have played cards with the Duchess of Queensberry. Placing her near a great mirror wherein her hand was reflected, he won three thousand pounds from her. The Duke, incensed by this knavery, secured the passage of an act forbidding gaming beyond a specified sum, according to the narrative. Jackson adds that Charteris thereafter lent upon mortgages, acquired estates in Scotland and Lancashire, and took up residence in London.
The capital afforded him, according to the same chapter, ample means to enlarge his affairs and his train of life. Women in his pay accosted young country girls at the inns where the wagons arrived, promising them positions as maidservants in his household. The true name of the master was concealed. Ann Bond had arrived in London and had subsequently quitted her place on account of illness. Having recruited her strength in private lodgings, she sat before the door. It was there that a woman spoke to her of Colonel Harvey.
Ann accepted the employment. The procuress conducted her to the house, where she passed three days before learning the true name of her master. He gave her money to redeem the clothes she had pawned during her sickness and offered to purchase her fresh attire. These garments she refused. He then tendered her a purse of gold, a life annuity, and a house if she would consent to lie with him. She rejected the proposal: she would perform her duty as a servant, she replied, and he might discharge her if her work did not please him.
The following day, Ann overheard a visitor enquire for Colonel Charteris. The name struck her with terror. Well aware of the reputation which Jackson attaches to the man, she informed the housekeeper that she was ill and must quit the house. The housekeeper gave warning to the master. He summoned her, threatened to shoot her dead if she offered to leave, and commanded the other servants to keep the door fast.
On the morrow, the clerk of the kitchen sent her into the parlour. Charteris bade her stir the fire. Jackson records that he stopped her mouth and violated her; when she declared that she would prosecute him, he struck her with a horsewhip and loaded her with abuse. The door opened and the clerk of the kitchen appeared. Charteris thereupon alleged that Ann had robbed him of thirty guineas and ordered her to be turned out of doors. Her complaint was thus turned against her as an accusation of theft, and she was thrust into the street.
Ann repaired to Mrs Parsons and sought her counsel, who advised her to prefer an indictment. The charge was laid before the grand jury as a completed rape, and not a mere assault with intent; a true bill was found. Charteris was committed to Newgate, loaded at first with heavy irons. He soon paid for lighter fetters, hired an apartment, and was waited upon by servants. His son-in-law, the Earl of Wemyss, procured a writ of habeas corpus; the colonel was admitted to bail and enlarged pending his trial.
At the Old Bailey, the defence assailed Ann’s character. Jackson affirms that these imputations failed, and that there was no ground to suspect her prosecution of an ulterior design. After a lengthy trial, the jury pronounced Charteris guilty. The calendar enters into no detail regarding the depositions, but records the issue: a verdict of guilty and sentence of death. Bail had not extinguished the accusation; the trial had restored Ann and her word to the heart of the proceedings.
The sentence was not followed by execution. The Earl of Wemyss summoned Lord President Forbes from Scotland to lay the matter before the Privy Council. Jackson relates that an estate of three hundred pounds per annum was settled upon Forbes for this service. The King at length consented to grant Charteris a pardon, upon the condition that a suitable annuity be settled upon the prosecutrix. The pardon followed upon the verdict: it was no acquittal. The chapter does not specify the amount of the annuity, yet it makes this condition the concluding act of the legal proceedings.
Charteris retired to Edinburgh and lived there some two years, according to Jackson, before his death. The calendar names no day. It recounts that the colonel was interred in the family vault at Greyfriars, where the populace all but tore his coffin to pieces. Shortly after his conviction, a print representing him at the bar of the Old Bailey had been published with a satirical inscription. Jackson likewise transcribes an epitaph ascribed to John Arbuthnot, which concludes that Charteris had been condemned “for what he had not done.” This turn of phrase stands at variance with the narrative of the trial; it is a satire preserved in the chapter, not an instrument of law.
Following the trial, Ann Bond vanishes almost entirely from the page. Jackson notes that an annuity was to be settled upon her, then turns back to the death, the coffin, and the execrations heaped upon Charteris. At the outset, she had refused the gold, the house, and the annuity tendered for her consent; she had attempted flight, then sought counsel of Mrs Parsons. Her accusation had led to a conviction which the royal pardon did not erase. The compilation preserves her voice long enough to record the verdict, but follows no further the life of the woman for whose benefit that annuity was to be established.