The grey horse reappeared upon the highway without its rider. A farmer, making his way toward Wadebridge, observed the animal saddled yet riderless; having abandoned the chase, he questioned several men concerning the beast, one of whom believed he recognized the mount of Mr. Nevill Norway. The farmer proceeded to the merchant’s dwelling. The horse stood near the stable, and dark stains of blood were perceived upon the saddle. Two servants thereupon set out along the Bodmin road in search of their master.
Camden Pelham places this disappearance on the evening of 8 February 1840. Norway, a dealer in timber and sundry merchandise, resided at Wadebridge, some nine miles distant from Bodmin; he had attended that town’s market. Towards four o’clock, the chronicler writes, Norway had drawn out his purse to discharge a debt, when William passed closely by and must have seen it. A little before ten o’clock, the merchant set out on horseback for his home. A companion rode with him for several miles before parting company. The solitary horse, returning to the homestead, turned a familiar road into an urgent query: where had its master vanished, and who had intercepted him on his journey?
The road was lonely and rugged. After about two miles, one of the servants caught sight of something glistening in a stream. It was Norway’s body. He was conveyed back to Wadebridge upon his own mount; Mr. Tickle, the surgeon, observed severe wounds upon the head and face, which Pelham attributes to repeated blows inflicted with a blunt weapon. Nearby, tracks led from a pool of blood down to the brook; the merchant’s hat and a fractured piece from the lock of a pistol were discovered not far off. The chronicler reports that the footprints suggested the presence of two men and a retreat through an adjoining orchard. This reading of the terrain, however, is not corroborated by full testimonies within the bounded source.
Robbery appeared the probable motive. The purse, the money, a pocket-slate, and a bunch of keys were missing; searches conducted around the spot where the body had lain failed to bring them to light. The volume does not specify the sum carried off, nor does it recount the whole of the ensuing investigation. It does, however, cite several depositions that directed the authorities toward two local labourers, James and William Lightfoot, brothers who had grown up in the vicinity.
Harris, a shoemaker, recalled having seen them near the stream on the night of the murder. Ayres, a neighbour of James, reported another circumstance: that very evening, he had heard his neighbour return late and speak with his wife; though unable to distinguish the words, he heard both the woman and child burst into tears. When James’s dwelling was searched on 14 February, a pistol lacking its striking mechanism was found concealed within a ceiling beam. James explained that he had broken it whilst killing a cat; his demeanour appeared suspicious to the authorities, and he was committed to custody. William was apprehended three days later, after having remarked to Vercoe that if his brother were to suffer, he must suffer likewise, “for they were both in it,” according to the account preserved by Pelham.
Examined before a magistrate, William delivered a detailed declaration. He acknowledged having overtaken James on the road home and having accompanied him to the vicinity of the spot where the deed was committed. He stated that they had concealed themselves in a field; by his account, James snapped the pistol twice without its discharging, and thereupon struck Norway down with the weapon. William admitted his presence, their flight, and his own share in the theft: he had concealed the purse in his garden before casting it from Pendavey Bridge. His narrative shifted onto his brother the initial assault and the mortal blows, whilst nonetheless placing himself within the enterprise.
William subsequently guided the officers to a furze brake where the merchant’s pocket-slate and keys were recovered. The articles did not of themselves prove who had struck the blows; yet they confirmed that portion of the declaration concerning the disappearance and concealment of the effects. James was brought back from Bodmin gaol to Wadebridge on 19 February. Jackson, the constable, later deposed that James had delivered a confession agreeing in substance with William’s, yet striving to cast the initiative of the attack upon his brother.
Another narrative attributed to William shifted the roles once more. The gaoler at Bodmin testified that following his arrival at the prison, William told him he had revealed the whole truth to Mr. Molesworth. In this version, James had twice attempted to shoot Norway; William had then struck the victim with a stick, before James beat him with the pistol. The two statements attributed to William thus diverge regarding the weight of his own actions: the one depicts him as an accomplice present at the robbery, the other attributes to him a blow struck against the merchant. James, for his part, was reported as acknowledging a similar chain of events while charging William with commencing the assault.
The law, in Pelham’s relation, possessed no single, unvarying confession capable of resolving this contradiction. The compiler notes, on the contrary, that the brothers were kept apart until the trial, and that each of their accounts sought to cast the heavier guilt upon the other. To their declarations were added the testimonies placing them near the brook, the fragment of the pistol lock, the weapon found in James’s cottage, the hidden articles, and the other circumstances which Pelham states corroborated the depositions. Yet the chapter reproduces neither the full proceedings nor the questions put to the jury. These reported details must therefore be distinguished from the judicial verdict that followed.
The assizes opened at Bodmin on 30 March 1840, before Mr. Justice Coltman. When the two men were placed at the bar, Pelham describes them as displaying little agitation, having long been kept separated. Called upon to plead, they maintained their innocence. The judge summed up the evidence laid before the court; the jury returned a verdict of guilty against both brothers. Each received sentence of death. The tribunal’s decree thus united, under a single condemnation, two men whose reported utterances had continually accused one another without ever converging.
Following the verdict, the brothers were permitted to meet in the same cell. Pelham relates that they began by heaping reproaches upon each other, and soon came to blows, until the turnkeys parted them once again. This scene does not determine what each had done upon the road; it merely demonstrates that fraternal ties had brought their stories no closer together. For several days thereafter, the compilation describes them as indifferent to their fate. On 7 April, they received their families; following this interview, the narrative depicts them as more attentive to the spiritual exhortations of the Reverends Kendall and Molesworth. On the following Sunday, they attended the prison chapel.
The execution took place at Bodmin on Monday, 13 April. William was thirty-six years of age, and James twenty-three. The two brothers mounted the scaffold accompanied by the ministers, prayed, and desired that a last message be conveyed to their families. Pelham estimates the crowd at upwards of ten thousand spectators, noting that few among them displayed any compassion. In the same passage, he recalls that a subscription of some £3,500 had been raised for Norway’s widow and family between the murder and the execution. The public retribution and the succour rendered to the survivors thus form the dual aftermath that the compiler chose to record.
The grey horse had brought the first tokens of the crime back to Wadebridge; the brothers’ declarations never ceased to bandy the guilt between them. The jury condemned them both, yet Pelham’s relation does not permit us to transmute these self-serving narratives into an unabridged transcript of the trial. It leaves to the reader the essential fabric—the lonely road, the missing effects, the conflicting versions, the fatal sentence—without supplying the spoken words and contradictions that the chronicle passed over. It is within this gulf between mutual accusation and a shared doom that the true heart of the affair resides.