In my last blog post I looked at a libel case between two Exeter medical practitioners. It was interesting to see how professional reputations were at stake and the ways in which practitioners called each other’s skills into question. For this post I’m staying on a similar theme, but this time a medical practitioner plays the part of a key witness in a bitter dispute between two ‘Gentlemen’ from the Welsh marches in the 1630s.

In September 1634, members of the families of Heane and Callow were enjoying an evening’s revelry in an alehouse in Brockweir, Gloucestershire. No doubt oiled by good sack, a discussion about the wardship of a young member of the Heane family quickly became a debate….and inevitably a dispute which quickly got out of hand.

At some point a £10 wager was made and a member of the Heane family declaimed, loudly, that ‘the Heanes were as good men or better’ than the Callows and challenged them to back up their boasts with weapons. That did it. Rowland Callow called Walter Heane a ‘base rogue and a Villaine’ (strong stuff in the 17th century) and promised to ‘have Heane’s hart’s blood’. Callow made a grab for Heane’s sword, pulling it partly out of its scabbard, but things didn’t quite go his way. In pulling out the sword he severed one of his own fingers!

As was often the case, this one single flashpoint was the catalyst for a bitter feud that spilled over into other arenas and quickly came to court. Aside from the question of injury, both to Callow’s fingers and also to the reputation of both men, a variety of other petty accusations began to fly. Callow accused Heane of failing to present one of his nephews for the crime of trespass on Lord Pembroke’s estates. Heane called Callow’s witnesses ‘infamous and of no credit’, and others of taking bribes, living incontinently with a woman in Ireland and keeping an unlicensed alehouse. The stage was set for a court battle of epic proportions.

In January 1635 depositions began to be heard in Monmouth and a commission was further held in St Briavels in May 1635. It is interesting to examine some of the evidence that was heard before the commission. The defence was based on whether certain actions and words had taken place. Had, for example, Callow called Heane a rogue and a villain. Had he indeed threatened to have Heane’s blood and had he, as some witnesses had it, struck Heane, drawing blood and then, in a Tyson-esque show of fury, bitten off a piece of Heane’s ear?

Callow’s severed finger was the subject of much debate amongst witnesses. Robert Ellice of Deane Magna, Gloucestershire, a victualler, testified that Callow had come to him for ‘chuirurgerie and shewed him his hand whereon he had an hurt on the little finger and a scarr on the finger next to it, and he saith that the bone of the little finger was scaled and could not be cured, but that the scale must be by force pulled off or by corraisive plaister eaten off.’

John Morgan, a Malster also of Dean Magna, suggested a different course of events. As Callow had no weapon of his own, Morgan ‘Saith that Walter Heane did then draw his sword out of the scabbard and did strike Rowland Callow and cutt his little finger so much that it hanged downe’, and Morgan ‘was fayne to splint it up; and had done him further hurt if the company had not stopped and prevented him, by which Rowland Callow has lost the use of his finger’.

Here the finger was purposefully severed by Heane, rather than a result of Callow’s misjudged grab! Other witnesses testified to the finger ‘hanging down’ after the scuffle but other embellishments began to enter, such as Heane taking up a ‘great stone with an intention to throw it at Callow’s face’ and then ‘did buffet [Callow] on the face with his fist so that his face therewith brused and grew black and blew’.

One of the most interesting witnesses (for me as a researcher on Welsh medical practitioners!) was Thomas Evans of Trelleck in Monmouthshire, described as a barber surgeon aged about 30. Evans testified that ‘He had known Callow for 4 years ‘and in that tyme hath heard him called Mr Callowe and taketh him to be reputed a gentleman’. He did not know Heane. About 23 October last he was sent for to come to Callow’s house at Llandogo, co. Monmouth where he saw Callow’s wounded finger and was desired to cure it. He searched the wound ‘and was faine to take a bone out of it; and a weeke after he did take another bone out of Mr Callowe’s finger.’

The case dragged on, with testimony after testimony beginning to test the patience of the commissioners. Debate moved from the original incident to claim and counter claim, questions of ‘gentlemanliness’ and reputation, accusations of impropriety, and on it went. Finally the commissioners had enough. Sentence was due to be passed in May 1636 but was first referred to arbitration…which dragged on until January 1637. Frustratingly the final judgement is not recorded but something of the exasperation of the authorities can be gleaned from the comments of Sir Richard Catchmay, bailiff and local process server. Perhaps without much sarcasm he suggested that the two men should simply settle matters by seeing ‘which of them could leap furthest into the River of Wye’!

(The full details of this case and testimonies are available at the University of Birmingham’s great site and database relating to the early modern court of chivalry, available at: http://www.court-of-chivalry.bham.ac.uk)