Motive for Murder: A Servant's Life in Virginia, 1678

Abstract

IN the predawn hours of May 24, i678, Thomas Hellier, a twentyeight-year-old indentured servant, murdered his master and his mistress, the Cuthbert Williamsons, with an axe.1 When Martha Clark, a young servant, rushed to assist the Williamsons, Hellier struck her a fatal blow.2 The murderer then stole a horse and a gun and galloped away from the Charles City County plantation called Hard Labour, where he had toiled for nine terrible months. Unfamiliar with the woods of tidewater Virginia, he soon became lost in a maze of unmarked paths. Within a day, local authorities captured the fugitive, who immediately confessed his bloody crime. A month later, a special court at Jamestown condemned Hellier to death by hanging at Windmill Point on the James River. The night before the execution, Hellier poured out his life story to an Anglican clergyman, who promised to have it published in London. This collaboration between murderer and minister yielded a remarkable forty-page pamphlet entitled The Vain Prodigal Life, and Tragical Penitent Death of Thomas Hellier ... (London, i68o). The work consists of three sections: a detailed account of Hellier's life, apparently in his own words,