A brief cry in the adjoining bedchamber; no blow witnessed. It is the testimony of Elizabeth Cleobald, a servant-maid, that serves as the threshold to the affair of John Beddingfield, who died at Sternfield, in Suffolk, in the night of the 27th of July 1762 according to the indictment set forth in the pamphlet. Eight months later, at Bury St Edmunds, the witnesses described marks upon the neck without agreeing upon their import, while two condemned prisoners delivered, after verdict, confessions that supplied another version altogether. The pamphlet preserves the gulf between that which was seen, that which was uttered, and that which the jury could lawfully hear.
The title-page places the assizes at Bury St Edmunds on Monday, the 21st of March 1763. The trial account itself bears the heading: Thursday, the 24th of March. These dates do not necessarily contradict one another: the first may denote the opening of the assizes, the second the very day of the proceedings recorded. The pamphlet furnishes no itinerary of the intervening days, leaving it impossible to reconstruct them further. It asserts that it was “taken down in court” by a shorthand writer, yet remains an ephemeral printed report rather than the court’s official roll.
Ringe and Margery Beddingfield, John’s widow, were brought to the bar. The bill of indictment charged them with murder and “petty treason”: it alleged that Ringe seized his master by the throat and strangled him, while Margery, in the next room, was present, aiding, and abetting. Such were the terms of the accusation, not yet the finding of the jury. Both pleaded not guilty.
The first deposition came from Elizabeth Cleobald, the maidservant. She related having seen Ringe and her mistress alone, kissing each other; she also recounted that Margery had spoken of a death before Michaelmas. Counsel for the defence objected that these matters lay outside the issue; the judge admitted them as circumstances that might throw light upon a concert between the prisoners.
On the evening of the 27th of July, Cleobald shared Margery’s bed in the kitchen-chamber, adjacent to that in which John lay down to rest. She said her master, a young man of four-and-twenty, appeared in good health. He had drunk punch with James Scarlet after his day’s work. Margery had refused to lie in the parlour chamber. Cleobald, overcome with fatigue after watching, fell asleep.
Between eleven and twelve o'clock, Margery awakened her. Cleobald stated that she heard a cry or sound of distress, short in duration, coming from John’s room. She implored her mistress to arise; the latter replied that they had better lie still. Ringe presently came into their room. In the darkness, Cleobald knew him by his voice. She swore she heard him say: “He is dead, and now I am easy.” Margery, she said, replied: “Is he dead?” Cleobald asked Ringe how he came there; he answered that he was forced to it.
Cleobald did not claim to have seen the strangling, nor to have entered John’s room before the discovery. Shortly afterwards, Ringe returned with a candle and gave out that his master was dead. Cleobald then described the face and neck as turned black. She initially kept back these words from the coroner, for fear that her mistress should use her ill.
This hesitation became a principal ground of defence. Cleobald disclosed only late in the day what she claimed to have heard; she could not define the noise, had seen no light, and had not sworn before the coroner that Ringe killed his master. She insisted upon the conversation she imputed to him, not upon any seen act. When she repeated her story to his face, Ringe, according to her, did not deny it; yet this reported silence did not constitute independent testimony.
Elizabeth Riches, another servant-woman, brought forward an earlier accusation. She stated that Ringe had proposed to her to put poison into his master’s morning dram of rum and milk, which she had refused. She also reported that he brought water for a draught after a vomit, though she did not swear to having seen any poison. Like Cleobald, she declared she had said nothing of this proposal to the coroner, through dread of Margery.
On the night of the death, Riches likewise heard a noise. Margery and Cleobald entered her room and bade her call Ringe. He went upstairs with a candle, and then announced that his master was dead. Riches described John lying on the floor upon his belly, near the bed, with his neck bruised and discoloured. A part of these details, she admitted under cross-examination, had been related to her by Ringe himself.
William Masterson, a lad of the stables above fourteen years of age, confirmed the discovery of the body, not the fatal deed. Ringe roused him, saying his master had fallen out of bed and killed himself. Masterson saw John on the floor, on his face, near the bed’s feet, his garments and bedclothes disordered. He judged that Ringe could not have had time to dress himself between his first summons and his return. He knew nothing of what had transpired before he was called.
James Scarlet, who had drunk with John that evening, deposed that the farmer was not in liquor and was in perfect health. Mr. Sparham, the surgeon called at the coroner’s inquest two days after the death, saw marks upon the neck, but initially thought that John’s own fingers, found near his throat, might have produced them; he deemed them insufficient to account for death. At the trial, he altered this opinion: the traces might have been caused by fingers and a thumb, with scratchings; sustained pressure could have stopped respiration. Yet he could not positively swear that this was the cause of death, admitting he had examined the body but cursorily.
An assistant to Mr. Cooper, another surgeon, likewise described distinct impressions, like unto a thumb and four fingers, and considered that prolonged compression might prove mortal. Nevertheless, he said it was hard to speak with certainty. William Alston, who assisted in laying out the corpse, remembered rather reddish, elongated marks upon one side only; he had not seen them black. The medical evidence supported the possibility of violence, while retaining contradictory descriptions.
The defence directed its force against the link between these outward circumstances and Margery’s complicity. Her counsel observed that only a single witness, Cleobald, touched her directly through the words attributed to her in the dead of night. The two women spoke of an unlawful intimacy between Margery and Ringe, yet neither had witnessed the strangulation. Witnesses called for the defence declared they had always known John and Margery to live on good terms as man and wife. They had not all dwelt within the house; their testimony described what they had observed, not necessarily the domestic life of every room.
The jury found Ringe guilty, and subsequently Margery guilty also. The pamphlet reports for him a sentence of hanging followed by dissection; for her, the sentence of burning at the stake. It thus enforced the penalty of “petty treason” found against the wife. It supplies neither appeal, nor subsequent minutes of the court, nor modern scrutiny of the trial.
The pamphlet subjoins certain confessions absent from the evidence laid before the jury. A few days before his execution, Ringe is said to have acknowledged that he first attempted poison: he said he bought arsenic at Aldeburgh, solicited Riches, and then put it into some water intended for John. According to his declaration, John drank but a small portion before perceiving something settled at the bottom of the vessel, and refused the rest. This confession was taken down after conviction by the prosecuting counsel, in the presence of a surgeon.
Ringe then gave his own relation of that night: he waited until John slept, entered his chamber, and took him by the throat. He asserted that both men fell from the bed, bending the curtain rod, and imputed a foreknowledge to Margery. These are his post-verdict utterances, not an independent confirmation of the vacillating testimonies. The pamphlet adds that Margery at first persisted in her innocence, but shortly before her death, upon being told of Ringe’s confession, admitted she was privy to the design and had discourse with him concerning the murder.
Finally, the printed account states that both convicts were executed at Rushmere, near Ipswich, on Friday, the 8th of April 1763. This date fell fifteen days after the hearing which the text places on the 24th of March, notwithstanding the sentence which had appointed the following Saturday; the pamphlet does not specify the legal instruments that brought about this respite. It closes with a few biographical particulars, including Ringe’s age and mention of a surviving daughter of Margery. The final piece remains the voice of the condemned as transmitted by the pamphlet: tardy, decisive for our reading, yet uttered after the trial and impossible to confound with what was actually heard by the jury.