William Roblin: the Last Man Hanged in Pembrokeshire (1821)
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William Roblin: The Last Man Hanged in Pembrokeshire (1821) William Roblin has achieved a striking notability in the annals of local crime since he was the last person to be executed in the county at Haverfordwest Castle on Easter Monday 1821. His story has been much quoted, and a number of accounts have been published including those penned by W.D. Phillips, Charles Sinnett, B.G. Charles, G. Douglas James and latterly by Andrew Roberts. There seems to be nothing new to tell, we know all the facts and the matter can be allowed to settle where they are. Or do we? The Roblin story is in fact, one of the best local examples of where fact and fiction effortlessly merge to create a version of events which surprisingly not accurate in many vital respects. Historical accounts are always subject to interpretation and the possibility that our knowledge can change with the discovery of new material. Sometimes startling new discoveries are the fruit of determined and dogged research and sometimes by serendipity, chance, luck, accident, whatever you want to call it. Our knowledge of the Roblin story will never be complete with all too many gaps in our knowledge and years of his life where no narrative can be made. Nevertheless, the discovery of a comprehensive account of his life and crime is now possible to read in the pages of the Haverfordwest & Milford Haven Telegraph in 1863 in a column entitled ‘Pembrokeshire Murderers.’ A number of the characters of this episode were still then alive. This account provides us with information which none of the previous writers 1 appear to have incorporated into their texts. This new account is by no means a direct, sober description but it does introduce genuinely new threads into the tale. We trace our story back to the very beginning to the rural idyll of Martletwy in the year 1776. In America, the colonists were rebelling against King George III while in this corner of the county William Roblin was born to a poor farmer called Richard Roblin. No record of his baptism appears, adding to the sense of his origins as being murky and mysterious. Most inhabitants of the parish eked out a living from the land while the small local collieries employed men women and children. We know absolutely nothing of Roblin’s early years except for the precious moral condemnation later heaped upon him. It was alleged how his early days were passed ‘in the society of the most dissolute and profligate companions, amongst whom drunkenness, blasphemy and desecration of the Sabbath by cock-fighting, dog fighting and outdoor gambling. These activities were carried out to an extent, and with a recklessness of all social and moral obligations unknown and even undreamt of to the present generation of Pembrokeshire people. This early, unattributed account of his early years continued by describing how Roblin ‘imbued these pernicious and soul-polluting characteristics which played such a prominent part in his later career, and ultimately brought him to an inglorious career.’ It seems certain that William Roblin, a yeoman, did imbibe to a great extent. It was easy to moralise and condemn these practices. Much less encountered was the examination of why people drank. It was usually a response to squalid living conditions; environmental 2 and standards of living were often factors why people drank; a temporary release from misery. In industrialised areas of northern England the consumption of wine, beer and spirits was known as ‘the road out of Manchester’ an effectual, if short-term remedy from polluting squalor. William Roblin was possessed of a fiery temper, which, when combined with drink, caused him to be discharged from one employer to another. By 1814 William Roblin was employed as a servant, probably of the agricultural kind, rather than as a house servant. His employer was one Richard Barzey, whose family had been at Arnolds Hill, in the parish of Slebech, since at least 1715. Later the property was acquired by the Baron de Rutzen. According to this hitherto unpublished Victorian account of the murder, Barzey was frequently called upon to remonstrate with Roblin on account of the latter’s brutal treatment of animals on the farm. His species of ferocity was apparently visited upon these dumb creatures, especially after he had consumed quantities of ale. Mr Barzey had enough of his errant employee and threatened him with dismissal unless he mended his ways. This however, Mr Barzey was not to put into effect. He died suddenly at Arnolds Hill in the parish of Slebech on 17 February 1814 aged 71. There is no evidence of foul play and no cause of death can be ascribed, although some rumour mongers said ‘it was under suspicious circumstances.’ Further, a portion of his cash which he kept in his house mysterious disappeared at the same time. The corrosive effect of rumour and innuendo, not for the first time, ate away at Roblin’s reputation. They had the cumulative effect of 3 making the Black legend which is still with us today. Did Roblin kill his employer and use some of the stolen money to set up on his own? It seems unlikely but we will never know for certain. While at Arnolds Hill farm, Roblin met his future wife Margaret who was also in service there. Margaret Thomas was baptised in Lawrenny Church on 5 May 1776, the daughter of Martha and Morris Thomas. The couple had courted and they married in the following year. Their marriage took place at St Petrox Church, where the Norman tower stands out in proud isolation facing towards the Castlemartin peninsula. They married by licence on 22 October 1815. William Roblin of Mounton was described as a yeoman while Margaret was simply described as a spinster. At 38 years of age Margaret would have been considered very old for the marriage market, although she was of course the same age as her husband. Soon after their nuptials they took a lease of a small farm at Deep Lake in Uzmaston parish, three miles from Haverfordwest on the Turnpike Road between Haverfordwest and Carmarthen. They also ran a public house in a small thatched dwelling on the farm. Alehouse licenses show how John Paige opened an ale-house at the bottom of Arnold’s Hill in 1811. He was still there in 1815 and he was probably succeeded by William Roblin in late 1815 or early 1816. At any rate, by Michaelmas 1819 the farmhouse was called ‘Home Bound’ probably an abbreviation for Homeward Bound, a sign calculated to appeal to weary country folk on their way home from market and then faced with the daunting sight of a very steep climb up Arnold’s Hill. For this 4 clarification we are indebted to Keith Johnson from his voluminous history of Pembrokeshire public houses. For many years’ Roblin’s inn was erroneously described as the New Inn. This name in fact only appeared forty years after Roblin and even then the name of the inn was the Carpenter’s Arms before that. It stood near the Picton Castle Lodge gate. Deep Lake in the parish of Uzmaston where the homicide took place in 1820 from an early Ordnance Survey Map In the four years or so that Roblin, yeoman cum innkeeper and contractor lived at Deep Lake he attracted an unenviable reputation. He allegedly pursued ‘a course of dissipation and lawless disturbance towards who he considered his enemies, or who had given him the cause of offence, however slight.’ He became the terror and dread of the 5 neighbourhood who seemingly ostracised him and his wife. Despite their late marriage Margaret gave birth to two children. Their first child was very possibly a son named Isaac who died when he was two months old. A second child, a daughter named Martha was born at Deep Lake in around 1818 and was described as a ‘sweet and interesting girl in her fourth year’ at the time of her father’s execution. The ‘Home Bound’ was a veritable vortex sucking in vicious tales of murder and debauchery. Many of the reports in circulation centred upon Roblin’s drunken conduct and the extreme looseness with which his house was managed. One popular and persistent rumour centred upon an Irish hawker who visited the house and apparently was never seen again. The Irishman’s sudden and singular disappearance added much to Roblin’s ill-fame and it was broadly asserted how Roblin had murdered his guest and buried the body. One of the most damning aspects of Roblin’s character was his alleged antipathy to religion. The author of a contemporary pamphlet, Richard Grimes, contains a reference to Roblin’s desire to join Lord Milford’s cavalry. This auxiliary military unit was paid for and sponsored by the peer of Picton Castle. When asked why he wished to become a volunteer soldier he replied ‘To pull down all the damned meeting houses.’ He added how he could take care of his own salvation and that he did not need the services of those damned preachers. So as to spare the readers’ sensibilities the word damned was politely abbreviated to the first and last word together with four asterisks. 6 Life is full of strange ironies and unexpected occurrences. Roblin supplemented his farming, more properly small holding and inn keeping by carting materials for local farmers and builders. On one occasion he was employed carting stones to the castle site where a new prison was being built in the grounds of Haverfordwest Castle . In the summer of 1820 the work on being the new gaol was well underway.