The 'Campden Wonder' is the name given to events surrounding the return of a man thought to have been murdered in the town of Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, England, in the 17th century.
[1] On 16 August 1660, in Chipping Campden, at the home of William Harrison, the 70-year-old man stated his intention to walk the two miles to the village of Charingworth, and left.
During the journey they heard that some items belonging to William Harrison had been discovered on the main road between Chipping Campden and Ebrington.
The hat had been slashed by a sharp implement, and the shirt and the neckband were covered in blood, there was no sign of the body of William Harrison.
Writer Linda Stratmann states that their lawyers had given bad advice to the Perrys, as the potential criminal charge of murder was as yet unresolved.
[9] As Joan Perry was suspected of being a witch, she was executed first, in order to break any spell that she might have cast upon her sons to prevent them from confessing their guilt.
He claimed that he had been abducted, wounded, had his pockets stuffed with money and been spirited away on horses from England via Deal port in Kent, transferred to a Turkish ship and sold into slavery in the Ottoman Empire.
[9] Harrison said that after about a year and three quarters his master had died and that he then went to a port and stowed away on a Portuguese ship, finally returning to Dover by way of Lisbon.
[4] Linda Stratmann, in her book Gloucestershire Murders, states that Harrison's story is questionable on several points: the abduction of a 70-year-old man, his pockets being stuffed with money and his selling into slavery for a few pounds; his being taken on horseback from Chipping Campden to Deal unnoticed; and his claims that his attackers wounded him in the thigh and side with a sword, then nursed him back to health.
[14] It has been suggested that the actual reason for Harrison's disappearance was that he had felt it expedient to leave the country due to the volatile situation surrounding the recent Stuart Restoration.