Murder at Crowhurst: A Tudor Cold Case

In August 1532 a charcoal burner named Robert Grame was murdered in a wood in Surrey. He worked alone, he carried a checkered board so he could count his money out there among the trees, and half the county seems to have known it.

What happened next is why we can still tell this story. The local justice of the peace, Sir John Gaynesford, was an old man who had no obligation to do any of this well, and he did it beautifully. He examined the body, checked for signs of suicide because a widow's survival depended on the answer, found a broken knife handle, took depositions from witnesses more than twenty years before the law required it, and eventually hauled his suspect in front of the Privy Council in Westminster. When that went nowhere, he wrote nine folio pages to Thomas Cromwell and told him he would rather leave the county than keep living like this.

And then the case vanishes from the record entirely.

This episode is about who Robert Grame was, what Gaynesford did, what probably happened to Anastasia Grame, and how much of the past is missing from the documents we have left.

Follow the show so the next one turns up on its own. The autumn collection is up at TudorFair.com, including Bonfires and Boleyns and Sweater Weather and Sovereigns.

Source: William B. Robison, "Murder at Crowhurst: A Case Study in Early Tudor Law Enforcement," Criminal Justice History. The underlying document is Gaynesford's report to Cromwell, State Papers 1/72/76-87, at The National Archives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices