39 



By W. W. Ravenhill, Recorder of Andover. 

 [Beid before tbe Sociecy at Andover, August, 1383.] 



" Crime existed before time." 

 jjHE terrible incidents narrated in this paper are of so much 

 interest, not merely to those engaged in the administration 

 of justice, but to all for all time, that no apology is needed in 

 bringing them under your notice, though they occurred outside 

 Wiltshire. I had intended to have done this at our Swindon 

 meeting, 1873, as being not far from the scene of them,' but was 

 prevented ; and now, we, though ourselves also " out of bounds," are 

 again connected with that neighbourhood by the useful Swindon, 

 Marlborough, and Andover Railway, without which perhaps the 

 present meeting would have been impossible. 



The Cotswold Hills, which rise at Tetbury, near the northern 

 limits of our county, extend thence northwards for about thirty 

 miles to Broadway Hill, above the small town of Chipping (Market) 

 Campden. There the ground falls several hundred feet, but two 

 long spurs, three or four miles apart, ending at Dover's Hill and 

 Northwick Park, jut out and approach the lower hills opposite, and 

 a circular valley is thus formed, five or six miles broad, in the midst 

 of which, flanEed with goodly trees, rises (120ft.) the fine Per- 

 pendicular tower of Campden Church .'* A mile to the north of 



' This story forms the subject of a notice in " London Society," No. 256, 

 p. 458, April, 1883, by A. H. Wall, under the heading " The old Bookstall, a very 

 extraordinary conviction for murder amongst the collection of rare pamphlets and 

 tracts from the Earl of Oxford's Library, now preserved in the British Museum." 

 The report (3 Harl. Misc., 547) and papers are in Howell's " State Trials," Ed. 

 A.D. 1812, vol. xiv., p. 1312. 



^ This fine Church is undergoing restoration. It is said to date from Richard 

 II., but a good deal of it is later being due to William Greville, Esq. (in his 

 epitaph called " Flos Mercatorum LansB totius Anglise," " The Flower of English 

 Wool Merchants"), 2nd year of Henry IV. Amongst the benefactors we find 

 the name of James Thynne, Esq., of Buckland, who erected a gallery in it, and 

 also built and endowed a school for thirty girls at Campden. 



