Thomas Dangerfield

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The pillorying and the whipping of Thomas Dangerfield, June 1685

Thomas Dangerfield (c. 1650 – 22 June 1685) was an

conspirator, who became one of the principal informers in the Popish Plot. His violent death at the hands of the barrister Robert Francis was clearly a homicide
, although whether the killing was murder or manslaughter was a matter of considerable public debate at the time.

Biography

Dangerfield was born about 1650 at

Waltham Abbey, Essex, the son of a farmer. At the age of about 12 in about 1662, he ran away from home to London
, and never returned to his home.

He began his career of crime by robbing his father of both horses and money, and, after a rambling life, which brought him to Scotland, France, Spain and Portugal, took to coining

capital crime known to English law.[2] Lord Chief Justice Scroggs later referred to him with contempt as "that fellow from Chelmsford gaol", and he also spent time in Newgate Prison.[3] He used a number of aliases, most commonly Willoughby.[2]

Popish Plot

False to everyone, he first tried to involve

Presbyterian plot against the throne, and this having been proved a lie, he pretended to have discovered a Catholic plot against Charles II. This was known as the Mealtub Plot, from the place where the incriminating documents were hidden at his suggestion, and found by the King's officers by his information.[1][2]

Mrs

high treason but acquitted in 1680: with the general waning of hysteria, men as disreputable as Dangerfield were no longer considered to be credible witnesses.[4]

For a time Dangerfield was used as a secondary witness in the Popish Plot trials to supplement the evidence of

informers, that Chief Justice William Scroggs, who knew his record of crime thoroughly, began instructing juries to disregard the evidence of "so notorious a villain.... I shall shake all such fellows before I am done". When Dangerfield protested publicly that he had sincerely repented of his former crimes, Scroggs, who did not tolerate interruptions in his Court, roared: "What, do you with all the mischief that Hell hath in you, dare to brave it in a court of justice?"[5]

Dangerfield, when examined at the bar of the House of Commons, made other charges against prominent Roman Catholics, and attempted to defend his character by publishing, among other pamphlets, Dangerfield's Narrative.[1]

Death; the fate of Robert Francis

The publication of his Narrative led, once public opinion had turned against the informers, to his trial for

Tyburn.[6]

On his way back from the first whipping on 22 June Dangerfield, who rather surprisingly was travelling by coach, got into an argument at Hatton Garden with a barrister, Robert Francis, who made a jeering remark, on the lines of "How do you, after your little race?" Dangerfield in return spat on him and called him a son of a whore, whereupon Francis struck Dangerfield in the eye with his cane: the cane apparently entered the brain, and Dangerfield died shortly afterwards from the blow.[7]

Francis was tried and convicted for

royal pardon
, on the basis of his previously blameless life, but, despite his low opinion of Dangerfield, he said that it would be wrong to let his murderer go unpunished, and Francis was duly executed on 24 July 1685.[11]

Sir John Bramston in a contemptuous epitaph wrote that Dangerfield deserved no pity: "he had been a highway thief, a cheat, a little rogue.. but there is an end of him".[12]

The Narrative - aftermath

In 1684

libel on James II and another on Lord Peterborough as a result.[13] James, with more magnanimity than he usually showed to political opponents, reduced both fines, and later restored Williams to royal favour and appointed him Solicitor General.[14]

In fiction

He is the subject, and perhaps the author, of Don Tomazo, or The Juvenile Rambles of Thomas Dangerfield (1680), a comic, self-consciously literary novel that presents Dangerfield as a clever and resourceful rogue. It is reprinted in Spiro Peterson's The Counterfeit Lady Unveiled and Other Criminal Fiction of Seventeenth-Century England (1961) and in Paul Salzman's Anthology of Seventeenth-Century Fiction (1991).

Notes

  1. ^ a b c Chisholm 1911.
  2. ^ a b c Kenyon 2000, p. 216.
  3. ^ Kenyon 2000, p. 227.
  4. ^ Kenyon 2000, p. 228.
  5. ^ Kenyon 2000, pp. 227–8.
  6. ^ a b Kenyon 2000, p. 295.
  7. ^ Howelll State Trials London 1811 Vol. XI p.505
  8. ^ State Trials p.506
  9. ^ State Trials p.506
  10. ^ Stewart, Alan The Oxford History of Life-writing Vol. 2 Oxford University Press 2018 p.288
  11. ^ State Trials p.506
  12. ^ Stewart p.288
  13. ^ "Proceedings against Sir William Williams, bart. for the publication of Dangerfield's Narrative". A complete collection of State Trials and proceedings for High Treason and other Crimes and Misdemeanors. 13 (410, column 1369). 1812.
  14. ^ Milne-Tyte, Robert Bloody Jeffreys-the Hanging Judge 1989 André Deutsch p. 188

References

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