For years, Mrs. Kidderminster sought the husband who had departed from their home with the promise of a swift return. She believed him to have embarked for Amsterdam, then Cork, then Barbados; she pursued every passing rumour, yet obtained no certain tidings. One day, while reading the public prints alongside her sister, her eyes fell upon an advertisement: unidentified bones had been discovered buried within a courtyard in Chelmsford. The man, it was believed, had been robbed and slain. The date assigned to the deed, she thought, might well coincide with the disappearance of her husband.
The account of the affair, preserved in a criminal collection of 1825, assigns the murder to the month of April 1654. Thomas Kidderminster, formerly steward to a bishop, had been travelling with several hundred pounds and legal papers concerning a family estate he intended to sell or redeem. His wife, then pregnant, had set out for London; he had assured her he would return within ten days. At Chelmsford, he put up at the White Horse, an inn where he had lodged in times past. He was murdered that very night. For years thereafter, no living soul knew what had become of him.
The new landlord of the White Horse, one Turner, recounted that labourers engaged in mending a fence between a meadow and an orchard had uncovered a skull displaying a mortal wound upon its left side. Digging deeper, they discovered the corpse doubled up within the pit. The coroner and his jury returned a verdict of murder caused by a violent blow to the head. As none could identify the deceased, the magistrate directed that a notice be inserted in the newspapers; Turner duly published the paragraph that was to reach the hands of Kidderminster’s widow.
Ere the body was identified, Turner had already laid the matter before the justices and procured warrants against the former innkeeper, Sewell, and his wife. Both denied all knowledge of the deed. Sewell was bound over to appear at the ensuing assizes, but died shortly before they commenced. His widow appeared in court and was continued upon bail.
Mrs. Kidderminster set out for Chelmsford accompanied by a female friend. Lacking a conveyance, they went on foot. Straying from their path beyond Stratford, they reached Romford in an exhausted state and took shelter at the Black Bull. Mary Mattocks, a native of Chelmsford, chanced to hear their purpose. Familiar with the former hostelry, she confirmed that murder had long been suspected there. She named the old landlord, Sewell, and directed them where he might be sought. Thus the widow encountered a local woman acquainted with the White Horse, capable of guiding her toward those who had once laboured beneath its roof.
Presently, the name of the former ostler, Moses Drayne, arose in their discourse. Mattocks said it was rumoured he had received sixty pounds and a suit of clothes. The widow repaired to Romford to question him. She demanded a description of the traveller who had stabled his horse at the inn. Drayne replied that he was a tall, stout man, with brown hair, wearing a black satin cap and a dark grey suit. His hat, he declared, was black. Mrs. Kidderminster corrected him upon this point: her husband wore a grey hat. According to the chronicle, Drayne changed colour and cast down his eyes; he referred the widow to Mary Kendall, formerly a maidservant at the White Horse.
Mary Kendall delivered a far more precise account. She related that she had been sent to carry sheets to a chamber called the King’s Arms, where she beheld the traveller standing by the hearth. The landlord, his wife, and the stranger were supping together. The traveller entrusted his cloak-bag to Sewell, declaring it contained near six hundred pounds alongside writings of great value. Later that evening, the mistress sent Kendall to lie with the children in a remote quarter of the house, and turned the key in the lock. The young woman declared she was awakened in the dead of night by a mighty blow, so violent that it shook the chamber where she lay.
On the morrow, she found Sewell, his wife, Drayne, and the daughters gathered round the hearth. None, they told her, had quitted the house; the traveller was already gone. They bestowed a groat upon the servant and strictly forbade her to cleanse the room. The door remained locked for nine weeks. When Kendall was at length admitted, she found garments and effects she recognised as the traveller's: his hat, his boots, his hung hanger, and his satin cap. The cloak-bag seen the night before remained likewise in the house. Within Sewell’s chest, she saw the stranger’s suit of clothes.
Kendall further avowed that she had taxed the ostler with having taken sixty pounds and the apparel. Sewell and his wife, she said, beat her and commanded her to hold her peace. Sewell was said to have offered her twenty pounds to depart the place. She likewise bore witness to the sudden rise in the Sewells' fortunes: they purchased and rebuilt a malt-mill, and the daughters went clad in costlier attire. These acquisitions the witnesses set alongside the stolen sums and vanished raiment. When she later disclosed these events to a kinswoman, the latter counselled her to return the money and inform the magistrates. Kendall was at last brought to testify, having long refused to speak. She explained that Sewell’s daughters had threatened to accuse her in turn if she dared reveal what she knew.
Other inhabitants corroborated portions of her deposition. Two women dwelling nigh the inn testified that between one and two in the morning, they heard a man cry out that he was being robbed of his money and murdered. There followed a heavy fall, the overturning of furniture, and then silence. On the following day, the people of the inn told them they were surely mistaken, for no stranger had lain within the house. Kidderminster’s servant identified the traveller's horse and apparel. A hatter identified a peculiar lining within the hat. The proof took shape through the preserved relics: the garments, the hat, the boots, and the gold lent abroad by a man formerly in penury.
Drayne pleaded not guilty. At his trial, the testimonies reconstructed the night at the inn and the concealment that ensued. The jury pronounced him guilty. Following his condemnation, he began, it is said, to make confession, but his wife interrupted him, imploring him not to incriminate others. The chronicle states that he subsequently implicated the elder of Sewell’s daughters. Both daughters were brought before the grand jury; Mary Kendall reiterated her testimony and Drayne’s accusation was laid before them. The grand jurors, however, threw out the bill for want of sufficient evidence, and the sisters were set at liberty.
For Mrs. Kidderminster, the notice in the public prints had at long last restored a name to the dead and led her to the relics he had left behind: a satin cap, a hat, boots, and a suit of clothes. Her long search for ships bound for Amsterdam, Cork, or Barbados reached its close in Chelmsford, beside the pit where her husband had been thrust away.