Terror to the Wicked: America’s First Trial by Jury that Ended a War and Helped to Form a Nation

Terror to the Wicked: America’s First Trial by Jury that Ended a War and Helped to Form a Nation, by Tobey Pearl is about a four-hundred-year-old murder. That is the short, short version. But Tobey Pearl does an excellent job reconstructing what life was like in colonial America to bring to life just how fraught the situation was.

When the colonialists came over under royal charter from Great Britain, contrary to some revisionist historians, the servants that traveled with them were not, by and large, black slaves. Most of those that traveled as servants, were Irish and English indentures. So, terms of indenture were typically 5 years, and at the end of 5 years, the servant was basically free to go out and build their own life. When the indenture system was first implemented, the payoff was worth it, and the term of indenture, in addition to a free trip across the ocean, and room and board in exchange for labor, once the indenture was over, the servant could expect 100 acres of ground. That was the contract for indenture as late as 1634. By the time our antagonist, Arthur Peach, signed his contract, the pay off had shrunk to 5 acres. And by the time Peach’s indenture would have ended in 1641, he would have been eligible for two suits, one for working, one for church, and then left to figure out life on his own. In a colony where they disliked single men, but men outnumbered women by like 5 to 1.

So, 1638, 2.5 years into his indenture contract, Peach decides the pay off is not worth it, and he’s gonna run. This was expressly prohibited under the terms of his contract. He was, for all intents and purposes, the legal property of his contract holder, in this case Edward Winslow. And as Winslow’s property, Peach was barred from leaving Plymouth colony, where the Winslow estate was located. But Peach had decided he’d had enough of the servant’s life, and he wanted freedom now.

One key difference between indentured servitude and later slavery is that while not allowed to leave the colony, Peach was allowed to gather at public houses when not working, and the public house in Plymouth colony was Stephen Hopkins, who gradually turned him home in to Hopkins Tavern. Now, by and large, the Puritan colonists of Plymouth colony did not approve of public houses. However, Hopkins was a Mayflower original, having survived the initial crossing and the intervening 18 years earned Hopkins some ease with the other colonists. And at Hopkins public house, Peach met up with three other indentured servants who were also ready to leave servitude, Thomas Jackson, Richard Stinnings, and Daniell Crosse. And the three decided to flee together.

Now, hand in hand with the desire to run towards freedom is the fact that the colonies were unsettled and the very recently fought Pequot wars were still very fresh…so fresh in fact that the treaties had not even been completed. And Peach had almost certainly fought in the Pequot wars. So, in addition to escaping their respective owners, the men also had to dodge potentially hostile native tribes, which in this region of Massachusetts was the Narragansett, the Nipmuc, and the Wampanoag. However, only the Narragansett and the Wampanoag were big enough to be problematic, the Nipmuc were like sworn liege men to the Narragansett. While they were there, they were not the overriding concern to the colonists.

So, the four men make their plans and start their escape. And while wandering through the woods trying to navigate their way north, they are passed by a Nipmuc man, who history remembers as Penowanyanquis. This was not his name. No one actually knows his name, although undoubtedly his tribe then knew who he was. But how he came to be called Penowanyanquis is part of the story.

The four escapees were surprised when Penowanyanquis passed them in the woods, and that night, as they lay there starving, it occurred to them, or at least to ring-leader Peach, that if they kill Penowanyanquis, they could steal his supplies, and that might see them through their journey to freedom. And so, Peach decides murder is the answer to all their problems. And when they catch up to Penowanyanquis the next day, Peach does attack the Nipmuc man, stabbing him several times with the blade Peach had, which was a short sword of some type.

Penowanyanquis manages to get away but is severely wounded. He escapes to hide in the woods, while Peach and his gang keep moving on. Somewhere in here, Peach and his gang are passed by colonist John Throckmorton, who sensed they were up to no good, and spurred his horse on. This is important to the later events.

Sometime the next day, some tribesmen from the Narragansett find Penowanyanquis still alive, but seriously injured. And, given the state of general hygiene in the 17th century, the injuries are festering, and he is fevered, so all he can say is penowa…meaning foreigners…did this. This is how he came to be called Penowanyanquis. It was so important for him to say who had done this, that he did not say his own name. And while his tribe undoubtedly knew who it was by his absence, there can be taboos against saying the name of the deceased, lest you tie them to this plain once they have passed. Not sure if that was the case here, though. Tobey Pearly did a fantastic job reconstructing aspects of Nipmuc culture, but whether or not that is a taboo to the Nipmuc was not addressed, so…?

Anyway, even with all the wilderness still in the bay, news traveled fast, especially with Narragansett messengers who knew the backways. By the time Peach and his band of runaways made their way to the William Blackstone’s manor, news of Penowanyanquis’s surviving the attack had beat them there. And now it became a race to flee the colony before justice could catch up to them. So, the Peach gang headed toward Roger Williams estate, which was known to be sympathetic towards those who were trying to escape indentured servitude.

William’s estate had the added advantage of being in a different colony, the newly formed Isle of Rodes…modern day Rhode Island. The Peach gang staggered into the Williams estate and kindly warned Roger Williams of marauding Indians who had apparently mortally wounded another native in the forest. Williams offered the four men food and rest before gathering up doctors from the area to try and help the wounded Penowanyanquis. Barely stopping to eat, the Peach gang immediately continued on their journey while Williams, with Drs Thomas James and John Greene hurried out to help, arriving just in time to for Williams, who spoke fluent Algonquian, the language spoken by the tribes in the area as a common tongue, to hear Penowanyanquis dying tale. Williams, on hearing the story, immediately realized that the four men he had just sheltered were the guilty parties.

Williams sent his Indian slave, a boy named Will, to follow the men and alert authorities should the men land in a settlement.

And then something of a highly problematic nature occurred…the body disappeared. Now this, the author did go into great detail on Nipmuc customs, and thinks it most likely that the Narragansett tribesmen, recognizing the young man was Nipmuc, may have cremated the body in accordance with Nipmuc customs. But this still left the Englishmen with the problem of no body no crime, which has been fairly consistent in English jurisprudence for centuries.

Regardless of the missing body, the Peach gang was captured and held at Aquidnett Island, which fell outside the jurisdiction of both Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colony, but still worked in cooperation to hold the gang until trial jurisdiction could be determined. However, the holding facility at Aquidnett Island was lacking, and Daniell Crosse was able escape, fleeing all the way to New Hampshire, where the colony there, in long standing tradition of Live Free or Die, told Plymouth and the Massachusetts Bay Colony to pound sand, they would not be extraditing Crosse. From here, Crosse is lost to history.

The other three men left the colony in a pickle. The Pequot war was barely ended. And if the murderers were not brought to justice, the war could flare up again. However, in the eyes of some colonists…it was only an Indian. Hell, in the eyes of some of the tribes, it was only a Nipmuc.

Right away, Governor John Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony nopes right out of it. He knows this is a hot bed issue and wants no part of it, ceding the right to trial to the governor of Plymouth Colony, Thomas Prence, known to the colonies as Terror to the Wicked. Who arranges for the Narragansett to transport the prisoners back to Plymouth for trial.

Now this was bold, and I can only imagine that everyone wondered. Would the men even make it to trial? I wonder if the Narragansett doing the transport thought the same thing. Did they wonder if they could just kill the men and the English would even care? I mean, these were escaped slaves essentially. There might be a charge of property damage, but would the English accept property as recompense and let it all go? Conversely, what if the English did NOT let it go and the war flared back into open combat? The tribes had already lost a lot of people to this fight. And so, the Narragansett transported the men safely to Plymouth to await trial. And Prence convened his jury.

This was no mean feat in 17th century colonial life. The jurists had to be freemen, no indentures, and no women. Prence wanted educated men, which would hopefully mitigate the fact that there was no body.

Pearl goes into detail explaining how trials and courts were run in the 17th century, and while one can certainly see the roots of American jurisprudence in the way the court was run, it is vastly different from how things are run today. Those jurists? Those were hand picked men. There was no random jury selection. Half the jury were essentially held on blackmail. Not to give a verdict one way or the other. But they specifically followed Reverend John Lothrop, who wanted to strike out from Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay to form his own colony, which he could not do without the permission of Governor Prence. Basically, Prence said, give me the men for my jury, and I’ll let you leave.

Eventually, 11 men were found, with the 12th being pulled from the crowd the day of the trial. Typically, they did not have defense attorneys, and the accused were their own representatives. And the three men remaining, minus the escaped Crosse, knew that they had to stick together. They let Peach do all the talking, which consisted mainly of “it wasn’t us.” And “prove it…no body no crime.”  The requirement for a murder conviction at the time was two witnesses to the crime. Since the only two witnesses stood accused as well, the prosecution had nothing. Basically, the only proof of any kind they had was the testimony of John Throckmorton that they had been in the area about the time Penowanyanquis was attacked.

And then Governor Prence allowed something never before seen in the colonies. First, the two Narragansett tribesman who found Penowanyanquis were allowed to testify as to what they found. And they swore, on their own lives, that Penowanyanquis was deceased. If he ever surfaced as a living person in the colonies again, the two tribesmen’s lives would be forfeit. And their testimony that there had been a body was accepted. There was the first hurdle gone…they did not witness the crime, but they were able to swear there had been a body, and that testimony was accepted.

The next thing was Penowanyanquis’s dying declaration, as relayed by Roger Williams. Now, almost for as long as trials and crime have existed, dying declarations have been accepted as testimony. And with this piece of testimony, the nail was in the coffin. The jury found all three men guilty and convicted Crosse in absentia. And with that, the treaty for the Pequot war was secured. The native tribes developed some faith that they might be able to find justice in the English courts. And the rest of the indentured servants learned that running was not a viable option.

This was a really interesting piece of history, something I had never heard about, and I imagine most people had not. It is written partly like a history book, and partly like an anthropological review of both the native tribes and colonial life in the 17th century. And it is an important piece of historical jurisprudence, showing how trials evolved in America. I quite liked this book, and it helped remind me of how much bullshit comes out of Hollywood. Like, I know the Puritans were not the party animals, but Hollywood would have you believe they were completely joyless. And here I found out they had a public house. And premarital sex. She gave a number like 30% of women were pregnant when they married. So much for Hollywood history. This is why I read. To learn what Hollywood doesn’t want you to know.

This book was originally reviewed on YouTube on April 3, 2022, but is now available on Rumble and PodBean.