On 3rd July 1691, army surgeon Richard Cromwel was executed in Lichfield for murder. A publication featuring his final prayers and pre-execution speech was sold by Michael Johnson, the bookselling father of Samuel. As a bizarre bonus, the book entitled, ‘The Happy Sinner; or The Penitent Malefactor’, also included Cromwel’s legacy, in the form of several remedies for ‘ills of the flesh’, including worms, wounds and wind. I’ll link to an online copy of the book in the comments but please do not try them at home folks.

All of the ingredients were apparently readily available from the city’s apothecaries, except for ‘the Queen of Hungaries Water’. Fortunately, for anyone suffering from collick, that component was available from a bookseller in Lichfield. And you’ll never guess which one… The cures are of course to be taken with a pinch of salt (probably literally in this case). One of the book’s bolder claims is that a combination of fennel, sugar candy and white vitriol, now known as zinc sulfate, boiled in spring water, restored the sight of a boy in Lichfield who had been blind for three years.

Another page reveals how Cromwel had been hopeful of a reprieve right up to the day before he was due to die, but when three ravens landed on the Guildhall and started hurling themselves at the gaol walls as he prayed, he took this as a sign from God that he was a goner.

The details of the capital crime supposedly committed are unclear but a note added after Cromwel’s final speech appears to cast doubt on the conviction. ‘How far this unhappy Man was guilty of the Crime he dyed for, is too late to dispute. Tis indeed certain a Man was Kill’d but whether by this person or the Switz’s (?) his companion, is now the query, since this that Suffered, denyed it to the last’.

Late last night it occured to me to search the parish registers to see if the Man that was Kill’d could be identified. There, in the register of St Chad’s church, is an entry on the 22nd February 1691 for Francis Spencer, accompanied by the note, ‘was kill’d by a souldier’. This surely must be the victim. What happened to the body of Richard Cromwel after he was taken down from the gallows on the London Road is something of a mystery however. St Michael’s seems the most likely place for him to have been buried as the register there records several others who met the same fate but there is nothing relating to Richard Cromwel. I shall continue to search in the hope I can add this final chapter to the sad story of the so-called Happy Sinner.

Kate G