Tudor True Crime: Lynching of the "Duke's Devil"

February 19, 2026·58 min·3 clips

Lamb was called the 'Duke's devil,' accused of using witchcraft to help Buckingham poison rivals and bewitch the king.

A woodcut fixes the scene. A London street, a tavern, and an older man in rich clothes trying to defend himself with a sword while boys and men come at him with stones and cudgels. The victim was John Lamb. He was in his eighties, linked with occult practice, and widely associated with the horrific sexual assault of a young girl. Buckingham keeps coming back into view. The host asks Professor Alastair Bellany whether Lamb's relationship with the Duke of Buckingham can actually be proved, or whether it sits in the messier world of political rumour. Bellany answers carefully. The first clear claim of a Buckingham connection appears after Lamb's 1624 pardon for a rape conviction, when a newsletter suggested Buckingham had helped with the lobbying. That still does not settle the matter. But from outside the court, the pardon looked hard to explain, so people suspected help from someone close to the king or privy council. The documents make it less tidy. Someone had asked the king to look at Lamb's case, amid rumours that Lamb could offer secret intelligence about hidden jewels or the Gunpowder Plot. The king became interested. One of his chief lawyers reviewed the case and found that Lamb had a relatively strong legal argument for mercy. Lamb denied the allegation. He also said the girl's father owed him money and had turned the accusation into an extortion attempt after Lamb refused to comply. Then came the legal technicality. Bellany explains how the pardon could rest on strict legal grounds, even as public suspicion stayed fixed on influence. That murkiness is the point. By the end, Lamb's street murder has become a way into Buckingham, the dangerous handling of royal power, and consequences reaching toward civil war and beyond.

As heard by us

A 1628 London killing becomes a careful look at rumor, pardon, and court politics.

An 1628 London street murder gives the episode its frame, but the real interest is how it moves between pamphlet lore, court politics, and the question of what can actually be proven about John Lamb, the elderly figure tied in public memory to occult practice and the assault of…

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A street murder opens into the politics and legal uncertainty of Charles I's court.

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