Joan Rossiter [Roycester] and the Murder of her husband William Hartgill

 

The Hartgills had been settled on the Somerset-Wiltshire border since at least the mid-15th century, and Edward and Thomas Hartgill had then sat in Parliament for several Dorset and Wiltshire boroughs. William Hartgill owned the manor of Hardington near Frome, with about 650 acres, but he seems to have lived mainly at Kilmington, some ten miles from Westbury. This manor had formerly belonged to the abbey at Shaftesbury, from which Hartgill leased it, but at the Dissolution it passed to the 7th Baron Stourton who in 1542 or 1543 sold it to Hartgill.

 

According to a story current in John Aubrey’s day, Hartgill first took service with Lord Stourton as a ‘mighty stout fellow’ who had killed a man, but he is not known to have followed his master to the wars in Scotland and France, his function as steward being to manage Stourton’s affairs at home.

William Hartgill [1493-1557] of Kilmington's election to the last Henrician Parliament he probably owed to Stourton, whose closeness to Edward Seymour [22 May 1539 – 6 April 1621], 1^st Earl of Hertford, would have added strength to the nomination: it is possible that the same patronage had given Hartgill a seat in one or more of the preceding Parliaments, the names of the Westbury Members since 1529 being lost, and his failure to secure one from 1547 may likewise be connected with his breach with the family.

 

The William Stourton, 7th Baron Stourton had come to doubt his steward’s honesty before his death overseas in September 1548, and his successor, his son, Charles Stourton promptly clashed with William Hartgill over the will, notably because the steward supported the claims of both the widow and her husband’s mistress, a daughter of Rhys ap Gruffydd. In the nine-year feud which followed, the lawless Stourton traded on the forbearance of the Duke of Northumberland, who was Stourton’s uncle, and of Queen Mary, whose Catholic zeal he shared and who made him lord lieutenant of Wiltshire, Dorset and Somerset. In this he was justified in so far as his campaign of violence earned him only one spell in the Fleet before 1556, when a further outburst brought him there again and cost him heavy damages. Released on bond while awaiting further charges, he went home clearly bent on cutting the knot.

 

The manor of Kilmington was obtained by William, Lord Stourton, in 1543, but within two days was passed to his steward William Hartgill. William Hartgill seems to have been well trusted as he managed Lord Stourton’s estates when the latter was involved in Henry VIII’s expedition to France. Lord William Stourton was succeeded by his son Charles Stourton in 1548. In the reign of Edward VI., Charles came to see his widowed mother, Dame Elizabeth who was living at the house of William Hartgill, Esq., and demanded a great deal of money but William Hartgill took her part and refused.

 

Charles Lord Stourton earnestly persuaded William Hartgill to be a means that Dame Elizabeth should enter into a bond to him, in a great sum of money, that she should not marry; which the said William Hartgill refused, unless Lord Stourton would assign some yearly portion for his mother to live upon. In discoursing on this matter Charles Stourton quarrelled with William Hartgill; and on Whitsunday, in the morning, he went to Kilmington Church with several men, with bows and arrows, and guns; and when he arrived at the church door.

 

John Hartgill, son of William, being told of the said Lord Stourton's coming, went out of the church, drew his sword, and ran to his father's house adjoining the churchyard side. Several arrows were shot at him in passing, but he was not hurt. William, his father and Joan [nee Rossiter], his mother were forced to go up into the tower of the church with two or three of their servants for safety. When John Hartgill arrived at his father's house he took his long-bow and arrow, bent a cross bow, charged a gun, and caused a woman to bring the cross-bow and gun after him, and he with his long-bow came forth and drove away the said Lord Charles Stourton and his men from the house, and from about the church, except half-a-score that had entered the church, among whom one was hurt in the shoulder with a hail shot.

John’s father advised him to take his horse and ride up to the court, and tell the council how he had been used. On Monday, towards evening, he reported to the honourable council how his father had been dealt with, whereupon they sent down Sir Thomas Speak, the High Sheriff of Somerset, not only to deliver the captives, but to bring with him the said Charles Lord Stourton, who, when he came, was committed to the Fleet, where he remained but for a short time.

 

It appeared that as soon as John Hartgill had set off towards London, Lord Charles Stourton's men returned to the church of Kilmington, and about his father’s, William Hartgill's house, and continued about there till the arrival of the sheriff Sir Thomas Speak, which was on Wednesday; during which time William Hartgill's wife was permitted to go home on Whitsunday, towards night. But in the meantime Lord Charles Stourton's men went to the pasture of William Hartgill, took his riding gelding, and carried him to Stourton Park pales and shot him with a cross bow, reporting that William Hartgill had been hunting in his park upon the gelding.

 

Thus Lord Charles Stourton continued his malice throughout King Edward VI's reign, and with violence took from William Hartgill all his corn, cattle, etc. On the death of King Edward VI, William Hartgill and his son petitioned Queen Mary and her council for redress, her Majesty being then at Basing End, in Hampshire.

 

The Queen’s Council called Lord Charles Stourton and William Hartgill before them, and Lord Charles Stourton promised there that if William Hartgill and his son would come to his house, and desire his goodwill, they should not only have it, but also be restored to their goods and cattle; where upon his promise, made in such presence, they took John Dackcombe, Esq., with them to witness their submission.

 

When William Hartgill and his son, John, came near Stourton House, in a lane half-a-dozen of Lord Stourton's men rushed forth, and letting Mr Dackcombe and William Hartgill pass them, they stepped before John Hartgill, and when he turned his horse to ride away, six others of the said lord's men beset him before and behind; and, before he could draw his sword and get from his horse, wounded him in three or four places, and left him for dead. Nevertheless, in half-an-hour, he recovered himself, got upon his horse, and took refuge in the house of Richard Mumpesson, of Maiden Bradley, gent.

 

This at last became a subject of Star Chamber inquiry, and Lord Charles Stourton was fined in a certain sum to be paid to the Hartgills, and imprisoned in the Fleet, whence he obtained licence, upon some pretence, to retire to his house in the country, and took an opportunity to murder both the Hartgills.

 

Within three or four days after his arrival at Stourton Caundle he sent advice to the Hartgills that he was ready to pay them the sums of money as ordered by the Star Chamber, and to end all disputes between them. They agreed to meet him at Kilmington church on Monday after Twelfth Day, at ten o'clock; and Lord Charles Stourton came accordingly to Kilmington, accompanied by fifteen or sixteen of his servants, sundry tenants, and some gentlemen and justices, to the number of sixty. He went to the church house and sent word to the Hartgills, who were in the church, that the church was no place to talk of worldly matters, and that he thought the church house a fitter place.

 

The Hartgills came out of the church; but fearing ill, refused to enter into any covered place, the church excepted; whereupon it was proposed that a table should be set upon the open green, which was done accordingly. Lord Charles Stourton laid thereupon a cap-case and a purse, as though he intended to make payment, and calling the two Hartgills, said that the council had ordered him to pay them a certain sum of money, every penny of which they should have. Marry, he would first know them to be true men; and then laid hands upon them, saying, "I arrest you of felony"; on which his men, to the number of ten or twelve, by violence thrust them into the church house, where, with his own hand, the lord took from them their purses. Then having in readiness two cords, he delivered them to his man to bind the Hartgills; and to the younger of the Hartgills, when bound, he gave a blow in his face, and coming out of the house with his sword, and finding at the door young John Hartgill's wife, Dorothy Hargill, Charles kicked at her, and gave her such a stroke with his sword between her neck and head, that she fell to the ground nearly dead.

 

From hence he caused the two Hartgills to be conveyed to the parsonage of Kilmington, where they were kept with their arms bound behind them, and without meat or drink. About one o'clock in the morning they were conveyed to a house called Bonham near Stourton; and arriving on Tuesday about three in the morning, they were laid, fast bound, in separate places, without meat, drink, or fire, or anything to lie upon. About ten o'clock Lord Stourton sent to Bonham, William Farree, Roger Gough, John Welshman and Macute Jacob, commanding them to convey to the Hartgills to a place appointed, and warning them, that in case they should make any noise, to kill them at once. These four brought them into a close adjoining Stourton, and knocked them on the head with two clubs, till the murderers thought they had been dead (his lordship in the meantime standing at the gallery door, which was but a small distance from the place).

 

This done, they wrapped themselves in their own gowns, and carried the bodies through a garden into his lordship's gallery, and from thence into a place at the end, his lordship bearing the candle before them. Being not quite dead, they groaned much, especially old William Hartgill. When William Farree, one of the murderers, swearing by God's blood they were not yet dead, his lordship himself ordered their throats to be cut, lest a French priest, lying near to the place, might hear them; and William Farree took out his knife and cut both their throats, Lord Charles Stourton standing by with the candle in his hand.

 

One of the murderers then said: "Ah! my lord, this is a pitiful sight. Had I thought what I now think before the thing was done, your whole land should not have won me to consent to such an act." His lordship answered: "What a fainthearted knave is this: is it any more than ridding us of two knaves that, living, were troublesome both to God's love and man's? There is no more account to be made of them than the killing of two sheep." Then their bodies were tumbled into a dungeon; and after Henry Sims and Roger Gough had been let down with cords, for there were no steps, they dug a pit and buried them together; Lord Stourton often calling to them from above to make speed.

 

The bodies were afterwards taken up by Sir Anthony Hungerford, and were found in the same apparel that they were taken in, buried very deep, covered first with earth, then two courses of thick paving, and finally with chips and shavings of timber, above the quantity of two cartloads. In the examination of the atrocities of Lord Charles Stourton it appeared that he had caused, not long before, a barn of one Thomas Chaffin to be set on fire by three of his servants; and then against Chaffin, for saying it was not done without the knowledge of the said Lord Charles Stourton, or some of his servants, he brought an action, and recovering a hundred pounds damage, he took for the payment out of his pasture by force twelve hundred sheep, with the wool upon their backs, and all the oxen, kine, horses and mares that he could find.

 

On another occasion, from one Willoughby he caused to be taken, for his pleasure, a whole team of oxen, whereof two were found fatting in the stall of his house when he was apprehended.

 

Lord Stourton was executed 6th of March, 1556, for the murder of William Hartgill, Esq. [husband of Joan Rosseter or Rowcetter, daughter of Richard Rossiter or Roycetre ], and his son John Hartgill, of Kilmington, Somerset, after an implacable Persecution On the 28th of February, 1556, Lord Stourton was arraigned at Westminster Hall before the judges and several of the council. It was long before he would answer to the charge laid against him, till at last the Lord Chief Justice declared to him that he must be pressed to death, according to the laws of the land, if he would not answer; after which he made answer, and was convicted, and condemned to be hanged, together with his four men, for the following murders.

 

On the 2nd of March Lord Charles Stourton and four of his servants rode from the Tower of London with Sir Robert Oxenbridge, the Tower lieutenant, with certain of the guards, through London towards Salisbury. The first night they lay at Hounslow, the next day they went to Staines, thence to Basingstoke, and to Salisbury. Lord Stourton was accordingly executed on the 6th of March, in the market place at Salisbury, and his four men in the country near the place where the murder was committed; and previous to his death he made great lamentation for his wilful and impious deeds.

Charles Stourton hanged with silk cord (noble status) & there is a belief that Queen Mary issued pardon but Lord Pembroke Lord Lieutenant of Wiltshire dodged receiving it so ensuring that Charles Stourton was executed.

 

In St Mary's Church Kilmington Wiltshire there is to be found a stained-glass window dedicated to the murdered Hartgill men. "In Memoriam Johannis et Gulielmi Hartgill XII Jan 1557. Hac fenestram curaverunt ponendam Henricus & Gulielmus Hartgill MDCCCLXIX".

 

The following Sunday Stourton came to Kilmington church with ‘a great many men’ with bows and guns and drove William Hartgill, his wife and some servants into the church tower. John Hartgill, their son, temporarily cleared Stourton’s men, by the use of long bow, cross bow and gun and was told by his father to ride to the Court. The Hartgills were besieged in the church tower until Wednesday when John Hartgill returned with the High Sheriff of Somerset. Lord Stourton was committed to the Fleet prison for a brief period but continued to harass the Hartgills through the reign of Edward VI.

On the accession of Queen Mary the Hartgills petitioned for the redress of property stolen and Lord Stourton, summoned to Court at Basing (in Hampshire), promised to return everything. When the Hartgills went to Stourton’s house in 1555 they were attacked, and John Hartgill was left for dead.

The matter was referred to the Star Chamber and Stourton was temporarily released for a bond of £2,000 to return to Wiltshire and repay the Hartgills such monies as he owed them. He returned just before Christmas 1555 and let the Hartgills know that he was ready to repay them. They were naturally apprehensive about meeting him but finally agreed to meet at Kilmington Church on 11 January 1556. Stourton arrived with about 60 servants and supporters and at first the Hartgills refused to leave the church. They were deceived however and, having been paid the money owing, were taken, the money removed from them, and they were bound and taken away, while Stourton killed or nearly killed John Hartgill’s wife, named Dorothy.

After being moved to various places the Hartgills were murdered by four of Stourton’s servants and buried in a dungeon, or cellar, beneath his house. The bodies were exhumed by Sir Anthony Hungerford and Stourton and his men committed to the Tower of London for the murder. On 26 February they were condemned to be hanged and they were executed in Salisbury Market Place on 6 March. Stourton was buried in Salisbury Cathedral. The fact that he was hanged instead of being beheaded, as was normal for his rank, showed the revulsion that his actions had aroused. The Hartgill family survived in Kilmington until well into the 18th century and in 1763 Ferdinando Hartgill sold Kilmington manor.

Unfortunately for the Stourtons the idyll was to end suddenly in the 1550s, when they were caught up in a most improbable domestic vendetta on their own estates that was to bring them, and, indirectly, our three Stourton brothers at Exeter, to the brink of catastrophe. The year 1548 saw the eighth lord, Charles Stourton, succeeding to his inheritance. He showed no hankering after the military life of his predecessors, preferring to devote his time to his estates, which he presided over with uncommon jealousy and belligerence. 

With these unlovable traits he combined a violent temper that would flare out in vindictive acts of revenge upon any man who crossed him: tenants could find their barns burned down or their flocks confiscated for imagined slights. Armed ambush was part of his repertoire and one chronicler further adds that ‘his other routs, riots, robberies and murders it were too long to write’. 

His most bitter spleen, however, was reserved for his estate stewards, father and son, William and John Hartgill, constantly spurred on by the conviction that they had taken advantage of his father’s long absences campaigning in France in order to acquire certain Stourton land and manorial rights by legal trickery. The Hartgills on their side came of good yeoman stock, able to claim sheriffs of Wiltshire and Somerset in their ancestry, but they were hard, uncouth, acquisitive men. William had the reputation of a ‘surly, dogged and cross fellow’ in the words of John Aubrey. The methods of the Hartgills towards their underlings were overbearing and could run to a violence rivalling Charles’s own. 

One does not have to depend on the word of John Aubrey alone for the authenticity of the bitter feud that erupted over the next five years as the two families stalked each other in the countryside round Alfred’s Tower. Few episodes in our shire history have been more completely recorded, for the account has come down from John Strype, who copied it from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, a work that was written shortly after the feud. This had begun with a surprise attack on the Hartgills in 1549 and there is a graphic account of their rushing their aged mother, Joan, into the shelter of Kilmington church through a hail of arrows from the bows of Charles Stourton and his posse. 

This outrage earned Charles a summons to the court of the young Edward VI and a term of imprisonment in the Fleet gaol, and he was lucky to be released on payment of a huge sum in fines and recognisances. These events did not go unnoticed by powerful local families: Edward Seymour, son of the Protector, Duke of Somerset, the Thynnes at Longleat and the Earl of Pembroke at Wilton, all representatives of the new Protestant leaders, viewed their staunch Catholic neighbour with mounting alarm. 

There was no hiding the macabre climax when in February 1557 Charles managed to seize the Hartgills. Strype’s words describe the terrible scene of their being taken down into the dungeon of Stourton Castle and of their murder by clubbing before their throats were cut, with Charles Stourton looking on. 

A wave of revulsion spread quickly through the shires and reached the court, where Queen Mary was now on the throne. Her Catholic sympathies were of no avail to Charles Stourton who was immediately called before the House of Lords to answer for his crime. He maintained his defiance to the end, refusing to answer charges at his arraignment in Westminster Hall and making the insolent rejoinder to the Lord Chancellor: ‘I am sorry to see that rhetoric doth rule where law should take place.’ He was only brought to order by the threat of the terrible ancient punishment for contempt of the House, being ‘pressed to death’, a grisly ritual whereby heavier and heavier weights were heaped upon the victim’s chest. 

Charles’s subsequent execution in the market place at Salisbury marked the end of an epoch for the family of Stourton, bringing sudden poverty and humiliation where there had been a proud record of power, wealth and influence. His three infant sons who launched this article were only retrieved from a precarious future by the courage of their widowed mother, Ann Stourton, née Stanley. Her appeals on their behalf were finally rewarded in 1575 when Queen Elizabeth, who was now on the throne, relented and ordered a Bill conferring full reinstatement of the family and its estates. 

Thus vindicated by their Queen and some months before the Bill had a chance to be presented to Parliament, the College opened its doors to the three brothers with their name expunged of any inherited guilt, i.e. ‘restored in blood’. The eldest, John, was fully recognised as the ninth Lord Stourton and was summoned to attend Parliament in the following year.

Taken from The History of Parliament

WILLIAM HARTGILL

b. by 1493, prob. s. of William Hartgill of Kilmington. m. settlement 12 May 1514, Joan, da. and h. of Richard Rosseter or Rowcetter of Shaftesbury, Dorset, at least 3s.1

Offices Held

?Subsidy collector, Som. 1515; benevolence collector, Wilts. 1545; escheator, Som. and Dorset 1542-3, 1548-9; steward to Sir William Stourton, 7th Baron Stourton by 1544-48; j.p. Som. and Wilts. 1547; commr. chantries, Som. 1548, relief, Som. and Wilts. 1550; keeper, Duke of Somerset’s woods at Maiden Bradley, Wilts. c.1548-52.

Hartgill seems to have been a man of moderate fortune, and his will, made in January 1556 and proved on 13 Nov. 1557, contained few significant bequests. His widow was to have ‘all her lands in Shaftesbury, ‘Barow’ (?Barrow, Gloucestershire or Somerset) and Bristol for life, the house at Kilmington during her widowhood if she chose to live there, and £100 out of the ‘money, corn, cattle and debts that Charles Lord Stourton oweth and wrongfully keepeth from me’; two younger sons, Thomas and Edward, were to receive £40 each from these debts if they could be recovered. Hartgill appointed his son John and grandson Cuthbert executors, but as John died with him and Cuthbert was an infant it was the two widows who proved the will.

Until 1896 Kilmington was in Somerset and the Long Knoll, a narrow ridge running from east to west, 288m at its highest point, formed a boundary between the two counties. 

As the parish was an intrusion of Somerset into Wiltshire this change tidied up the boundary and was probably appropriate as Kilmington had more in common with its Wiltshire neighbours of Maiden Bradley and Stourton than the more distant Somerset villages. The parish is on the northern boundary of Selwood Forest and there is still much woodland to the east and south. Much of the parish is on Boyne Hollow Chert and is Upper Greensand, while both the Long Knoll and White Sheet Hill (246m) are chalk separated by a narrow band of Upper Greensand from the Lower Greensand.

The parish is on the northern boundary of Selwood Forest and there is still much woodland to the east and south. Much of the parish is on Boyne Hollow Chert and is Upper Greensand, while both the Long Knoll and White Sheet Hill (246m) are chalk separated by a narrow band of Upper Greensand from the Lower Greensand.

So Kilmington is now in Dorset, but it was in Somerset and William HARTGILL of Culmington, must be Kilmington.

Will of Ann (or Anne or Anna) DACKOMBE or HARTGILL – testator Anna DACKOMBE widow of of Stepleton, Dorset to be in buried in church of Stepleton, son/executor James DACKOMBE, grandson William son of James Dackombe, son/overseer William Dackombe, daughter Anna Gane son-in-law/overseer Hanry Gane, daughter Sybill Evans, son-in-law/overseer Henry Evans, daughter Margaret Horton, son-in-law William HORTON, no bequest, grandsons Thobias and Richard HORTON, sons of Williams daughter, Elizabeth DACKOMBE, sister, Dorothy HARTGILL, other relative, Martha HORTON (mother, sister or daughter of William HORTON), other Joane GREENE, maid, Bridgett YONGE, Marie MORRIS, Mother COWPER. witnesses Frances CHALDECOTE, John COOKE, Henry GANE and John CLATWORTHE s 17 July 1585 p11th February 1585/6 by James DACKOMBE executor – Reference by Geoffrey MANN 1. 1585 Anna Dackombe of Stepleton, PCC Windsor 11, abstract by Fry no 51.