At Tyburn, John Hewlet asked for a prayer book from the cart, kissed it after the manner of one taking an oath, and then turned toward the multitude to declare, as a dying man, that he had never struck Joseph Candy. The declaration could not overturn the verdict returned a short time before. On December 26, 1724, a jury had found him guilty upon the oaths of eyewitnesses. To their depositions, Hewlet had opposed steadfast protestations of innocence and a flat denial of the deed. From its opening lines, the chronicler presents the affair as one of those cases wherein contradictory accounts appear to carry an equal weight. At Tyburn, the verdict remained unshaken, yet Hewlet repeated his denial.
Hewlet was born in Warwickshire, the son of Richard, a butcher. He served not his apprenticeship under his father, but learned the same trade at Leicester. Ill-natured persons, the chronicler reports, asserted that the trade had endowed him with a bloodthirsty temper. This charge adhered to the tale of his early days. Hewlet did not remain to the end of his indentures. Being a stout and robust youth, he hoped to gain advancement in the army and enlisted in the First Regiment of Foot Guards, during the reign of William III.
The wars soon earned him the reputation of a brave soldier, though rude and cruel. His officers relied upon him without bearing him any affection, according to the account. He formed an attachment to a corporal named Blunt, described as a man who took pleasure neither in security nor far from danger. At the siege of Namur, both found themselves in the trenches when the French made a fierce sally, only to be repulsed with grievous slaughter. In the confusion of the fray, the pursuers lodged themselves in an outwork and had well-nigh taken another; the ground remained exposed to the enemy’s fire. A young cadet of Blunt’s regiment had been slain.
Blunt observed to his colonel that the cadet carried nineteen pistoles upon his person, and that it were a pity the French should possess themselves of them. He asked leave to go and fetch the money. The colonel reminded him that the ground was still swept by the enemy’s shot, that any man venturing thither risked his life, and added that many corpses lay there, making it hard to identify the right one. Blunt replied that he would know the young gentleman by another mark, should his countenance prove insufficient. The colonel at last suffered him to depart. Blunt crossed the ground under fire, examined several bodies, recognized the cadet, and brought back the coins. He had hazarded his life to recover the nineteen pistoles.
This deed, saith the chronicle, pricked Hewlet’s emulation. He resolved to perform an exploit that might match it. An occasion presented itself during the work upon a mine driven beneath an enemy bastion. The engineer appointed to fire the train of powder had drunk heavily overnight and mistook the hour; he laid the match too early, while the pioneers were yet working in the mine. A sentinel came running forth and cried out that the blast must await noon, for some twenty men were underground and stood in peril of their lives. Hewlet rushed in, sword in hand, and cut the train of powder just before the fire reached the barrels. He thus saved the pioneers exposed to the explosion. The chronicle displays him accomplishing the perilous venture he had vowed to undertake following Blunt’s bravado.
At the battle of Landau, Hewlet received a blow to the head from the butt of a musket. His skull was fractured, and an operation was performed upon him which the chronicler terms trepanning. After this treatment, he affirms, Hewlet never fully recovered his former faculties, and, as soon as he had taken drink, would fall into a fury bordering on madness. It is thus that the chronicle connects the wound sustained at Landau with the disorders it attributes to him after his return to England.
Following the Peace of Ryswick, Hewlet returned to England. He entered the service of a gentleman and married. He and his wife had nine children; the chronicler adds that they were all dead before their father came to his tragic end. He subsequently held the post of a night watchman; the chronicle places him in this office at the time Joseph Candy was slain.
Candy was killed by a blow that inflicted a mortal wound to his head, and Hewlet was indicted for having struck him with his watchman’s staff. Eyewitnesses deposed at the trial. On December 26, 1724, the jurors declared Hewlet guilty of having given the fatal blow to Candy’s head with his staff. To these depositions, Hewlet opposed only the repetition of his innocence and the denial that he had ever struck the victim.
After his condemnation, Hewlet was cast into the condemned hold. Instead of showing the penitence expected by the chronicler, he cried out against the witnesses, called them perjured wretches, and invoked the judgment of God upon them. He wished that after his death his apparition might haunt and terrify them to their graves. When it was represented to him that such language was ill-suited to a man preparing to appear before his Maker, he altered not his tone.
As death drew near, the chronicle does not show him terrified at the thought of leaving this life. He appeared only to regret leaving his wife and a few ancient acquaintances from Warwickshire. He desired to receive the sacrament and said he would prepare himself as best he could. Thus, the prayers he wished to join to his dying days coexisted with his rage against the witnesses. On the day of execution, Hewlet preserved the demeanor he had displayed during his imprisonment, adding neither confession nor recantation. At Tyburn, he once more protested his innocence before the assembled throng.
Then came the gesture with the prayer book. Hewlet kissed it as though swearing an oath upon it, and repeated that he had never struck Candy. He died at Tyburn, advanced in years. Long years divided the soldier who had severed the powder train from the watchman accused of having struck Candy. The courage of the former could not determine the innocence of the latter, no more than his repute for brutality could alone account for the fatal blow. Before the multitude, Hewlet had chosen to repeat the selfsame fact, without evasion: he denied having struck the man. His oath remained to confront the verdict returned upon the depositions of eyewitnesses.