Millionaire - Janet Gleeson [20]
The escape, announced a few days later in court, aroused the Wilson family’s outrage. They immediately ensured that Law was declared a fugitive from justice, and a reward for his apprehension was offered in the London Gazette of Monday, January 7, 1695. But here, too, their attempts to recapture Law were thwarted. The publication was produced under the auspices of the Secretary of State—none other than the Duke of Shrewsbury. Doubtless with his connivance, the advertisement was worded as follows: “Captain John Lawe, a Scotchman, lately a prisoner in the King’s Bench for murder, aged 26, a very tall, black, lean man, well shaped, above six foot high, large pock holes in his face, big high nosed, speaks broad and loud, made his escape from the said prison. Whoever secures him, so as he may be delivered at the said prison, shall have fifty pounds paid immediately by the Marshall of the King’s Bench.”
The unidentified person who placed the notice ensured that the description of the handsome fugitive was wildly inaccurate. John Law was not a captain, nor was his face pockmarked, nor was his voice “broad and loud.” If anything, the unattractive picture it painted helped his successful escape.
Public interest, already avid at the time of the trial, was whipped up further by the drama and romance of Law’s flight. Everyone expected that he would make for his native Scotland, and attention focused on roads to the north. There was at least one false alarm. Narcissus Luttrell noted a writ of habeas corpus issued “for bringing up hither Mr. Lawes, who killed Mr. Wilson, he being apprehended in Leicestershire as he was riding post for Scotland.” Then, a few days later, on January 26, he disappointedly recorded the latest installment: “The report of Lawes being taken in Leicestershire proves a mistake; ’twas another person.”
Even years later the details of the duel and escape were still picked over. Most agreed that there was more to the matter than evidence in court had suggested, and that the origins of Wilson’s money lay at the root of the matter. Many bizarre theories were put forward to make sense of the scant facts. John Evelyn wrote, “It did not appear that he was kept by women, play, coining, padding, or dealing in chemistry; but he would sometimes say that if he should live ever so long, he had wherewith to maintain himself in the same manner.” The Unknown Lady’s Pacquet of Letters published in 1707 offered one solution. According to their author, Wilson had accidentally met a masked woman in Kensington Gardens and, without knowing who she was, embarked on an illicit affair with her. The woman forced Wilson to agree that he would never attempt to find out her identity and in return paid him a generous retainer. But the temptation for Wilson was too great. When he discovered that the woman was Elizabeth Villiers, the king’s boss-eyed, unattractive mistress, she was furious that he had broken his word and enlisted the help of her friend Law, whom she knew to be already embroiled in a quarrel with Wilson, to avenge them both. Villiers assured Law that with her royal connections, he would escape the usual punishment.
This extraordinarily far-fetched account was countered a decade or so later by another outlandish and recently rediscovered theory. A pamphlet thought to have been published around 1723, entitled Love Letters Between a Certain Late Nobleman and the Famous Mr. Wilson: Discovering the True History of the Rise and Surprising Grandeur of That Celebrated Beau, suggested that Wilson’s money came secretly from a homosexual lover and that Law had been involved in the intrigue and had fallen out with Wilson over it. But by the time this version of events was published, Law was an internationally famous figure who had rocked the financial structure of the Western world. Europe was full of satirical and slanderous attacks on his character and background—and this, in all probability,