Читать книгу True Crime Chronicles - Camden Pelham - Страница 36

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THE name of Charteris will long be remembered with loathing and detestation, as having belonged to a villain, whose profligacy, at the time at which he lived, rendered him an object of universal disgust and hatred.

The execrable subject of this narrative was born at Amisfield, in Scotland, where he was heir to an estate which his ancestors had possessed above four hundred years. He was related to many of the first families among the nobility of the north; and having received a liberal education, he selected the profession of arms, as that of which he desired to become a member. He served first under the Duke of Marlborough, when he successively held the ranks of ensign in a foot regiment, and cornet of dragoons; but being a most expert gamester, and of a disposition uncommonly avaricious, he made his knowledge of gambling subservient to his love of money; and while the army was in winter-quarters, he stripped many of his brother-officers of all their property by his skill at cards and dice. His villany, however, did not end there, for when he had defrauded his companions of all they possessed, he would lend them their own money back, at a usurious rate of interest, taking an assignment of their commissions as security for the payment of the debts.

John Duke of Argyle and the Earl of Stair were at this time young men in the army; and being determined that the inconsiderate officers should not be thus ruined by the artifices of Charteris, they applied to the Earl of Orkney, who was also in the army then quartered at Brussels, representing the destruction that must ensue to young men serving in the army, if Charteris were permitted to continue the line, of conduct which he had adopted unchecked.

The Earl of Orkney, anxious for the credit of the army in general, and his countrymen in particular, represented the state of the case to the Duke of Marlborough, who gave orders that Charteris should be put under arrest and tried by court-martial. The court was composed of an equal number of English and Scotch officers, in order that the accused might have no reason to complain of his trial; and after a full hearing of all the circumstances against him, he was sentenced to return the money which he had obtained by his guilty artifices, to be deprived of his commission, and his sword having been broken, to be drummed out of the regiment.

This sentence having been carried out to its fullest extent, the degraded officer returned to Scotland; but there, by means of the most servile submission and the use of the money which he possessed, he procured for himself a new commission in a regiment of horse, in which he was eventually advanced to the rank of colonel.

The lesson which he had received, one would have thought would have been sufficient to deter him from a renewal of those artifices in the employment of which he had been detected; but every day served to furnish him with new victims among the young men of rank and fashion, to whom, by his standing in the army, he contrived to procure introductions. Nor was his character infamous only on account of the dishonesty of his proceedings, but he soon obtained an unenviable notoriety on account of the unprincipled boldness with which he conducted his libidinous amours. Agents were employed, whose duty it was to procure new subjects for the horrid desires of their master, and the most extraordinary and unhallowed devices were employed by them to secure the object which they had in view. Public disgust was excited in the highest degree by the open daring with which these proceedings were carried on, and at length the name and character of this abominable libertine became so notorious as to render him the object of universal detestation and disgust.

Among other unfortunate young women who fell into the hands of this villain, was one whose name was Anne Bond. She was a girl of respectable connexions, and being in search of employment as a servant, her bad fortune threw her into the way of the agents of Charteris. She was possessed of considerable personal attractions, and she was employed under a representation that her master was a Colonel Harvey. A few days, however, served to inform her of the name of the person into whose hands she had fallen. Her master professed to behave towards her with great kindness and consideration; but within a week after she had entered his employment, he made to her a proposition of a most disgusting nature. She repelled the foul temptation, and her fears being alarmed by the circumstance, she was confirmed in a determination, at which she had nearly arrived, to quit the service in which she was employed, by hearing on the following day that her master was no other than the Colonel Charteris of whose character she, in common with the world, had heard so much. She therefore immediately acquainted the housekeeper with her intention to leave the house; but the colonel having been informed of the circumstance, he behaved towards her with great violence, and threatened that if she dared to run away, he would shoot her. He then ordered the other servants to take care that she did not escape, and on the following day proceeded to the accomplishment of the design by force, in which he had failed to succeed by stratagem. He ordered her to be sent into the parlour by the clerk of the kitchen, and then desiring her to stir the fire, he threw her down, and having stopped her mouth with his nightcap, he completed an offence which subjected him to capital punishment. The girl, on recovering her position, threatened to prosecute him, and then he beat her most unmercifully with a horsewhip, and calling the clerk of the kitchen, bid him turn her out of doors, alleging that she had robbed him of thirty guineas. His orders having been directly obeyed, the girl proceeded forthwith to prefer an indictment for the assault which had been committed; but the Grand Jury finding that the colonel had, in reality, been guilty of a capital offence, they at once returned a true bill on that charge.

Colonel Charteris was immediately taken into custody for the crime alleged against him and lodged in Newgate, where he was loaded with heavy fetters; but having, through the instrumentality of his friends, procured a writ of habeas corpus, he was admitted to bail.

The trial took place at the Old Bailey on the 25th of February, 1730, when every effort was used to traduce the character of the prosecutrix, with a view to destroy the force of her evidence; but, happily, her character was so fair, and there was so little reason to think that she had any sinister view in the prosecution, that every artifice failed, and, after a long trial, in which the facts were proved to the satisfaction of the jury, a verdict of guilty was returned, and the Colonel received sentence to be executed in the customary form. The same interest which had before been employed on behalf of this villain was now again made use of; and upon the settlement of a handsome annuity upon the prosecutrix, he received a pardon from the King. He soon found, however, that London was no longer a place in which he could appear, unless to be pointed at with the finger of scorn; and he retired to Edinburgh, where, after a lapse of two years, he died in a miserable manner, the victim of his own dissolute and hateful passions.

His vices were so notorious, that it was not without great difficulty that his body was committed to the grave. The place appointed for the reception of his remains was the family vault in the church of the Greyfriars in Edinburgh; but the mob having assembled, they made a violent effort to obtain possession of his coffin, with a view to tear it and its contents to pieces, and committed a variety of other irregularities, in honest contempt of the detestable character which he bore. At the time of his death, he was possessed of very large estates in England and Scotland, the produce of many usurious transactions, to which he was a party during the latter portion of his life. He was married to the daughter of Sir Alexander Swinton, of Scotland, by whom he had one daughter, who was afterwards united to the Earl of Wemyss.

Soon after Charteris was convicted, a fine mezzotinto print of him was published, representing him standing at the bar of the Old Bailey with his thumbs tied; at the bottom of which was the following inscription:

Blood!—— must a colonel, with a lord’s estate,

Be thus obnoxious to a scoundrel’s fate?

Brought to the bar, and sentenced from the bench,

Only for ravishing a country wench?

Shall men of honour meet no more respect?

Shall their diversions thus by laws be check’d?

Shall they be accountable to saucy juries

For this or t’other pleasure?—hell and furies!

What man through villany would run a course,

And ruin families without remorse,

To heap up riches—if, when all is done,

An ignominious death he cannot shun?

A most severe but just description of the character of Charteris was afterwards written by Dr. Arbuthnot, who published it in the form of an epitaph, as follows:—

HERE LIETH THE BODY OF

C O L O N E L D O N F R A N C I S C O,

WHO, WITH AN

INFLEXIBLE CONSTANCY,

AND INIMITABLE UNIFORMITY

OF LIFE, PERSISTED, IN SPITE OF

AGE AND INFIRMITY, IN THE PRACTICE OF

EVERY HUMAN VICE, EXCEPTING PRODIGALITY

AND HYPOCRISY; HIS INSATIABLE AVARICE EXEMPTING

HIM FROM THE FIRST, AND HIS MATCHLESS IMPUDENCE FROM

THE LATTER. NOR WAS HE MORE SINGULAR IN THAT UNDEVIATING

VICIOUSNESS OF LIFE THAN SUCCESSFUL IN ACCUMULATING WEALTH,

HAVING, WITHOUT TRUST OF PUBLIC MONEY, BRIBE, WORTH, SERVICE,

TRADE, OR PROFESSION, ACQUIRED, OR RATHER CREATED, A MINISTERIAL ESTATE.

AMONG THE SINGULARITIES OF HIS LIFE AND FORTUNE, BE IT LIKEWISE

COMMEMORATED, THAT HE WAS THE ONLY PERSON IN HIS TIME

WHO WOULD CHEAT WITHOUT THE MASK OF HONESTY;

WHO WOULD RETAIN HIS PRIMEVAL MEANNESS, AFTER

BEING POSSESSED OF 10,000 POUNDS A YEAR;

AND WHO, HAVING DONE EVERY DAY OF

HIS LIFE SOMETHING WORTHY OF

A GIBBET, WAS ONCE CONDEMNED

TO ONE FOR WHAT HE

HAD NOT DONE.

THINK NOT, INDIGNANT READER, HIS LIFE USELESS TO MANKIND.

PROVIDENCE FAVOURED, OR RATHER CONNIVED AT, HIS

EXECRABLE DESIGNS, THAT HE MIGHT REMAIN, TO THIS

AND FUTURE AGES, A CONSPICUOUS PROOF AND

EXAMPLE OF HOW SMALL ESTIMATION

EXORBITANT WEALTH IS HELD IN

THE SIGHT OF THE ALMIGHTY,

BY HIS BESTOWING IT ON

THE MOST UNWORTHY OF ALL THE DESCENDANTS OF ADAM.