ROBERT CREIGHTON, BARON OF SANQUIRE
Executed in 1612 for the Murder of John Turner, who had accidentally put out one of his Eyes
THE indictment charged the prisoner, as accessory before the fact, to the murder of John Turner, fencing-master.
Robert Creighton, Baron of Sanquire (or Sanchar, in Scotland), while playing at foils with John Turner, about five years before the murder, had an eye thrust out by one of Turner's foils; whereupon the baron, resolving to be revenged, tampered with several assassins to murder Turner.
He had not an opportunity of effecting it till the year 1612, when he prevailed on Gilbert Gray, one of his servants, and Robert Carliel, a dependent, both Scotsmen, to undertake it; but Gray afterwards declining the attempt, Robert Carliel associated himself with one James Irweng, another Scotsman, and these two, on the 11th of May, 1612, about seven in the evening, went to a public-house in the Friars, which Turner frequented as he came from his school, and finding Turner there they saluted him, and fell into conversation with him; when Carliel, on a sudden, fired a pistol at Turner, and shot him in the breast; and he immediately dropped down dead, saying only, "Lord have mercy upon me, I am killed."
After this, Carliel fled to Scotland, Lord Sanquire absconded, but Irweng and Gray were taken while endeavouring to make their escape; and Gray was afterwards made an evidence against the rest.
At length, Lord Sanquire surrendering himself, and Carliel, the principal assassin, being brought back from Scotland, Carliel and Irweng were tried at the old Bailey, London, and being convicted of the murder, they were executed in Fleet Street, near the Friars; and Lord Sanquire being afterwards arraigned at the King's Bench bar as accessory before the fact, confessed the indictment, and was thereupon condemned, and executed in Palace Yard.