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WILLIAM ROBLIN A PEMBROKESHIRE MURDERER OR "INTEMPERATE PASSION" By Andrew J Roberts These days the A40 Carmarthen Road is alive with commuters travelling to and from their employment. Vehicles regularly race down Arnold's Hill and past Deeplake Farm, an area notorious for the dangers of modem travelling. In 1821, however, it was infamous for another reason murder. Today the name William Roblin has no real meaning for most Pembrokeshire people. Some may remember Albert Edward Jenkins, the Rosemarket murderer executed in Swansea in 1950 and the last Pembrokeshire man to be hanged, but few have heard of Roblin, the last man to be hanged in Pembrokeshire. According to certain written local histories, in 1820 a gamekeeper from the Picton Castle Estate called Griffiths1 or Frederick Negget2 accused William Roblin of being a poacher. Outside Roblin's alehouse, The New Inn at Deeplake, the row between them turned violent. The gamekeeper's gun discharged3 or Roblin battered the gamekeeper with the blunderbuss4 killing him. At the subsequent trial Roblin's charge of murder was reduced to manslaughter5 but he was found guilty. Richard, Lord Milford, was not pleased with this verdict, since the victim was his gamekeeper, so used his influence to force a retrial. William Roblin was then found guilty and executed. Local gossip even added the story that Roblin had been involved in carting the wood that was used to build his scaffold. The surviving primary sources in the Pembrokeshire Record Office tell a very different tale from the legend. William Roblin first appears as the tenant of Deeplake in 1817.6 The farm was owned by John Hensleigh Allen of Cresselly. The previous occupier of Deeplake, John Page, had an alehouse licence in 1813,7 but because of gaps in the records it is impossible to state categorically that Deeplake was an alehouse while Roblin was occupier. During the evening of Friday 18 August 1820, Thomas Thomas of Boulston, and his employee, William Davies, were returning home from