THE annals of crime record few tragedies so fearful in their enactment, so mysterious in their present concealment, so singular in their ultimate discovery as the Oddingley murder. A clergyman is shot at noon-day, while walking in his own fields—the assassin and the motive are perfectly known, yet he eludes justice, and suddenly and for ever disappears. Some of the men to whom common rumour points as the probable instigators of the crime, pass to their account, and make no sign. At last, when twenty-four years have elapsed, the body of the murderer is strangely discovered, in a state of preservation and under circumstances which leave no room to doubt that he was himself murdered by those who had hired him to commit the crime they were afraid to perpetrate with their own hands. Thus circumstance combined with circumstance to increase the romance of this tale of blood, and invest it with a fearful interest, creating an unparalleled excitement, not only in this neighbourhood but throughout the whole country. People delighted to point to it, as showing how, with silent footfall, justice ever tracks the murderer’s steps, and at last exposes his guilt to the gaze of day, with whatever care and midnight secrecy he has sought to hide and cover it. But it showed, also, that the punishment of murder, as of other crimes, is sometimes postponed to a more perfect time of retribution, and that men doubly dyed with the blood of others—shed under the influence of passions the most detestable—avarice, hate, and fear—can walk their lives long among their fellows with a smooth brow, and at last placidly turn their faces to the wall without, to outward seeming, one pang of remorse or outcry of conscience. The first notice of this terrible crime appeared in the Worcester papers of June 26, 1806, and is as follows: “The Rev. G. Parker, rector of Oddingley, in this county, was, on Tuesday evening last, most inhumanly murdered in a field near his own dwelling house. The perpetrator of this cruel deed discharged a gun at the unfortunate gentleman, the contents of which entered his right side; and afterwards, in a manner peculiarly atrocious, with the butt end of his gun fractured his skull. An inquest was held the following day, before R. Barneby, Esq., coroner, when the jury returned this verdict—‘Wilful murder, by some person or persons unknown.’”