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6 - Corruption, Conspiracy and the Coroners

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2021

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Summary

This chapter examines the complex and contested process of the coronial inquest into John Egerton's death. The inquest was a crucial stage in the gathering of evidence against the accused in a case of homicide but is a relatively obscure area in current scholarship partly because in most cases we have only the official inquest as our record of what occurred. However, in this instance we are fortunate to possess the depositions taken before the coroners as well as accounts of how the court actually operated. The latter emerges partly from a controversy over attempts by the Morgan interest to subvert the course of justice through bribery and by having the inquest moved to a more sympathetic jurisdiction. The case is also of interest because two coroners were involved, and they seem to have been divided, one having ties to the Morgans, the other to the Egertons. Although these developments make for a more complex and unusual inquest than was normally the case, they also cast a welcome light into the functioning of the coronial system in Jacobean England and expose some of the pressures to which coroners were subject in this period. This chapter will thus explore some of the ties of patronage and connection which the Morgans were able to mobilise in their efforts to frustrate the inquest and try to obtain a finding of manslaughter rather than murder. It also examines matters which are usually obscure in our current understanding of the coronial process such as the nature and composition of the coronial jury.

In the early afternoon of 21 April 1610, John Egerton's cooling body was laid on a table at a Highgate inn by the local constable, Leonard Beaker. Strictly, the corpse should not have been moved from the place where the death had occurred so the body could be viewed in situ. Indeed, this action later raised questions as to whether Egerton's resting place was, in fact, given accurately in subsequent testimony, particularly that of William Robinson. Beaker presumably set a watch over the corpse so that nobody would be able to interfere with it before the arrival of Middlesex's coroners the following day.

The coronial component of English law was an ancient one reaching back to the twelfth century. Coroners viewed dead bodies in consultation with a jury of local men to determine the causes of sudden and suspicious deaths.

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Anatomy of a Duel in Jacobean England
Gentry Honour, Violence and the Law
, pp. 103 - 126
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2021

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