The Damnation of John Donellan (5 page)

John Donellan.

If this letter betrays a growing defensiveness on Donellan's part, and the first complaint at Theo's own difficult character, the day was not over yet. Donellan had another cause for distraction: the servants announced that yet another surgeon was at the door.

This was someone that neither Wheler nor Donellan had asked
for: Mr Samuel Bucknill, a local surgeon who had turned up of his own accord.

‘I have heard that Dr Rattray and Mr Wilmer have been here,' Bucknill explained. ‘I heard that they declined opening it on account of the putrid state it was in. If it is of any satisfaction to the family,' he went on, with some evident enthusiasm, ‘I will at all events take out the stomach.'

Here was someone with no introductory letter, no invitation from the family; someone confident enough to knock on the door of Lawford and bulldoze his way through to Theo's corpse, dissecting instrument in hand. But Donellan had no knowledge of how well qualified Bucknill was to perform an autopsy; more importantly, he did not have Wheler's permission to use him. He prevaricated. ‘It would not be fair,' he said, ‘after Dr Rattray and Dr Wilmer had declined it, and they so eminent in their profession. It is impossible.'

Bucknill's reaction to Donellan's rejection of his services was to leave as abruptly as he had arrived; it is certain, given what happened the following day, that he went the six miles straight across the fields to Sir William Wheler.

Wednesday 6 September was the day scheduled for Theodosius's funeral. The latest fashion was for burial at night, but Theodosius's cortège was organised for three o'clock in the afternoon. It is likely that Donellan was responsible for the arrangements, as women were not usually welcome at such events – they were thought to be too emotional.

Donellan, by his own testimony, thought that he had fulfilled all that was required of him: he had allowed Wheler's nominated physicians to see the body and had given them the opportunity for a dissection. He had also confirmed, or so he thought, that Rattray would visit Sir William and tell him what they had found. Apart from that, he had no other instructions, so he went ahead and arranged bearers and stewards, and the coffin was re-soldered. The weather had not changed; it was still very hot.

Despite having taken charge of arrangements at Lawford Hall
since Theodosius's death, Donellan's position was uneasy. His mother-in-law was of no help; she had left everything to him to sort out. She had even refused to pay Rattray's and Wilmer's fees and, by her own admission at the trial, had not written to Theo's guardian. Nor had she asked Powell about the medicine; instead, she had questioned Donellan about his washing out the medicine bottles. Donellan's position was further undermined at the house when the servants were told by him – or so it transpired at the trial – to wash out a still that he had kept in his rooms for distilling rose and lavender water (a still that the prosecution would later contend had been used to distil lethal laurel water).

And then another letter arrived.

Lemington, September 6th, 1780.

Dear Sir,

From the letter I received from you yesterday morning, I concluded that the body of the last Sir Theodosius Boughton had been opened … but find that they found the body in so putrid a state that they thought it not safe to open it … I likewise find that a young man of Rugby, Mr Bucknill, did attend and offer to open the body, but it was not done …

One can almost hear Wheler fuming with frustration. He added that he had not heard from either Rattray or Wilmer and that it had been Bucknill who had told him the story. As if despairing of Rattray and Wilmer, Wheler went on to tell Donellan to let Bucknill dissect the body, with a Mr Snow. He then jumped to the conclusion that Donellan or the Boughtons must have been afraid of the dissection being carried out in the house:

If there is any danger in opening the body, it is to themselves and not to the family. The body may be taken into the open air. Mr Bucknill is or was very desirous of opening the body.

I am, with respects …

William Wheler.

His postscript had an even more frustrated urgency:

If Snow is from home, I do not see any impropriety in Bucknill doing it, if he is willing.

Bucknill had obviously made an impression.

Donellan replied at once, in a letter dated ‘a quarter before one o'clock, Wednesday'. The house was full of mourners, and the drive with carriages and horses. He referred ‘you, or anyone that pleases' to his previous letter, saying that he had let Wheler's doctors see the body alone and he asked that they let Wheler know what they had decided. He agreed that Bucknill had been at Lawford Hall, but that Sir William had not introduced him for, if he had, Donellan would have let him see the corpse. The letter was hurried, fraught:

The time fixed for burial is three o'clock today, if you please order to be postponed until the state of the body is made known to you … please let me know … if we do not hear from you we conclude you have seen some of them [the physicians] …

Not a word of reply was sent to Donellan by Sir William, even though a rider would have been able to reach him, and bring back a response, before three o'clock.

But a greater question remains.

As Theodosius's guardian, why wasn't Sir William Wheler at the house to attend the funeral? Had he been there, the authority to carry out the autopsy and to delay the funeral would have been his, and Donellan would have been relieved of this onerous – and soon to be damning – burden.

At two o'clock, with the lead coffin already brought downstairs and standing in the hall, Bucknill arrived back at Lawford.

Neither Rattray nor Wilmer came back, despite Donellan sending a servant out looking for them with a letter asking them to do so. There is no record in the trial transcript or in Donellan's
Defence
to suggest that Donellan ever received a reply; but the
Scots Magazine
of 1781 (edited by James Boswell) quotes a letter sent from
the doctor, Wilmer, on 6 September in which he politely excuses himself from responding immediately, pleading an urgent ‘midwifery case', but saying that he would go and see William Wheler if he got back from Coventry in time.

Rattray had only returned to his own home that morning after his visit away, and testified later that he had received a letter from Donellan begging him to go and tell Sir William the circumstances of the night of 4 September.

Oddly, Rattray did not reply to his messages, but at some time on the same day he did meet up with Sir William, at the ‘Black Dog tavern'. In court later, he did not say when, nor did he say what kind of conversation they had. But neither he nor Wilmer went back to Lawford that day. Why Wheler did not absolutely insist on the doctors returning to the Hall to do their job is a puzzle.

Bucknill, of course, was a different matter. He turned up three-quarters of an hour after Donellan had sent his servant off to look for the other two doctors, saying that he had received a message from Sir William to come to Lawford and meet Mr Snow there so that Snow could open the body.

Donellan was standing in the hall.

According to later testimony, Bucknill asked, ‘Has Snow arrived?'

‘No,' replied Donellan. He must have hesitated or seemed confused, for the doctor's reply was impatient. ‘Pray sir,' Bucknill insisted, ‘have you received any message or letter from Sir William Wheler?'

‘I have.'

‘I have to meet Mr Snow here, and we are to get Sir Theodosius's body into the garden, or any convenient place we think proper, and we are to open it.'

Donellan made no move to comply. ‘I have written to Sir William,' he said. ‘And to Doctors Rattray and Wilmer. I am waiting for Sir William's orders.'

Something was awry here. Donellan
had
received Sir William's orders in his postscript: ‘If Snow is from home, I do not see any impropriety in Bucknill doing it …'

Bucknill was beside himself with impatience. He had a very ill patient two miles away; the funeral was not for another hour; Donellan would not give permission for the autopsy to go ahead until Snow arrived, and Snow was not there. He decided to go to his patient, saying that he would be gone at most an hour and a half.

But he was ‘not ten yards' out of the door when a messenger arrived with the news that his patient appeared to be on the verge of death. Riding on with all haste, he was nevertheless overtaken within a mile by a servant who had galloped at breakneck pace from Lawford. Mr Snow had arrived at the house, he was told. They had missed each other by about three minutes. Bucknill now had to choose between the dying and the dead. He chose his living patient, rode on, and sent the servant back saying that he would return within the hour.

It was almost exactly three o'clock when Bucknill arrived back at Lawford Hall.

He was met again by John Donellan. ‘Is Mr Snow here?' Bucknill asked.

‘He is gone,' Donellan replied.

Bucknill, by his own testimony, was speechless.

‘He has given us orders what to do,' Donellan said. ‘I am sorry that you should have given yourself all this unnecessary trouble.'

Samuel Bucknill took his horse in utter disgust and ‘rode away as fast as I could'.

Theodosius Boughton was not taken from his coffin that day. There was no dissection. The pallbearers hoisted the heavy lead coffin on to the carriage, and the procession to Newbold church began in the sweltering heat.

He was buried as arranged.

‘Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order'

Edmund Burke

‘Those comfortably padded lunatic asylums which are known,
euphemistically, as the stately homes of England'

Virginia Woolf

IT IS NOT OFTEN THAT A FAMILY DECIDES
to put one of their relations in a bottle and throw them into a pond. Of course, if they are causing trouble in the neighbourhood, it is an interesting solution. The best thing to do is to herd twelve clerics together, each with a lighted candle, and have them exorcise a particularly haunted bedroom; after a few minutes, during which time all but one candle is blown out by the incensed ghost, the priests will succeed in cramming the ancestor into a glass phial. Then everyone can rush outside and throw the bottle into the bottom of a flooded pit.

It seemed to work for Sir Edward Boughton in the 1770s. Until then his ancestor One-Handed Boughton (he had lost an arm in an accident) had run riot in the darkened lanes around Lawford Hall. The story went that, in life, he had been fond of ravishing
young women and ‘acquiring neighbours' lands by fair means or foul'.
¹
His ghostly arrivals were heralded by the noise of a cracking whip and loud shouts, followed by a phantom coach and horses hurtling past, One-Handed Boughton at the reins, resplendent in scarlet hunting jacket.

Time tends to distort. However, whether the legend of the thundering carriage was true or not, this Elizabethan Boughton seems to have caused some disturbances at the Hall. His locked bedroom, which no one would occupy come the eighteenth century, resounded with loud scrapes and bangs; servants – when any could be persuaded to enter – would find that the furniture had been mysteriously rearranged. In despair, Edward Boughton, the Sixth Baronet and Theodosius's father, had employed the twelve clerics to carry out the extraordinary ritual. And he really believed that it had worked. Out walking one day with his neighbour Sir Francis Skipwith of Newbold Hall, he refused to fish in the marl-pit pond, saying ‘the spirit of his ancestor lay there.'
²
The colourful, tragic and complicated nature of the Boughton family, however, encompasses far more than just a troublesome ghost.

The Boughton baronetcy had been created in 1641, a gift from Charles I to William Boughton for his support during the Civil War. The title lasted 322 years. Although the first three generations of Boughtons had established a progressively powerful line, from the time of William Boughton, the Fourth Baronet, the dynasty was destined to be fraught with division, feud and scandal.

The Fourth Baronet – whose portrait reveals a fleshy face with irregular features, not improved by his supercilious stare – was born in 1663. He married twice, effectively creating two families: the children from his first marriage, to Mary Ramsey, and the children from his second marriage, to Catherine Shukburgh, existed on either side of an ever-expanding gulf, united by name alone. While Mary, having provided an heir, died young and quietly sank without trace from history, Catherine was an altogether different proposition. Seeing what she perceived as weaknesses in Mary's children, particularly the eldest son, she set out to exploit them.

Catherine had been in her early twenties when she had married William, twenty years her senior. Having come from a whole tribe of sisters, she was used to large families, but she had also learnt to ‘divide and rule'. Having lost her own mother when she was barely five years old, she had grown up with a step-mother, Diana Verney. Whatever ploys she might have learned from Diana, she now used them to manage her own step-family, and she promptly engaged her own step-mother to look after William's children. William's eldest boy, Edward, was only twelve years old, but he grew up with little paternal influence; cosseted by his grandmother, Abigail, he had been left alone with her and his four sisters.
³

Young Catherine now found herself as the matriarch of a family steeped in history. This was familiar territory: the Shukburgh family itself was influential. For centuries, the Boughtons had been high-profile figures at Court: the first baronet's grandfather had been ‘Esquire of the Body' to Henry VIII, for which the parishes of Bilton, Dunchurch, Long Lawford and Newbold had tumbled satisfyingly into the Boughton coffers. Born in 1544 but fatherless by 1548, this ancestor – another William – had moved stratospherically up through society, his status propelled by confiscated lands.