The letter was addressed to Mr. Battine, the Surveyor of Customs at Chichester. When William Galley drew it from his pocket within an inn at Leigh, a company of smugglers caught sight of the name upon the cover. Daniel Chater was travelling in his company; both men had left the coast to identify a prisoner detained in the wake of the robbery at the Poole Custom House. The strangers told them they had mistaken their way and offered to serve as guides. In truth, they had just perceived that these travellers were riding to bear witness against one of their own.
Ever since the plundering of the Poole warehouse in 1747, the revenue officers had been searching for those who carried off the seized goods. A man referred to as Dimar in the chronicle, arrested and held at Chichester, had recently been singled out as a suspect. Chater knew him and possessed knowledge of the burglary. The authorities requested that he accompany Galley, an officer of the customs, that he might formally identify Dimar before the magistrates conducting the inquiry. Their journey toward Chichester was intended as a routine appearance of witnesses; it proved instead to be the march that delivered them into the hands of the gang.
Having accepted the proffered escort at Leigh, the travellers halted at the house of a widow named Payne, whose sons were known to consort with the smugglers. Mrs. Payne suspected the two strangers of being revenue officers, and her sons went abroad to summon their confederates. In the meantime, Chater and Galley drank heavily. The record relates that they spoke far too freely of their errand and their connections. When they were roused that evening, the smugglers were in full possession of their secret.
When the hour came to depart, William Jackson commanded them to rise and quit the house. The company set out on horseback. Some among them debated keeping the two men captive and transporting them across the Channel to France; others opposed the design. Ere long, the gang fell upon the travellers with their whips. The beatings continued over several stretches of the road, until the wretched men could no longer keep their saddles. Their legs were then lashed beneath the horses’ bellies to prevent their falling; yet their bodies slipped down nonetheless, until their heads dragged heavily along the ground.
At Lady Holt Park, the smugglers cut Galley loose. According to the deposition recorded by Borrow, they debated whether to cast him down a well. Certain voices protested, and he was lifted back onto a horse. He was no longer capable of sitting upright; they laid him across the saddle, then forced his legs around the pommel, his torso dangling over the neck of the beast. He begged that they would kill him outright rather than leave him to linger in agony. None granted his prayer. While one of the smugglers mounted behind to steady him, Galley fell down a steep descent and died upon the spot, as the account relates.
The men carried his corpse to the house of a confederate and inquired how it might best be concealed. Another smuggler advised them to dig a trench in a solitary place. They laid Galley in a shallow grave. Seven months later, a huntsman chanced upon the spot. Galley’s coat, boots, and official commission were recovered from one of his pockets. These effects restored to light what the murderers had sought to obliterate: the man was indeed an officer of the customs, sent to aid the inquiry into the Poole outrage.
Chater had not died with his companion. The gang carried him to the house of old Mills, another confederate, and chained him to a post in a turf-shed, where he remained for three days. Benjamin Tapner drew a knife and slashed his forehead and across both his eyes. He bade him fall to his prayers, warning him that the men who had come to kill him would not depart until the deed was done. Not one among them intervened.
They subsequently conducted Chater on horseback toward the well at Lady Holt. Tapner placed a halter about his neck. Seeing a gap in the pale, the captive attempted to squeeze through; Tapner compelled him to vault the fence. The men suspended him over the mouth of the well and left him dangling there for a quarter of an hour. One of them seized his legs; Tapner loosened the rope, and the body plunged to the bottom. When one of the smugglers declared he believed he still heard the wretch breathing, they cast heavy fence-rails and gate-posts into the pit before riding away.
On their journey homeward, the men halted to drink at the house of an acquaintance. Borrow records that they spoke of the deed as though it were a notable exploit. Yet the disappearance of the two travellers provoked a protracted and painstaking search. Members of the band were taken into custody, and several consented to turn King’s evidence against their fellows. The prosecution did not rest merely upon the exhumation of Galley’s remains; it gathered the corroborating testimonies of those who had ridden with the gang and participated in the outrages.
A Special Commission convened at Chichester on 16 January 1749. Benjamin Tapner, John Cobby, and John Hammond stood indicted as principals in the murder of Chater; William Carter, the elder and younger Richard Mills, and William Jackson were arraigned as accessories before the fact. Jackson and Carter were likewise indicted for the murder of Galley. The bills of indictment thus distinguished between the two deaths and the specific role attributed to each prisoner in their execution. The proceedings opened before a jury that heard the recital of the torments, the description of the places of confinement, and the depositions of former accomplices. The jury retired for scarce a quarter of an hour before returning a verdict of guilty against all the prisoners, according to the chronicle.
The presiding judge ordered their execution for the following day. Borrow fixes 18 January 1749 as the date of the hanging of six of the condemned; Jackson had died in prison on the evening of his conviction. The bodies of Carter, Tapner, Cobby, and Hammond were subsequently hung in chains: Carter near Rake, Tapner upon Rook’s Hill, and the remaining two upon the coast near Selsey Bill. High upon the littoral, their gibbets stood as a landmark seen from afar, both to the east and to the west.
In Jackson’s pocket was discovered a small religious charm. It invoked the Three Kings of Cologne and implored their intercession at the hour of death. A French inscription attested that the paper had touched their sacred relics in Cologne, serving to preserve travellers from misfortunes of the road, fevers, and sudden death. Borrow employs this relic to comment upon the condemned man’s faith; the scrap of paper proves nothing regarding his guilt in the murders. Yet it endures among the material relics preserved in the annals of that fatal road: the letter that betrayed Galley’s errand, the commission disinterred from the earth, and this talisman promising safety to a man condemned for riding with that murderous company.