In a London street, sometime around 1416, a badly injured child saw a merchant passing through the crowd.
“This is my father,” he cried.
The merchant stopped. Despite the child’s injuries, he recognised his son. He took him from the beggars who controlled him and had them arrested. The boy’s cry uncovered a crime that had begun more than a hundred miles away in Lynn.
Three children disappear
The story is recorded by two important fifteenth-century chroniclers. Thomas Walsingham, a monk of St Albans, wrote that three mendicants had kidnapped “three citizens’ small sons” from Lynn. John Capgrave, who was born in the town in 1393, placed the event in 1416 and described what followed in much greater detail.
One child was blinded. Another had his back broken. The third had his hands and feet cut off. The injuries were deliberately inflicted so that people would take pity on the children and give their captors food or money.
Nothing identifies the victims. We do not know their ages, whether they were taken together, or from which part of Lynn they disappeared. Walsingham’s description of them as citizens’ sons suggests that their families belonged to the recognised community of the town, but he gives no names.
The kidnappers removed the children from Lynn and eventually brought them to London. Their injuries had turned them into a source of income. They could be displayed in streets, markets and outside churches, where the sight of their suffering encouraged passers-by to give alms.
Walsingham adds an ominous phrase. The men mutilated the children “as was their practice”. This may suggest that they had previously used other children in the same way, although no further victims are identified.
The merchant in London
The captors’ scheme ended because one child recognised his father.
Capgrave says that the man was a merchant who had come to London. The boy saw him and cried out loudly. The father recognised his son, removed him from the beggars and arranged for their arrest.
The children were then questioned. Capgrave says that they “told all the process”, meaning that they related the course of their abduction and mistreatment. His use of the plural indicates that more than one child survived to give evidence.
The beggars were hanged. Capgrave approved of the sentence, adding that they were “ful wel worthy”, thoroughly deserving of their punishment.
His account was written several decades later, but the case was also recorded in Walsingham’s Chronica Maiora. Capgrave may have known Walsingham’s version or drawn upon the same source. Yet his connection with Lynn is significant. He was about twenty-three when the crime occurred and was probably already associated with the town’s Augustinian friary. The abduction of three local children may have remained in Lynn’s memory long after the executions.
From Leadenhall to Tyburn
An anonymous London chronicle appears to record the punishment of one of the offenders.
Under the civic year 1416–17, it reports that on St Catherine’s Eve, 24 November 1416, a beggar was drawn in his own cart from Leadenhall to Tyburn and hanged for “dismembering of young children”.
The parallels are strong. The offence involved a beggar, several mutilated children and an execution in London at exactly the right period. The entry does not mention Lynn, however, so the connection cannot be treated as certain.
The cart may have been the vehicle in which the children were transported or displayed while begging. If so, forcing the offender to ride in it to Tyburn turned an instrument of exploitation into part of his public punishment.
The London chronicle mentions only one condemned beggar, while Walsingham and Capgrave describe three captors. One man may have been regarded as the leader and subjected to the public procession. The others could have been hanged separately, or the London writer may simply have ignored them.
The children vanish from history
Nothing is known of the children after the trial. The chroniclers do not say whether they returned to Lynn, how their families supported them, or how long they survived their injuries.
No surviving record yet supplies their names or identifies the merchant father. Nor has a formal indictment or trial account been found. Since the arrests occurred in London, the decisive legal proceedings probably took place there rather than before Lynn’s own courts.
The surviving evidence nevertheless preserves a clear sequence of events. Three children were taken from Lynn, deliberately disabled and carried to London. One recognised his father, the captors were arrested, and the children told their story.
Their names are lost. The child’s cry is not.
© James Rye 2026
Book a Walk with a Trained and Qualified King’s Lynn Guide
References
Note on sources: Capgrave explicitly records the injuries, the merchant’s recognition of his child, the children’s testimony and the hanging of the beggars. Walsingham independently places three abducted sons of Lynn citizens at the centre of the case, while the London chronicle records the probable related execution at Tyburn on 24 November 1416.
- Capgrave, John. The Chronicle of England. Edited by Francis Charles Hingeston. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1858, 316. https://archive.org/details/chronicleofengla00capg
- Nicolas, Nicholas Harris, and Edward Tyrrell, eds. A Chronicle of London, from 1089 to 1483. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1827, 105. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/27027/27027-h/27027-h.htm
- Walsingham, Thomas. The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham, 1376–1422. Translated by David Preest. Introduction and notes by James G. Clark. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/chronica-maiora-of-thomas-walsingham-13761422/8F08AAE7709C4307A1167A94CE669E6C