Lady Bette & the Murder of Mr Thynn: A Scandalous Story of Marriage & Betrayal in Restoration England by N.A. Pickford

Author:N.A. Pickford [Pickford, N.A.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Published: 2014-04-24T00:00:00+00:00

Wellclose Square, Wapping, after Barbon’s redevelopment

29

THE HOUSE OF THE SWEDISH ENVOY

You mince your words mightily.

– Prosecution lawyer cross-questioning Frederick Hanson.1

T he lodgings in Rupert Street were not to Konigsmark’s liking. The sea coal was of poor quality and gave out little heat. To make matters worse the chimney was blocked and downdraughts of smoke constantly filled the room with noxious choking fumes. Outside, snow was falling and the temperature dropped steadily. The streets were even filthier than usual, and the sky was a malignant, unrelenting grey. Konigsmark lay on his bed all day and all night, wrapped in his flannel shirt, coughing and shivering. He was anxious, irritable, and was not sleeping well. Each morning, long before it grew light, there was noise from the street, the raucous shouting of vendors, the constant clatter of iron wheels on flint cobbles.

Konigsmark complained repeatedly to Joseph Parsons, who owned the house, about the state of the chimney.2 Chimneys in that condition caused fires. It needed a brush pushed up it, or even better a small boy to climb up it and remove whatever obstruction was causing the problem. The use of small boys to climb chimneys was a recent innovation. But Parsons did nothing to remedy the defects. In disgust, Konigsmark decided to change his lodgings yet again, this time decamping to St Martin’s Lane.

Hanson continued to call round at regular intervals. They talked about Bette. Konigsmark was obsessed with thoughts of the girl and her money. He ranted about Thynn and his insolence and rudeness. He wanted to know from Hanson whether, if he killed Thynn in a fight, he would still be allowed, under English law, to marry Bette. Hanson didn’t know the answer, but being of an obliging and deferential nature he agreed to find out.

So Hanson went to see the Swedish envoy, Mr Leinberg. There was a large Scandinavian merchant community working in London. Mainly they lived near the river, in the area of Wellclose Square, Wapping. In the early 1680s ‘it was a dangerous place to go over after it was dark, and many people have been robbed and abused in passing it’.3 In 1682 the entrepreneurial Nicholas Barbon4 purchased the freehold of an area of narrow and evil-smelling streets and developed Wellclose into a square of elegant brick town houses.

Mr Leinberg was used to dealing with questions of tariffs on wood and copper imports and embargoes on woollen textiles. The question that Hanson desired to discuss in the privacy of Leinberg’s muffled rooms was outside the envoy’s usual remit. Hanson was later required in court to repeat the conversation word for word. After much evasion and fidgeting, he was finally forced to admit that he had asked ‘if Konigsmark should meddle with Esquire Thynn, what the consequence might be, and if the laws of England would be contrary to him in the hopes or pretensions he might have to my Lady [Bette]’.5 When cross-questioned further as to just what he meant by the word ‘meddle’ Hanson hesitated and became increasingly flustered.

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