Humphrey Dethick
Humphrey Dethick (born 1577) was an English merchant in Italy who killed a man in Scotland in 1602 during a royal christening.[1]
Career
He was the son of William Dethick and his wife Helen, of Smithston in Derbyshire. He went to school in Ashbourne, and then was briefly at Cambridge. Dethick said his father was a gentleman who sold his inheritance to a Londoner called Storie. He then went to sea, taking French and Spanish prizes with Captain Clegmond. After this he worked for Richard May, a London merchant tailor and woollen draper in Watling Street. His brother Edward Dethick was a silk man in London.[2]
Murder at Dunfermline
Dethick was arrested and imprisoned. He seemed insane and was examined by the court physicians, probably Martin Schöner and John Naysmyth, who declared that he was faking his madness.[9] Dethick claimed that he had heard a prophecy in Spain that he should kill someone. Thomas Douglas heard that his father was a baker in London, and that he would be tortured using the rack. He was taken as a prisoner to Edinburgh Castle and claimed his actions sprang from the "madness of drink" only. His trial was delayed because the illness of the king's son Robert, and the king remained at Dunfermline. James was hesitant to punish a man from England who also seemed unfit for trial.[10]
Dethick's fate is unclear. News of his imprisonment was current in London, and on 27 June Philip Gawdy wrote:
The King of Spain is chief instrument in all, and his finger was deeply in a conspiracy lately intended against the King of Scots, to have been performed by a fellow that was Hix [Baptist Hicks] his man of Cheapside, and an Italian that came not according to appointment. They two should have murdered the King, but the other was taken and has grown mad since his imprisonment.[18]
Sources
- Bain, Joseph (1896). The border papers : Calendar of letters and papers relating to the affairs of the borders of England and Scotland. Vol. 2. Edinburgh: General Register Office.
- Calderwood, David (1845). The History of the Kirk of Scotland. Vol. 6. Edinburgh: Wodrow Society.
- Chamberlain, John (1861). Williams, Sarah (ed.). The letters of John Chamberlain. London: Camden Society.
- Chamberlain, John (1939). McClure, Norman Egbert (ed.). The letters of John Chamberlain; Volume One. Memoirs. Vol. XII, part 1. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.
- Green, Mary Anne Everett, ed. (1870). Calendar of state papers, Domestic series, of the reigns of Edward VI., Mary, Elizabeth, 1547–[1625]. Vol. Elizabeth 1601–1603, with Addenda, 1547–1565. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts.
- Mackie, John Duncan, ed. (1969). Calendar of the State Papers Relating to Scotland. Vol. 13: 1597–1603, Pt. 2. Edinburgh: HMSO for the Scottish Record Office.
- Roberts, R. A., ed. (1910). Calendar of the manuscripts of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Salisbury ... preserved at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, Vol. 12. V. 18-24: [Publication] - Historical Manuscripts Commission ;9. Hereford: Historical Manuscripts Commission.
References
- ^ Steven Veerapen, The Wisest Fool: The Lavish Life of James VI and I (Birlinn, 2023), p. 213.
- ^ John Duncan Mackie, Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 13 part 2 (London, 1969) p. 980.
- ^ Roberts 1910, p. 176.
- ^ Jane Ashelford, Dress in the Age of Elizabeth I (Batsford, 1988), p. 78.
- ^ Mackie 1969, pp. 980–981, 986.
- ^ Mackie 1969, p. 982.
- ^ Mackie 1969, pp. 978–979, 982–983.
- ^ Calderwood 1845, p. 151.
- ^ Steven Veerapen, The Wisest Fool (Birlinn, 2023), p. 213.
- ^ Mackie 1969, pp. 983, 993, 996.
- ^ Bain 1896, pp. 788–789.
- ^ Sarah Williams, Letters of John Chamberlain in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1861), p. 139.
- ^ Green 1870, p. 201.
- ^ Chamberlain 1939, p. 150.
- ^ Chamberlain 1861, p. 139.
- ^ Roberts 1910, p. 180.
- ^ Mackie 1969, pp. 983, 993, 996, 1000–1001, 1005–1007, 1019, 1027.
- ^ Isaac Herbert Jeayes, Letters of Philip Gawdy of West Harling, Norfolk, and of London to various members of his family, 1579-1616 (London, 1906), p. 123