|
|
Hangman's Noose |
||
|
Coiners
Story |
The first trial of the Spring
assizes was that of William Varley and his son Thomas, both charged with
coining. The father was found guilty and sentenced to death. The son,
supposedly under the influence of his father was acquitted. James
Oldfield was also tried the same week and found guilty and sentenced to
death. The trial of David Hartley, the most important, was the last of the spring assizes on the 2nd April 1770. The trials of 22 other prisoners were put off until the August assizes and they were awarded bail. The trial of the four men accused of Deighton's murder was also postponed until the August assizes but they were ordered to be kept in gaol. Despite its importance, little
record was made of the trial. The main evidence was that provided by
Broadbent, who had made a statement that he had seen Hartley clip four
guineas, Jagger collecting the clippings with a piece of paper. Hartley
was sentenced to death on the 6th April 1770. James Jagger was later
freed. At about 2.30 in the afternoon of
Saturday 28th April 1770, David Hartley and James Oldfield were executed
at Tyburn near York. William Varley had his sentence respited. David Hartley’s
wife, Grace requested that her husbands body be released to her for
burial in Heptonstall at the local churchyard. Heptonstall sits on top
of the hill overlooking Hebden Bridge, and the cortege would have made
its way up the Buttress, a steep, narrow, cobbled roadway to the
churchyard of St. Thomas a Beckett. On May 1st 1770, David Hartley, King
of the Yorkshire Coiners was laid to rest a short distance from the
porch. The Latin entry in the parish register records “David Hartley
of Bell House in the township of Erringden, hanged by the neck near York
for unlawfully stamping and clipping public coin.”
The gravestone (pictured on the right above) simply states “David Hartley 1770”. It provides the final resting place of many of David Hartley’s immediate family, his father William (1789), his wife Grace (1802), his Grandson David (1845), his son David (1847) and his Daughter in Law Prudence (1823). The gravestone immediately to the right also contains many of the family, most notably David Hartley's brother Isaac. |
||
