In the Shadow of the Noose: Mad Earl Ferrers: The Last English Nobleman Hanged for Murder by Randall Dan Alexander

Author:Randall, Dan Alexander [Randall, Dan Alexander]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Monday Books
Published: 2013-06-25T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

THE TRIAL, DAY TWO – THE DEFENCE

‘OYEZ, OYEZ, OYEZ! Lieutenant of the Tower, bring forth your prisoner, Laurence Earl Ferrers, to the bar, pursuant to the order of the House of Lords.’

As on the first day of the trial, the noble prisoner was brought into Westminster Hall, which was again packed to the rafters, to kneel before his peers. He was ordered to rise and continue with his defence.

To help prove that insanity was a family trait, he asked his first witness, Thomas Huxley, about his uncle Henry, the previous Earl Ferrers, whom the witness had known for 14 years before his death.

‘What was the matter with him?’

‘He was a lunatic.’

He then confirmed that two other female members of the family had been diagnosed as being insane.

His next witness, Wilhelmina Deborah Cotes, confirmed that she had known the Earl’s aunt Lady Barbara Shirley and said, ‘she was always looked upon as a lunatic.’

Reverend Walter Shirley, the Earl’s younger brother – a rather more sensitive man, who wrote poetry and hymns as a pastime – did his best to help his sibling, stating that he believed him to be a lunatic, despite not having seen him for two years while away preaching in Ireland.

‘I have seen him talking to himself, clenching his fists, grinning and having several gestures of a madman, without any seeming cause leading thereto,’ he said. ‘I have likewise very frequently known him extremely suspicious of plots and contrivances against him from his own family, and when he was desired to give some account what the plots were that he meant, he could not make any direct answer. Another reason I have for thinking him so is his falling into violent passions without any adequate cause.’

When asked whether the family had ever thought of having his brother committed to an asylum, the Rev Shirley replied that they had, but ‘were afraid to go through with it’ in case the doctors failed to find him insane. That would leave the way clear for Earl Ferrers to sue them for ‘scandalum magnatum’ – the criminal offence, and civil tort, of the defamation of a peer of the realm.

He agreed that members of the family were not on the best of terms with the current Earl; on one occasion, after a hunt, he had been berated by his brother for no good reason. ‘As I chose to avoid the bottle, I went up stairs to the ladies,’ he said. ‘Lady Ferrers at that time lived with him; and, without any previous quarrel, my Lord came upstairs into the room; and after standing for some time with his back to the fire, he broke out into the grossest abuse of me, insulting me and swearing at me. I cannot to this day or hour conceive any reason for it.’

The Rev Shirley was allowed to step down and was replaced by one of Earl Ferrers’ tenants, Richard Phillips, who had known the prisoner for 18 years. He told the Lords that the

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