43. John Carpenter, who murdered his wife. To the king our sovereign lord
your commons of this present parliament humbly beseech: whereas one John
Carpenter of Birdham in Sussex, husbandman, on 7 February in the eighth
year of your noble reign [1430], said to Isabel his wife, who was 16 years
of age and had been married to him for only 15 days, that they would go
together on pilgrimage, and dressed her in her best clothes and took her
with him from the said town of Birdham to the town of Stoughton in the
said county, and there in a wood he hit the said Isabel his wife on the
head, so that her brain came out, and with his knife gave her many other
deadly wounds, and stripped her naked from her clothes, and took his knife
and slit her stomach from the breast down, and removed her bowels from her
body and looked to see if she was pregnant; and thus the said John
horribly murdered his wife: of which horrible murder on Thursday after the
feast of St Ambrose the bishop, in the aforesaid year of your reign [6
April 1430], the said John was indicted before Sir John Bohun, knight,
Henry Husee, knight, and William Sydney, your commissioners of your peace
within the aforesaid county, and process was begun on the same indictment
according to your law, until the said John Carpenter was outlawed for the
said murder, and mercifully he has now been arrested for the same crime
and is in your prison called King's Bench.
May it please you most wise lord to consider the horrible aforesaid
murder, and by the authority of this your high court of parliament to
ordain that the said John Carpenter may judged as a traitor, and that
your judges have power to give judgment on him to be drawn and hanged as
a traitor, in order to avoid such horrible murders in future: saving
always to the lord of the fee, the escheats of his lands, after a year,
day and waste.
(from Parliament Rolls)