Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio.
It was early morning, about six o'clock on November thirteenth, fifteen thirty six, when Robert Packington, a London merchant, was fatally shot while on his way to attend early Mass at Mercer's Chapel at Saint Thomas of Acon. It was the first firearm crime in London's history and a crime that has never been solved. Welcome to Criminalia. I'm Maria Tremarky.
And I'm Holly Frye. It was a short walk from Robert's home on Needler's Lane to the chapel one that he made daily to worship. That day, he carried a lantern. It was still dark and the air was very foggy, filled with chimney smoke, and missed from the Thames. His route took him, as it always did, down Cheapside Street, which ran east to west between two public water fountains in the city, the Great Conduit to the Little Conduit.
As he crossed the street, just a few feet from his destination, a single gunshot rang out and Robert, fatally hit by a bullet, fell to the ground a crowd, many of whom were his fellow church goers, began to gather around him and began asking questions such as who would kill Robert such a respectable fellow, and why the murder was a shock for Londoners. After all, nobody had been killed in London by a handgun ever before, and there was little information to go on.
Most, if not all, detailed accounts of this killing derived from a single primary source, a man named Edward Hall, who was a member of Parliament and chronicler of Robert Packington's life. They were contemporaries of Packington's death. He wrote that a gun was heard by neighbors and bystanders, but no one saw the assailant because it had been a densely foggy night.
Let's break out of Robert's death scene for a moment to talk about gun crime and a little gun history. This was the first recorded gun fatality in London, but the type of gun used was notable too. The first firearm was used in thirteen sixty four, again the first recorded use. Today, the United Kingdom has one of the
lowest levels of gun crime in the world. There is limited access of the general public to firearms and many types of guns are banned, others are subject to strict control measures, including proper licensing, but this was not the case in the sixteenth century. Robert had been shot with a wheel lock pistol, which was the first self igniting gun and had just been introduced sometime in fifteen thirty four, so just two years before this murder. It was a
long barreled pistol that really changed the firearm world. Previously, fire arms that were in general use were absolutely nothing like it. Prior to the wheel lock gun style, by the beginning of the fourteen hundreds, arquebuses were in use. They were long, slow loading matchlock rifles and pretty typical of the muskets that they'd have used in colonial America. For example, they were big, more than a meter long, and they had to be held using both hands. The
gunpowder was ignited with a lighted match. A matchlock style firearm would have absolutely attracted attention wherever it was fired on the battlefield or by an assassin on a foggy night.
When wheel locks were first introduced, they were limited to personal use by nobles, officers the elite. They could be floated and ready to go at a moment's notice, unlike matchlock guns, but that came at a cost. Literally, the cost of manufacturing this type of gunlock kept it out of most people's hands. By the early fifteen forties, wheelock pistols began to appear on the battlefield, particularly with cavalry
and royal bodyguards. They were becoming a popular firearm, and many people wondered and worried that off the battlefield they'd fall into the hands of assassins and those with violent natures.
In his book In Assassin's Deeds, A History of Assassination from Ancient Egypt to the present Day, John Whittington claims Robert Packington's death was likely the first assassination by a firearm in history. Using a wheel lock pistol meant the killer could be just a few yards away from their
victim when they pulled the trigger. There would have been a flash in an explosion, but on a foggy night like the one of Robert's death, the small, discreete gun allowed the killer to quickly get in and out of the area.
We're going to take a break for a word from our sponsors, and when we're back, let's learn about who Robert Packington was, and if there was anything about his life that could have been a motive for his death.
Welcome back to crimin Ilia. Let's talk about the life of Robert Packington.
Robert Packington was probably born in fourteen eighty nine, though this was a very long time ago, and various records through history suggest it might have been anywhere between fourteen eighty nine and fourteen ninety six. It's a little bit squishy there. He grew up in the region of Worcestershire, where large tracts of land had been long held by the Washburn family. His father, John Packington, was married to Elizabeth Washburn. Robert had three brothers, John, Augustine, and Humphrey.
Robert married twice. He and his first wife, Agnes Baldwin, married in fifteen twenty, and they had two two sons and three daughters, Thomas, John, Elizabeth, Ann, and Margaret. Widowed, although we're not sure when that happened exactly. Robert remarried his second wife, Catherine Dallum, also a widow, had a son and daughter, George and Dorothy, from her previous marriage.
Like his older brother, John, Robert was an inner templar after the military order of the Knights Templar were disbanded by Pope Clement the fifth and the fourteenth century lawyers began to occupy the remaining temple site and buildings, and they formed two societies, the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple. They acted as legal advisors. The societies were basically organized
similar to the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge Universities. They offered accommodation to those who practiced the law and to their students, and there were facilities for legal education. Robert was admitted in fifteen twenty, but he never practiced, despite his brother's inclusion and also that his father in law, John Baldwin, was Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas,
Robert saw the society mostly for its social potential. When he was admitted, he'd already completed a decade long apprenticeship with the Mercers Company, one of twelve significant livery companies in London. The Mercer's was a trade organization for general merchants and specifically for those who traded cloth, and by fifteen twenty Robert was a prominent importer and exporter of cloth and various sunderies, and a successful merchant.
Robert was it would seem at the top of his game. He was a quote leading light in the Mercer's Company, a quote philanthropic force for good. In fifteen sixteen, he was one of the worshipful commoners in attendance at a general court of the merchant Adventurers twice, first in fifteen
twenty three and again in fifteen twenty nine. The Mercer's Company elected him, along with a few others their merchants, to quote, devise such articles as should be thought necessary as well for the enhancing and bringing up of the hants concerning the merchant Adventurers, and for all other things, and to devise what things be most necessary and behooveful for the common wheel of the city to be moved at this next Parliament. So the first time he was asked,
Packington gave them what they wanted. He played ball. In fifteen twenty nine, however, when called upon by his company to again devise articles for presentation to Parliament, he ruffled more than a few feathers when he sharply criticized the Catholic clergy. After all, Robert was Catholic. Of the five grievances suggested for redress to Parliament that year, Robert also included one that he knew would figure prominently in the
proceedings of the House of Commons. Quote to have in remembrance how the King's poor subjects, principally of London have been pulled and robbed without reason or conscience by the ordinaries in probating of testaments and taking of mortuaries, and also vexed and troubled by citations, with cursing one day and as soiling the next eth haic omnia propecunis, which in Latin means and for all this money. He had political and religious opinions, and he spoke them.
Packington was not only a prominent merchant and businessman, he also became a member of Parliament. Robert was elected to replace William Boyer when the parliamentary vacancy became available in fifteen thirty three. He was re elected in fifteen thirty six. Probably that's a probably because the names of the members for London that year are lost to history, perhaps in a fire, but it's widely assumed he held the seat because the King asked for the reelection of the previous members.
Chronicler and Member of Parliament Edward Hall noted that Packington was quote a man of a great courage and one that both could speak and also would be heard. He spoke in Parliament somewhat against the covetousness and cruelty of the clergy.
So with a case this old, it's pretty unlikely we'll ever really know who did it. But let's talk about the biggest theory surrounding Robert's death. It involves politics and religion. Historians suspect Robert may have been a target because he had criticized not the King but the Catholic clergy more than once. He had been outspoken about his criticisms, including
to Parliament. Some blamed the Catholic clergy directly for his death, including scandalous yet possibly well founded allegations by Protestants that the Bishop of London had hired the assassin.
Packington, who was himself Catholic, had developed reformist religious convictions and perhaps expected bark but instead got bites in recas thoughts to his ongoing criticism of Catholic clergy. He was a successful London merchant with connections and sympathies with notable Protestants and those of other beliefs. As a businessman, he worked with lots of different people. Most people in England were Catholic, but that was changing during the years that
marked the end of Robert's life. When the King, King Henry the Eighth broke with the Church, it was shocking to many. Some opposed the decision, though defiance was punishable by death under Henry's New Treasons Act of fifteen thirty four. Full disclosure here on this This is a very long and complicated historical story, so forgive us as we stick to the highlight reel.
King Henry the Eighth had been a devout Catholic, and he'd defended the pope against new Protestant ideas being published by Martin Luther, a German theologian. Luther published a series of criticisms of the Catholic Church in fifteen seventeen, inspiring what would eventually become a new branch of Christianity known as Protestantism. It began as a protest against the Catholic Church.
Henry's break with the Catholic Church for the reasons we're about to discuss, eventually led to England's transition to a Protestant country, an event called the English Reformation.
Robert was killed at a time when a whole lot was converging in political and religious realms in England, and one of those things was that the King of England wanted an annulment, and the Catholic Church wouldn't grant him one. But he was king and he wanted one, So some dirty deeds went down. Catherine of Aragon was Queen of England and the first wife of King Henry the Eighth from their marriage in fifteen oh nine until its annulment on May twenty third, fifteen thirty three. That annulment was
not so easy, and for a few reasons. Catherine had previously been married to Henry's older brother, Arthur Tudor, and married Henry after Arthur died just months after they had wed. Henry's argument for dissolving his marriage was that, through an interpretation of the Catholic Bible quote, if a man marries his brother's wife, the couple will be childless. Catherine had given birth several times, but only one daughter survived, Mary Tudor,
for seven years. Pope Clement the seventh basically avoided the annulment issue, mainly to avoid alienating Catherine's nephew, who happened to be Charles the Fifth, the Holy Roman Emperor.
If the Pope wouldn't do it for him, Henry would find another solution to end his marriage. He broke ties with the Catholic Church and with Rome, and he declared himself to be the supreme head of the Church of England. Now that he oversaw his own church, he had his own Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas kranmer annull that marriage to Catherine. He had Parliament pass an act to stop Catherine from being able to appeal to the pope, which is a heavy handed move in a breakup. And then he married
Anne Boleyn and on that. We're going to take a break for a word from our sponsors, so meet us right back here to talk about how Robert's life as a Catholic intertwined with his country's religious upheaval.
Welcome back to Criminalia. While no one was ever identified as the killer, there was plenty of speculation. But before we speculate, let's talk a bit more about politics and religion.
The Reformation had repercussions, including an Act of Parliament past which led to the dissolution of Catholic properties such as monasteries, priories, convents, and friaries in England, Wales and parts of Ireland, and that led to many uprisings. Prominent figures such as Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer, who had Protestant sympathies, began to rise at court.
Between fifteen thirty six and fifteen forty, inspectors commissioned the Valor Ecclesiasticus were assigned to report on the wealth and the lifestyles of those in all of those Catholic properties about to be closed. These reports, written as you may imagine, with anti Catholic bias, stated that monks were living in wealth and luxury and not at all as humbly as expected.
Assets and lands were sold off for the benefit of the Crown, though much was sold to the nobles as a way to secure them as pro Church of England. There was little resistance among clergy and among members of Parliament, except for Chancellor Thomas Moore, who was beheaded when he refused to swear allegiance to the king.
The Chancellor wasn't the only one to take issue with the Act of Dissolution and the general move against the Catholic Church in October of fifteen thirty six. At that point, just a few weeks before Robert's death, thousands of people and we've seen numbers reportedly as high as thirty thousand from the north of England rose up against Henry's New Church of England and Protestantism and against the treatment of Catholics, and marched to York under a Catholic banner of the
Five Wounds of Christ. That's an uprising known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. Those involved were promised a pardon and the opportunity to address their demands. Accepting that result, they disbanded, but Henry's response was instead brutal. Many were arrested, hundreds were executed, and the group's leader, Robert Askey, was hung in chains where he was left to starve to death.
While no one was ever identified as Robert Packington's killer, there was plenty of speculation. Chronicler Edward Hall, who was Protestant minded, dabbled in some of that speculation when he suggested that quote most likely Robert had been murdered by a cleric. With such religious upheaval happening, it was probably
a good guess. Another chronicler at the time, John Fox, brazenly named Packington's murderer as doctor Robert Vincent, the Dean of Saint Paul's, without any real evidence to back that up. Though Fox later wrote that alleged assailants confessed on their deathbeds well, no one ever confessed to this crime. Protestants, though, claimed Packington as a martyr for their cause.
Robert was buried in the parish church of Saint Pancras. He had drawn up a will on November twenty third, fifteen thirty five, almost exactly one year for his murder, with his wife and his brother Humphrey as executors. In it, he stated that he trusted he'd find salvation quote only by the merits of Jesus Christ. In London. At this time, children legally became orphans if they had lost both parents or their father, and Robert's children from his first marriage
had now lost both him and their mother, Agnes. On November twentieth, fifteen thirty seven, about a year after the shooting, the Court of Aldermen officially placed his eldest son, Thomas, in the care of Sir John Baldwin, that was Agnes's father. About five years later, Thomas, then of age, acknowledged that he had received his share of his father's estate, and that in fifteen forty four his younger brother did as well.
In fact, despite never knowing what happened to their father that early morning, all of Robert's children were, it appears, cared for Elizabeth, known as Best married twice, as did Margaret, and married Richard Cupper esquire little information information that's pretty questionable at least remains about Robert's son John, His and the lives of other John Packington's have kind of woven together over the centuries, so it's hard to know what
accounts are referring to which one of them. Thomas, his eldest son, went on to be knighted by Queen Mary the first Catherine and Henry the Eighth's only surviving child and a Catholic in October of fifteen fifty three.
Talk about a cold, cold, cold, cold case.
Yeah, so are you ready to step into the cooler and discuss this with me?
Yes? It might take me a while through all the centuries to get there.
Right on, come on, you can do it. Okay, I'm gonna add in some personal biographical information to this one, because we're doing this episode on a day when I am trapped at my house because snow, so I can't go out and get new ingredients. So one I had to work with what I had on hand. Now that may sound limiting, but let me be clean.
I was laughing at just no, I have limited in my.
House, a pretty well stocked bar. But it also meant that, like, if I had an idea that was something that I didn't have on hand, I can't just run out and get it. So for a minute, because thinking about this time in history, we're talking at a time when it's pretty much all beer and wine of some sort. And I was like, oh, I'll do some sort of shandy and I'll go get like a nice beer, and but I can't do that, and I don't tend to keep beer on hand, so be safe. Then I was like,
what about wine? And I don't tend to keep a lot of wine on hand. I've used ruby port this season already, yes, pretty recently, so I don't want to repeat that yet. And I was like, oh, what about Bubbly And then I did some research and it didn't exist yet, so I don't want to use that. But then I remember word vermouth, which is just a fortified wine. Yes, yeah, and I have that please refrigerate your vermouth. It does not have a high enough ABV to be sitting on
the counter. That's one part of my soapbox for the day.
It's a little PSA.
I also wanted to do something that we haven't because this is an unusual event, you know, this was the first time. It was all novel, the way everyone was perceiving it was novel. I thought I should use at least something that I don't think we've ever used on the show before, which is funny because it's not an uncommon ingredient, but it isn't when I reach for all that often, and that is driver mouth. Hey, we've used
sweet vermuth a few times, but I have dry. And I also because all of the discussion that we had about the evolution of firearms at this time is so evocative and it made me think of that distinctive smell of gunshot, that I wanted to do something with a smoke note without doing liquid smoke. Although heads up, that's gonna appear in the mocktail. But for the cocktail, which we're calling first shot, although it is not a shot, here's what we're putting together. It's an easy one. It's
four ingredients. They're each one ounce, So you're gonna do one ounce of lemon juice, one ounce of simple syrup, one ounce of driver mouth, and then one ounce of mescal and you are gonna shake this together in your shaker and strain it into a pre chilled glass. This is a really really good drink. It's it does something so cool, which is not something I anticipated. It's almost as though the ingredients line up on your palate to like raise their hand one by one. Because the first
thing you taste is that driver mooth. That's sort of like if you're familiar with sweetervermoth and you haven't had dry before. Dry. It's also sweet, it's just not as sweet, and it's a mellower sweetness, So you get that kind of mellow sweetness on your tongue, you get that little bit of citrus, and then the finish is where the mes cow makes itself known. Then you get that smoky thing.
So now I have never been shot praise grito, but I imagine that is kind of what it's like, where you feel something and then you realize what it is, and that's kind of how this plays out. It's like, this is a drink. What is this drink? Oh, there's a smoke note, there's a mescal. This is a mes cow drink. It's so delicious. I want to make a kajullion.
Of them snowday drinks, maybe with leftovers. Sometimes the best thing there is.
An optional presentation version of this, And I honestly this is drinker's choice, because I honestly can't tell if I like it better with or without, which is before you, before you strain into your pre chilled glass, dip one edge of that glass into water or lemon juice, and then dip it into black lava salt so that you have a little bit of a smoky salt note on the rim.
I bet that's so delicious with that.
It's good both ways. And I can't decide which one I like better. I really can't. Usually I'm like, oh, that's the one, right, yes, one both, It's just gonna be what you like. So lava salt, by the way, is not super hard to get. You can order it online. My grocery store sometimes has it. It's not very difficult to get your hands on. So that's not a particularly exotic ingredient. Okay, So for the mocktail for this, we're
gonna switch some stuff up. The first thing you're gonna do is brew a cup like a regular eight outce cup according to packaging of like a lemon tea, and you are going to add a little bit of salt to that after you take the tea bag out or your tea infuser out, just like a little a pinch, a little pinch, and then you were going to take three ounces of that three ounces of your salted lemon tea.
You're gonna add your simple syrup, and then you will add just a dot, like a single dash of liquid smoke, and you'll shake that up in your shaker with ice and pour that into a pre chilled glass. Again, the salt on the rim is optional. That is a very refreshing one that gives you a similar flavor thing where the smoke is the finish note, but it is a little brighter overall because it just doesn't have alcohol in it,
so it's a brighter sip. That's another good one that I think I will probably make in batches to just have around the house. It's like sweet with a little bit of salty, and there's that smoke finish and it's a really really yummy drink. So that is what we're calling the first shot. I'm gonna make another one right after we finish recording because it was really good. And this is another one that got the stamp of approval from my non drinker beloved that to me always says something.
With us coal in it, Like, I'm surprised about that.
Listen, I will say, I mean not to you know, overshare his palette information. But he's not a big drinker, but there are drinks that he likes yep, that to me are very heavy on alcohol flavor, even though that's not what he usually likes. It's a weird one. It's a weird one. There's a shot he gets at one of our favorite places to drink when we're traveling, and it's one I don't like. It's too spirit forward, but he loves it. And it's just you.
Never know, you never know about Different.
Palettes are complicated, Different things are going to hit different people's taste buds in different ways. So whatever it is in that that I don't respond to delights his palette. And again that's part of the ethos of our whole cocktail thing on this show is like figuring out what you like. Tweak any recipe. If you taste a recipe and you're like, there's something missing here, to figure out what it is that your palette wants an add it and see if that fixes it. That's the whole thing.
It's about empowerment to make delicious things.
I always say I like our Choose your adventure drinks, but they really all kind of are in some way.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. If you don't like mescal, you could just make this with tequila or almost anything else and just try it out and see what you got. Anyway, I hope all of you are experimenting with fun things and figuring out what delights you the most and coming up with your own signature cocktails. We will be right back here next week with another cold case and another cocktail and mocktail to go with the story. Criminalia is
a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.