1678

The 1678 killing of Lord Charles Huxley was an illegal murder within the Checquy Court: Lady Adelia Huxley ordered her husband thrown down a well, making the death the first of the notorious internal killings described in the account.

The Killing

In 1678, Lord Charles Huxley was thrown down a well on the orders of his wife, Lady Adelia Huxley. The brief account identifies the order and the method, but gives no further details about who carried it out or the circumstances at the well.

Place in the Court’s History

The murder is presented as one of only four illegal deaths of Court members caused by other Court members. The distinction matters: the Court had also suffered deaths from outside assassins and in the field, and had carried out legal executions, but those are separated from this small, notorious group of internal murders. The Huxley killing therefore stands as an early example of violence from within the institution, rather than an attack by an external enemy or a sanctioned execution.

The Huxley Aftermath

The next year, in 1679, Lady Adelia herself was beaten to death with a kettle by Bishop Roger Torville, described as her husband’s lover. That later murder is a separate event, but its placement beside Lord Charles’s death gives the two killings a stark sequence: Lady Adelia ordered her husband’s death, then died at the hands of the person identified as his lover. The account does not specify whether Torville’s killing was connected to the earlier order beyond that personal relationship.