The Cheapside Corpse
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Synopsis
London in the spring of 1665 is a city full of fear. There is plague in the stews of St Giles, the Dutch fleet is preparing to invade, and a banking crisis threatens to leave Charles II's government with no means of paying for the nation's defence.
Amid the tension, Thomas Chaloner is ordered to investigate the murder of Dick Wheler, one of the few goldsmith-bankers to have survived the losses that have driven others to bankruptcy - or worse. At the same time, a French spy staggers across the city, carrying the plague from one parish to another.
Chaloner's foray into the world of the financiers who live in and around Cheapside quickly convinces him that they are just as great a threat as the Dutch, but their power and greed thwart him at every turn. Meanwhile, the plague continues to spread across the city, and the body count from the disease and from the fever of avarice starts to rise alarmingly . . .
Release date: January 8, 2015
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Print pages: 480
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The Cheapside Corpse
Susanna Gregory
A number of theories have been proposed for why someone should have hidden such wealth and neglected to recover it – plague, the Great Fire, the civil wars, or even a burglar, executed before he could tell anyone what he had done – but until more evidence comes to light, all must remain speculation.
The house may have been owned by one Richard Taylor, who was accused of producing ‘fowle and course’ wares in 1606, and faced dismissal from the Goldsmiths’ Company. He suffered a spell in prison, but returned to his work and took a lease on a shop in Cheapside, where he stayed until the 1650s. His partner was Richard Wheler, whose widow Joan is recorded as renting a similar property two doors down. It was somewhere between these two premises that the hoard was discovered, although there is no evidence to say that it belonged to any of the three.
Captain Silas Taylor (no relation) was a Parliamentarian soldier who was Storekeeper of the Harwich Shipyard, as well as an amateur composer and a personal friend of the musician Matthew Locke. He was known to Samuel Pepys, and often appears in the Diary. Evan Taylor (or Tyler) was a printer who worked in the Cheapside area in the mid 1660s.
Another Taylor, also unrelated, was Randal, who wrote The Court & Kitchin of Elizabeth, Commonly called Joan Cromwel, The Wife of the late Usurper, Truly Described and Represented, And now made Publick for General Satisfaction. It was printed by Thomas Milbourn on St Martin le Grand in 1664, and republished in 1983 as Mrs Cromwell’s Cookery Book. It is a peculiar pamphlet, presumably intended to prove the author’s Royalist convictions by mocking the dead Cromwell’s wife.
There is a theory that Randal had worked in the White Hall kitchens during the Protectorate, and was dismissed ignominiously, but this has never been conclusively proven. Philip Starkey was one of Cromwell’s master-cooks, paid twenty pounds for each ambassadorial function. Mrs Cromwell died a few months after the book was published, at the home of her daughter and son-in-law in Northamptonshire. There is no evidence that she ever saw Randal’s scribblings.
As there were no banks as such in the 1660s, goldsmiths took it upon themselves to store and lend money, keeping it in their vaults, and loaning it to other customers at rates of between six and ten per cent. Some of their stockpile went towards paying for the war that had been officially declared on the Dutch on 22 February 1665 – a month later than portrayed in this novel.
Edward Backwell was one such goldsmith, a founder of our modern-day banking system. He was the government’s chief financial advisor during the Commonwealth, a role he continued after the Restoration. He arranged the money side of the sale of Dunkirk (an unpopular transaction that turned many people against the Earl of Clarendon), managed the payment of war subsidies, and lent the government money to pay the Tangier garrison. His ‘bank’ suffered a near-collapse in 1665, when he was out of the country on government business and the clerk he had left in charge (Robin Shaw) died of plague. He was finally ruined in 1672, when the King put a Stop on the Exchequer – de facto admission that the government was bankrupt. Shaw was probably in Spymaster Williamson’s pay. Other great goldsmith–banking dynasties of the 1660s include such names as Vyner, Angier, Hinton, Glosson, Johnson and Meynell.
James Baron was a linen-draper who married Frances Bott in 1650 and died in 1667. Francis Poachin was landlord of the Mitre on Cheapside in 1667, and lived on Cornhill; he suffered catastrophic losses to his business in the 1680s. Charles Doe lived on Cheapside between 1641 and 1671; his business failed shortly after the Great Fire. Nicholas Kelke was a pewterer who married a Southwark lass, while Mr Yaile paid twenty pounds’ rent for his house on Cheapside in 1638.
The Earl of Clarendon did build himself a princely home in Piccadilly, sneeringly called Dunkirk House. And the vintner Nicholas Colburn bought a country estate in Essex, where he was living in February 1665. Thomas Chaloner, father of the regicide, did discover alum on his estates at Guisborough in Yorkshire; they subsequently passed to the Crown, and an unfair takeover has been suggested as one reason why his heirs might have sided with Parliament.
The Intelligencer for 24 April 1665 records the unfortunate lot of Dr Misick, who was severely burned while reaching for a glass of spirit and turpentine. His maid suffered the same fate trying to save him, and it was feared that both would die. Francis Neve was an upholder active in the Cornhill–Threadneedle Street area in the 1660s. Famous courtiers include Bab May, Will Chiffinch, Winifred Wells, Lady Carnegie (rumoured to have given the Duke of York a ‘shameful pox’) and the Duke of Buckingham, while Sir George Carteret was Treasurer to the Navy.
As in most conflicts, the propaganda machines were busy during the Second Anglo-Dutch War. The rumour about the fifteen hundred drowned Britons was hawked around the city until it was discovered to be a lie and its originator punished. Similar rumours were propagated in Holland at the same time. Omens and portents were rife, and included comets, coffin-shaped clouds and other celestial phenomena, all reported with grave precision in the newsbooks. Pepys records being told about a sea-battle heard on 14 April, during which Captain Teddeman had his legs blown off, but there was no truth in it.
The parish registers of St Mary le Bow record several burials in the spring of 1665. They include Robert and Sarah Howard, George Bridges and Abner Coo, physician. Another early victim was Margaret Porteous, buried on 12 April 1665. Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year contains a tale of a Frenchman who caught the plague at his lodgings in Long Acre, and who then went to Bearbinder Lane off Cheapside, thus transporting the disease from one parish to another. However, Defoe was still a child when the Great Plague of London raged, and his account was written almost sixty years later, intended as fiction.
There was a riot in London over the double standards imposed by the authorities during the plague, although it happened in the area surrounding St Giles-in-the-Fields, not on Cheapside. It stemmed from the fact that the searchers could be bribed to record a death as something other than the pestilence, which would release the house from the forty-day quarantine.
Regardless of their efforts, London was essentially powerless to combat the disease, mostly because contemporary medics did not understand how it was transmitted or how to treat it. Various theories were put forward, including one that said it was caused by a deadly miasma, and another that blamed tiny worms invisible to the naked eye. Cures and preventatives were myriad, and many were advertised with great confidence in the newsbooks, although it was to no avail. The disease advanced relentlessly as the weather grew warmer, leaving thousands dead in its wake.
It had been a terrible night for Nicholas Colburn. He had been a wealthy man, proud owner of a country estate, founder of a reputable wine business, and fêted as a shining beacon of virtue by his fellow vintners. Now he had nothing, and he doubted that even his most loyal friends would hold him in very high esteem once they learned what he had done.
As he left the illicit gambling den the sun was rising, presaging the start of another crisp, blue winter day. Then he saw the man who had introduced him to his vice, and who had been whispering for weeks that his luck would change. The fellow was smirking. Colburn stared at him. Was that vengeance in his eyes – that he had wanted this to happen? Colburn shook himself irritably. No, he would not blame his ruin on someone else. He had always had a weakness for cards, and the higher the stakes, the more exciting and irresistible he found them. It had been his own choice to continue playing in the face of all reason.
As his fortune had dwindled, he had applied to the goldsmiths for loans – goldsmiths were also bankers, men who stored money for some clients and lent it to others. They had been astonished that such a rich man should need to borrow, but he had invented a tale about expanding his business, and had offered to pay twice the usual rate of interest. Naturally greedy, they had scrambled to accept his terms. However, being gentlemen of discretion, not one had discussed the arrangement with his colleagues. And that was unfortunate, because if they had, they might have prevented what was about to happen.
It was too late now, of course. The previous night had seen Colburn lose the last of the enormous sums he had begged. Unbeknownst to each other, virtually every goldsmith in the city had accommodated him, and many had overreached themselves to do so, flattered that they should receive the patronage of such a prestigious customer. Many of the smaller concerns would not survive when he defaulted. Indeed, even the larger ones would suffer a serious blow.
Bowed down with remorse, Colburn began to trudge home, for once grateful that he had no family – he had never married, so at least the disgrace that was about to come crashing down would not have to be endured by a wife and children. It would be his alone to bear.
He turned into Cheapside. As usual, the road was bright, lively and chaotic. And noisy – the sound of iron-shod wheels on cobbles, and the honks, bleats and brays of animals being driven to market was deafening. It reeked, too; the hot stench of dung mingling with the contents of the drains that ran down either side of the road – slender ribbons of water that were wholly incapable of coping with the volume of rubbish tipped into them.
As he passed the church of St Mary le Bow, a royal herald climbed the steps, resplendent in his fine uniform. Two trumpeters blared a fanfare to attract attention, and Colburn went to listen, although he did not know why – what heralds proclaimed could not matter to him now.
In a penetrating bawl, the man announced that war had been declared on the United Provinces of the Netherlands. Colburn wondered why the King had waited so long to say so – the news was weeks old, and had already been thoroughly discussed in the coffee houses. He experienced a familiar, sharply agonising stab of guilt as the little procession marched away to its next destination. Wars were expensive, so how would His Majesty pay for one? The answer was that he would expect help from the goldsmith–bankers. Except that many of them would not be in a position to oblige, thanks to Colburn and his gambling.
He hid behind a cart when he saw several bankers in the crowd that had gathered to hear the herald. Taylor, Wheler and Backwell headed the most powerful enterprises, while Angier and Hinton were smaller, but still influential. They stood talking in low voices, no doubt discussing how best to fund the looming conflict. Misery engulfed Colburn. What if the Dutch invaded because the King could not afford to defend his realm?
Sick with shame, Colburn stumbled away. How could he live with the knowledge that his fondness for cards had put his country in danger? He could never repay what he owed, and no one would ever spare him a smile or a friendly word again. He would be a pariah, shunned by all until the day he died. Gradually, he began to see what he must do. He waited until a particularly heavy cart was lumbering past, and flung himself beneath it.
There were cries of horror as the wheels crunched across him, and people hurried to stand around his mangled body, shaking their heads in mute incomprehension. Some were the bankers.
‘It is Nicholas Colburn,’ said Backwell, unsteadily. ‘One of my biggest clients.’
‘And mine,’ added Angier. ‘In fact, he owed me a fortune, so I hope his estate can pay, or I shall be ruined.’
Blood drained from faces as others said the same and the awful truth dawned. The sum total of the loans Colburn had taken out were far greater than the value of his assets, and he had offered the same collateral to all. No one would receive more than a fraction of what had been lent.
‘The war,’ gulped Backwell. ‘How shall we finance the war?’
Dick Wheler was the richest goldsmith in London. He was also the most ruthless, and thought nothing of lying, cheating, scheming and even ordering the occasional death to expand his empire. He had lost a substantial sum to the selfishly irresponsible Colburn, but it had not taken him long to recoup his losses. He had simply tightened the thumbscrews on his clients, and was pleased to say that now, just a few weeks later, his coffers were bulging once more. Few of his colleagues could claim the same – most were still reeling from the disaster.
He eyed the man who stood in front of him, a squat, ugly brewer named John Farrow, who quailed in trepidation and wrung the hat he held so hard that it seemed he might rip it in two.
‘You have paid me nothing for four months now,’ Wheler said sternly. ‘Therefore, I have no choice but to take possession of your brewery.’
‘No!’ cried Farrow in dismay. ‘How shall I dig myself out of this trouble without it? Please! Give me a few more days. My wife has been unwell and—’
‘Yes, yes,’ interrupted Wheler. He had heard the excuses a thousand times: business was bad because of the cold weather; the Dutch war meant customers were less willing to spend money; there had been an unprecedented hike in the cost of coal; a loved one was ill and medicines were expensive. ‘You have told me before.’
Farrow opened his mouth to press his case, but Wheler snapped his fingers and two henchmen materialised out of the shadows. The brewer struggled and howled as he was manhandled through the door, but his pleas fell on deaf ears – Wheler was actually rather pleased by what had happened: the brewery occupied a strategic position on Cheapside, and could be turned into a profitable tavern.
The next defaulter was ushered in, and the process began all over again.
‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘Widow Porteous. You borrowed money to start a laundry, but you have repaid none of it so far.’
‘Because no one told me that coal prices would rise so high,’ she stammered. ‘But I have to buy fuel to heat up my water, and there—’
‘You left a ring as surety,’ recalled Wheler. He walked to a cabinet and took it out. It was a pretty thing, silver studded with garnets. Perhaps his wife would like it. He brightened. It would distract her for a while, and she might relent in her campaign to be given a role in the running of the business. Joan had a good financial head on her shoulders, it was true, but Wheler did not want to work with her, and wished she would stop pestering him about it.
‘My late husband’s,’ whispered Widow Porteous, a tear rolling down her cheek.
‘It is forfeit,’ declared Wheler briskly. ‘You have a month to make the next repayment; if you fail, you will lose a lot more than this little bauble.’
‘But it is the only thing I have left of him! Please give me another week to—’
‘I have given you another week,’ snapped Wheler. ‘Several times. But you do not honour your promises. I, too, have bills to pay – the rugs in here are little more than rags, while my wife is in desperate need of new winter shoes.’
Widow Porteous stole a glance at the office’s opulent decor, which included a portrait of Joan in finery fit for a queen. When her gaze settled on the banker again, there was a good deal of reproach in it. Irked, Wheler barked an order and his henchmen ushered her out. When she had gone, he made a note of the transaction in the ledger that lay open in front of him.
As he wrote, he was wracked by a deep, phlegmy cough that hurt. His physician had diagnosed lung-rot, which would kill him in a few weeks, although that fate held considerably less terror for him than the prospect of catching the plague. There had been three cases near St Giles, and while most Londoners had grown complacent about the possibility of a major outbreak, Wheler had seen what the disease did to its victims. The thought of his pustule-ravaged corpse tossed in a pit with hundreds of others was almost enough to make him turn to religion.
He supposed he should spend the little time he had left with Joan, but that was a dull prospect when compared to the heady delights of high finance. It was no secret that he loved money more than people, and he would far rather pass his last days confiscating the assets of defaulters than sitting at home waiting to die.
He was still coughing when there was a knock on the door. It opened to admit James Baron, his top henchman, a great bull of a fellow with a rakish smile. Baron was resourceful, greedy and cold-blooded – exactly the kind of person Wheler needed to manage the less pleasant side of his operation. It was Baron who would take possession of the brewery, and who would visit those who had missed appointments that day. He was very good at what he did, and Wheler could not have managed without him.
‘Widow Porteous was your last client today,’ Baron reported. He frowned when he saw his employer’s pallor. ‘Do you want me to fetch Dr Coo?’
Wheler shook his head. ‘It will pass, and there is nothing more he can do anyway.’
‘As you wish. Is there anything else, or can I go home?’
‘I want you to visit the linen-drapers first. They promised me fifty pounds tonight, but they only brought forty. Perhaps one might have an accident, as a warning to the others.’
Unusually, Baron hesitated. ‘My brother-in-law is a linen-draper, and business has been bad of late. They lost a lot of money when their ship was attacked by Dutch privateers and—’
‘Not you as well,’ groaned Wheler. ‘They made an agreement and they broke it. Now do as I say, or I shall dismiss you and appoint someone else.’
Baron inclined his head, but not before Wheler had seen the flash of rage in his eyes. Many would call him a fool for challenging a brute like Baron, but Wheler knew it would be more reckless to let him gain the upper hand. Like all dangerous animals, it was necessary to let them know who was in charge. The two men nodded a cool goodnight, and Baron left.
Wheler pored over his ledgers for another hour, then stood to walk to the meeting he was due to attend – a gathering of the Goldsmiths’ Company, where fine food and drink would be served in sumptuous surroundings. He was looking forward to it, as he would be able to gloat over those colleagues who still floundered in the wake of the Colburn Crisis.
He heard the soft tap of footsteps behind him as he strode down White Goat Wynd and turned in annoyance, assuming it was a debtor come to beg for a reprieve, so when the knife plunged into his chest, his first reaction was indignation. Who dared raise a hand against him? An embittered client? Baron? A fellow banker, jealous of his success? The long list was still running through his mind when he died.
It was easy for travellers to know when they were nearing London because of the stench – three hundred thousand souls living in unhealthily close proximity could be detected from a considerable distance. The city could be seen from afar, too, first as a yellow-brown smear on the horizon from countless belching sea-coal fires, furnaces and ovens, and then as a bristle of towers, spires and turrets, with the lofty bulk of St Paul’s Cathedral looming majestically over them.
Despite the city’s drawbacks, filth and reek being but two, Thomas Chaloner was pleased to see it again. Since taking employment as intelligencer to the Earl of Clarendon three years before, he had spent more time away than at home, and his latest jaunt of six weeks had told him more than ever that he wanted to settle down. He had married the previous June, but had spent scant few nights with his wife since, and as their relationship was turbulent to say the least, he needed time to work on it if he did not want it to end in disaster.
He returned his hired horse to the stable in Westminster, and began to walk the short distance to his house on Tothill Street. It was warm for the time of year, which was a relief after a long and unusually bitter winter, and everywhere were signs that spring had arrived. There was a blaze of flowers in the grassy sward around the old abbey, while blossom covered the trees in St James’s Park. Birds’ plumage brightened as the breeding season got underway, and London seemed a happier, more hopeful place than when he had left it in March.
Striding along made him hot, so he unfastened his coat, a thick, practical garment of an indeterminate shade of beige. Like Chaloner, there was nothing about it to attract attention. He was of average height, weight and build, his hair was brown, his eyes were grey, and his face was pleasant but unremarkable. He had worked hard to make himself unmemorable, to blend into the background of any situation or gathering of people, and that was one reason why he had survived so long in the turbulent, shifting world of espionage.
As he walked, he reflected on the assignments he had just completed. There had been two of them. The first, for his friend John Thurloe, had been to visit members of the Cromwell family – no small favour, given that the Lord Protector’s kin had become personae non gratae after the fall of the Commonwealth. He had helped Cromwell’s son to catch a thief in the Fens, then had travelled to Northamptonshire to ensure that Cromwell’s widow was being properly looked after. He had completed both errands, including travel, within a week.
The second task had been for the Earl, and had taken rather longer: there had been rumours of an uprising in Hull, and Chaloner had been charged to put it down.
It had been a ridiculous order. The local sheriff was more than capable of tackling a handful of deluded fanatics who were more danger to themselves than the stability of the nation. Moreover, the sheriff resented someone from London looking over his shoulder, and had avenged himself by sending Chaloner on foray after foray into the sodden countryside, forcing him to endure weeks of muddy tracks, sleeping under hedges and poor food. Chaloner suspected the ‘rebellion’ had been crushed at least a fortnight before the official announcement was made, and the delay had been purely to make him suffer a little longer.
Thus he was delighted and grateful to be home. Tothill Street had a heartening familiarity about it, and he quickened his pace. His house was the big one in the middle, far larger than he and Hannah needed, but she was lady-in-waiting to the Queen and appearances were important to her. The extravagance worried Chaloner, though, who felt they should put aside at least some of their earnings for a rainy day. She disagreed, and some very fierce arguments had ensued.
A hackney carriage was parked outside, which meant she had guests. Chaloner’s heart sank. He disliked the hedonistic, vacuous courtiers Hannah chose as friends, and he had hoped she would be alone. He bypassed the front door and headed for the back one, aiming to slip up the stairs and change his travel-stained clothes before she saw him – more than one quarrel had erupted because he had joined a soirée in a less than pristine condition. With luck, by the time he was presentable, the visitors might have gone.
He strolled into the kitchen and was met by the warm, welcoming scent of new bread. All the servants were there. The housekeeper sat at the table with her account book, the cook-maid fussed over the loaf she had just removed from the oven, the scullion swept the floor, and the footman and the page perched on a window sill, polishing boots.
It was a comfortable scene, yet Chaloner immediately sensed an atmosphere. The staff were a surly horde, and he had often wondered how Hannah had managed to select so many malcontents. The housekeeper was inflexible and domineering; the cook-maid, scullion and footman were lazy and dishonest; and the page, old enough to be Chaloner’s grandfather and thus elderly for such a post, was incurably disrespectful. But even by their standards, the kitchen was not a happy place that particular day: all were uneasy, and the girls had been crying.
‘Oh,’ said the housekeeper disagreeably, when she saw Chaloner. ‘You are back.’
It was no way to greet the master of the house, but she was secure in the knowledge that her long association with Hannah’s family meant she would never be dismissed, no matter how discourteously she behaved. She was a lean, cadaverous woman whose loose black clothes and beady black eyes always reminded Chaloner of a crow. He did not check her for impertinence that day, however, because she was so wan that he wondered if she was ill.
‘Who is with Hannah?’ he asked, startled and suspicious when the others came to offer a variety of curtsies, bows and tentative smiles. They usually followed the housekeeper’s example of sullen contempt, and he was unused to deference from them.
‘They did not leave their names,’ replied the footman. ‘But they have been here before. The mistress owes them money, see.’
Chaloner felt the stirrings of unease. Hannah had accrued some serious debts the previous winter, and it had not been easy to settle them all. Appalled by how close they had come to fiscal disaster, she had promised to be more careful while he was away. Chaloner had believed her assurances, and was alarmed to learn that he might have been overly trusting.
‘Money for what?’ he asked.
‘Everyone at Court is in arrears with payments for things these days,’ said the housekeeper evasively. ‘So she is not alone.’
‘No, indeed,’ put in the scullion. ‘Will Chiffinch and Bab May owe tens of thousands.’
Supposing clean clothes would have to wait, Chaloner aimed for the drawing room. Hannah was proud of this chamber. It boasted a French clock, a Dutch chaise longue, and the walls had been covered with paper, an extravagance that had been decried by Cromwell’s Puritans, but that was a very popular fashion among the reinstated Royalists.
He arrived to find Hannah sitting on a chair looking frightened, while two louts loomed over her. The knife he always carried in his sleeve slipped into his hand, and he started towards them, but he had not anticipated a third man lurking behind the door. He jerked away in time to avoid the blow directed at his head, but it left him off balance, which gave the other two time to launch an attack. He deflected one punch with a hastily raised arm, but another caught him on the chin and down he went. Hannah’s cry of relief at his appearance turned to a shriek of alarm.
Blinking to clear his vision, he saw a cudgel begin to descend. He twisted to one side, ramming his blade into the fellow’s calf and kicking the feet from under another, just as Hannah sprang into action and dealt the last man a wild clout that made him stagger. The cosh-wielder released a howl of pain and hobbled towards the door, while his cronies, loath to tackle anyone who fought back, were quick to follow. Chaloner scrambled upright, but he was still giddy, and by the time he had recovered enough to give chase, the three men were long gone.
‘Oh, Tom!’ wailed Hannah. ‘Thank God you are home. You have been gone so long and—’
‘Who were they?’ demanded Chaloner.
‘No one to worry about,’ she replied unconvincingly, and flung herself into his arms so vigorously that she almost sent both of them flying. She snuffled into his shoulder, while he held her rather stiffly, supposing he should say something to comfort her, but not sure what. Eventually, she pushed away from him and went to stand in the window.
‘I had my portrait done by Peter Lely while you were away,’ she said in a muffled, distracted voice that made him suppose she was hurt by his failure to dispense the necessary solace. She pointed to the wall above the fireplace. ‘Do you like it?’
Chaloner stared at the picture. It captured perfectly her laughing eyes, snub nose and inconvenient hair. The quality of the work was no surprise, though, because Lely was Principal Painter in Ordinary to the King, and thus the most sought-after artist in the country. His popularity meant he could charge whatever he liked for a commission, and it was common knowledge that his prices were far beyond the reach of all but the richest of patrons.
‘Oh, God!’ gulped Chaloner. ‘So that is why we are in debt again!’
It was not the homecoming he had hoped for. Chaloner sat in his extravagant parlour, sullenly sipping expensive wine, while Hannah perched at his side and chatted about all that had happened since he had left – she was rarely cool with him for long. There had been another comet that presaged a major disaster – even astronomers from the Royal Society thought so, and they were no fools. Then there had been an ugly purple mist with leprous spots, follow
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