Francis Tryon awoke to find two men standing at the foot of his bed. When he demanded who they were, they made no answer. They gagged him, bound him fast, and ransacked the house. His servants had gone abroad to sup; by the time Tryon managed to drag himself to the casement to cry for help, the intruders had made off with his jewels and his money. At daybreak, in the merchant’s house in Lime Street, a single question pressed upon the examiners: how had the thieves, without the least sign of forced entry, discovered the very rooms and strongboxes known only to the intimates of the household?
The judicial chronicle published by George Borrow in 1825 relates this case under the names of Colonel James Turner and several members of his family. The narrative places the burglary at Tryon’s house on the 7th of January 1663; other passages refer to the night as a Thursday, without ever reconciling the calendar. The sums stolen likewise appear in varied amounts according to the several witnesses. It is enough to lay hold of the essential facts: money, pearls, and other jewels of great price had been carried away; Tryon had been bound and grievously maltreated.
Intimacy soon cast suspicion upon the colonel. He frequented the house, was privy to Tryon’s daily habits, and had been wont to come and view jewels there. The servant Hill deposed that he had heard Turner propose, the year before, to procure the drawing of a false will in favour of the colonel and two other men. Turner answered that the discourse had been nothing more than a jest. This allegation alone did not establish his hand in the burglary; yet it made plain why suspicion should fall upon a man who knew precisely where to search.
Turner did not take to flight. On the contrary, he thrust himself into the search for the missing goods. He was said to have declared that the thieves were friends of his, though two strangers had exceeded his instructions by using Tryon with violence. He gave his word that he would restore the money and the jewels before three of the clock. On the following day, Alderman Thomas Aleyn came upon him in a shop in the Minories, his hand inside a chest, hard by several bags containing hundreds of pounds. When asked whence this money came, Turner replied that he had received it from a goldsmith whose name he had forgotten. He subsequently admitted having moved it thither with his wife and children, until “this foolish business” should blow over.
This discovery, rather than closing the affair, opened it wide. Turner accompanied Aleyn to Tryon’s dwelling and gave assurances that the remainder would soon follow. He was left at liberty for a space. Later, when bailiffs took him upon a civil action, he maintained that he had failed to return the goods only because he was hindered from doing so. He pressed to be let out that he might apprehend the thief, swore he knew where to find him, and then asked that his wife be fetched. She proceeded to Tower Hill and presently returned bearing bags. In them almost all the jewels were identified. There remained missing only a carcanet of rubies and diamonds, valued at two hundred pounds. Turner insisted that this piece also would fall into his hands, and offered to give his bond in writing for the six hundred pounds still wanting.
As the inquiry advanced, the recovered articles weighed far heavier than his protestations. Witnesses testified to having seen Turner convey five bags, afterwards deny that he had carried any money at all, and contradict himself regarding its origin. One bag bore a seal which certain merchants compared to that upon a letter from the Bishop of Chichester, pronouncing them identical. Another deposition associated a seal with the Bishop of Winchester. These discrepancies of detail belong to the 1825 compilation; under either version, the witnesses showed that the money had never belonged to Turner, his own assertions notwithstanding.
The trail of his family followed the trail of the money. Elizabeth Fry related that, in the early morning, Mrs Turner had come to borrow a chest wherein to secure the funds of a ruined merchant. She claimed she sought only to preserve a mother and her seven children, and desired that the seals be torn from the bags to disguise their provenance. Her husband presently arrived; they offered twenty shillings for the service and enjoined secrecy. Mrs Fry further recounted that five bags had been lodged in her house. This testimony did not prove that the family had taken part in the burglary, but it disclosed a concerted effort to conceal the goods after the fact.
Other witnesses placed John Turner with his father during the conveyance of the bags; John admitted having carried two bags from Tower Hill to the shop in the Minories, though he swore he had received them from a man named Wild. This explanation—alleging an open handover in broad daylight by a notorious felon—was met with utter disbelief by the bench. William Turner at first denied having laid eyes upon his father for three years. Yet several persons affirmed having seen them together in the week preceding the crime. When the court came to apportion guilt, the proofs were by no means equally strong against each prisoner: the judges directed the acquittal of Mary, whose acts were deemed to have been performed under the coercion of her husband, and found no sufficient evidence against Ely.
The charge against James rested upon a far broader web of proof: his familiarity with the house, his shifting narratives, the concealed coin, the jewels brought back by his wife, and his own descriptions of the robbery. The servant Hill affirmed that Turner had told him how a man had concealed himself in the house before nightfall and unbarred the door to his fellows. A serjeant recounted another variation: that one of the thieves had gone down into the cellar during the day, taken a key from beside Tryon’s bed, and let in his confederates. Tryon deposed that he believed he recognised William among the men who leaned over his bed, though he would not speak with certainty. For his own part, the colonel suggested that the thief was a certain Wild, with whom he had treated for the return of the property. These several accounts crossed one another without ever resolving into a coherent tale.
At his trial, Turner maintained that he had done no more than hunt down the robbers and recover the goods for his friend. He accounted for the carriage of the bags by an agreement with Wild, who had promised to yield up the remainder if the colonel refrained from prosecuting him. When a judge inquired how he could have laid hands upon an unarmed felon, only to let him go and return with confederates, Turner replied that they had pledged their souls to one another. The judge dismissed the excuse as a barefaced invention. Several witnesses of good credit spoke in Turner’s behalf: they had long known him for a man of trust and had seen him entrusted with jewels of great price. In their view, a gentleman already possessed of wealth had no need to hazard his good name for a burglary. The jurors were thus left to weigh these testimonies of character against the bags, the goods, and the irreconcilable narratives.
The verdict was delivered in two stages. James Turner was found guilty; the other prisoners were acquitted. On the 19th of January, the court pronounced sentence of death upon him. He was hanged two days later in Leadenhall Street, near Lime Street, hard by the very house he had protested he wished only to succour. Before he suffered, Turner confessed that he had indeed taken part in the burglary alongside William, a man named White, and a comrade of the latter. He maintained that his wife and his sons had known nothing of the design. He likewise delivered up the ruby and diamond carcanet that had remained missing until that hour.
In this dying confession, the family was cleared of the central guilt. The chronicle leaves unsolved every contradiction regarding how the thieves entered the dwelling or the precise sum of the stolen property; yet it exposes with clarity the shift that brought about the colonel’s ruin: having stepped forward as the indispensable agent of restitution, he became the possessor of the bags, and at last the prisoner at the bar, incapable of maintaining a consistent tale. The necklace restored before the gallows closes the account without softening the violence done upon Tryon. In a house unlocked by a familiar guest, succour and suspicion had, for a few days, worn the selfsame face.