Walter Calverley

Walter Calverley (1579–1605) was an English squire from Yorkshire.

Perhaps the most infamous member of the Calverley family, he is known for murdering two of his young children, leading to his own death by pressing in 1605. His story has long been associated with two plays which were performed shortly after the events of 1605 and which were published in 1607 and 1608: The Miseries of Enforced Marriage and A Yorkshire Tragedy. These plays have strongly influenced the historic record, including his entry by Sidney Lee in the Dictionary of National Biography. Modern scholarship, based on historic legal documents and contemporary letters, provides a different picture.

In some of her letters, his mother-in-law spelled the name "Coverley", which suggests that it was then pronounced with the "al" as in "calf" (/ˈkɑːvəliː/; "Calverley" means "pasture for calves").

The conventional biography of Walter Calverley (as in the 1st edition of the Dictionary of National Biography) draws on events from the two plays and from history. Much confusion has been caused by the Calverleys' practice of alternating between "Walter" and "William" as the name of the eldest son in each generation, with the other name used for the second son. In accordance with common practice under primogeniture, the eldest son married young (often while a minor) while later sons married late.

The conventional biography does not say when Walter was born, perhaps because there is a clear problem for those, such as the DNB, which give the date − 1579 − of Walter's matriculation at Cambridge. It then goes on to record that Walter lost his father as a young child. This is consistent with Walter the matriculator having been the son of Sir William Calverley, who died c. 1572. We shall see that Walter the matriculator was probably the murderer's uncle, while Sir William was the murderer's great-grandfather.

In Scene 1 of A Yorkshire Tragedy, Sam says of the young master "he's married to another long ago". This theme is developed further in The Miseries of Enforced Marriage. The Calverley figure, Scarborrow, has plight his troth with Clare, the daughter of Sir John Harcop. Both parties consider the marriage binding: Scarborrow regards his subsequent marriage to Katherine as bigamous and their children as bastards; Clare commits suicide as she cannot remarry.

Under ecclesiastical law, marriage in sixteenth-century England could be contracted "per verba de præsenti" privately, with no public ceremony. Such marriages were valid in the eyes of the church, but were not recognised by the civil law. The conventional biography records that, in his teens, Walter fell in love with a local young woman and proposed marriage. She accepted, and the young couple planned to marry. We cannot know whether there is any truth to this.

In The Miseries of Enforced Marriage, Scarborrow is called to London by his uncle, Sir William, and his guardian, Lord Faulconbridge. His guardian tells Scarborrow that he is to marry the guardian's niece. In his 1816 history of Leeds and its district, Loidis and Elmete, Thomas Dunham Whitaker records that Walter travelled to London to meet his guardian, Sir William, who told him that he was to marry the guardian's niece. As Walter did marry Philippa Brooke, niece of Sir William Brooke, it is easy to see how this led to the identification of Sir William Brooke, 10th Baron Cobham as Walter's guardian.