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| “ | I can't imagine that a working knowledge of the Historia ecclesiatica looms large in the Hendom curriculum. | „ |
| ~ Matthew Copley-Barnes to Morse in Endeavour. |
Master Matthew Copley-Barnes is a minor antagonist in Series 4 of the TV Series, Inspector Morse and a minor character in Series 2 of its prequel series, Endeavour.
He was portrayed by the late Geoffrey Palmer in Inspector Morse, and by Jamie Parker in Endeavour.
Overview[]
Matthew Copley-Barnese was a respected academic and the wealthy Master of Beaufort College. However, he was secretly a pedophile who used his position and connections to get away with preying on children.
Nevertheless, unlike other pedophiles in the series (which is already a rare type of cases), Copley-Barnes was not a direct culprit to his episode's case. In addition, he was also incestuous, as his first victim was none other than his very own daughter, Imogen.
Biography[]
Past[]
In his past, this seemly well-renowned man, Copley-Barnes, had been sexually abusing his daughter, Imogen, apparently for many years. The action was so awful for her, that it left her being psychologically disturbed and traumatized.
However, Imogen wasn't going to be the last victim of her father. When she was eleven, Imogen went to the beach along with her family and her best friend of the same age, Silvie Maxton. Silvie recently lost her father, and thus Matthew Copley-Barnes adopted her. He suggested she would go out with his family for a travel to ease her trauma, which turned out to be an excuse for him to prey on her as his second victim.
Copley-Barnes followed Silvie secretly, and he seized the chance when she was scared by a snake. He pretended to calm her down, before he took it as a chance and raped the eleven-year-old girl on the beach.
After that, like Imogen, Silvia was under Copley-Barnes' control and became raped for several times, and she was also psychologically broken. Copley-Barnes even convinced that it was Silvia's fault for her being raped, and was forced to kept silent of it. Silvia cut off ties with Copley-Barnes and his family after her mother gone ill.
Endeavour[]
In Endeavour, the younger Dr. Copley-Barnes appeared appearing only in "Trove", the first episode of its Series 2. He gave Morse assistance when the latter arrived to investigate. As of now, Morse didn't discover his true nature.
Inspector Morse[]
The Infernal Serpent[]
For years, Copley-Barnes had been living under a controversial reputation, but he always got away with it by using his wealth and connection, most likely to the Freemasons and Oxford's officials, and it was implied that he was involved with a cooporations' medical experiment that caused people falling ill to cancer.
Later, his wife opened a piano class for children, and Copley-Barnes used it as a chance to find new subjects to abuse sexually. He had his third victim, Mandy Hopkirk (who was the daughter of Copley-Barnes' own gardener Philip) raped. The poor child fearfully carried the secret for a few weeks until her father Philip discovered the truth. Enraged, he decided to avenge his daughter. This had triggered the entire event that led to Dr. Dear's demise.
The real killer of Dr. Dear was Philip Hopkirk, the father of Mandy Hopkirk, and the gardener of Copley-Barnes' family. However, Philip was a very sympathetic murderer despite being the episode's culprit, as he tried to kill Copley-Barnes for what the child rapist had done to Mandy. He discovered his daughter being raped by Copley-Barnes after she returned back home and vowed for revenge.
Nonetheless, he had mistook Dear as Matthew Copley-Barnes in the rain and killed Dear by mistake. As a result, Copley-Barnes was the one who started everything in the episode, including Dear's murder. This caused Copley-Barnes to escape from punishment again, for the moment. On the next day, he greeted Silvia's return, as she now became a journalist who hoped to write an article about him. There, he expressed that it was mostly his wife's idea to repair their broken relations.
However, what Matthew proclaimed of fixing relationships were all fake. Copley-Barnes had been shown to be sardonic in private, even acting cruel and caustic to his own family if they failed to live up to his satisfaction. In the meantime, Sylvia's presence caused Imogen to have another nervous breakdown. She knew that the last time she left, Silvia left a green ribbon on Matthew's bed, as a sign of being another rape victim of him, just like her.
As for the parcels, they were sent by Sylvia to remind Copley-Barnes about what he did to her, each parcel represent one major time he raped her. Still, he took no interest in it and considered to be a meaningless prank, meaning that he never even cared about whatever he had done or have any sign of regret, choosing to forget about it by choice.
At last, Imogen finally pieced together all of the tragedy and memory she had lost due to her trauma. In spite of her father's insistence to silence her, Imogen stood up against him and told her mother about it. Because of that, Blanche was shocked and she finally realized what her husband had done over so many years.
Fed up by his abuse and enraged by what he had done, Blanche killed her husband and tried to commit suicide in the church. However, Morse rescued Blanche in time. Learning about what happened, Morse persuaded Blanche to give herself in, as she carried the burdens of all those her husband had sexually abused.
In the end, when the police had arrived, Blanche accepted Morse's pleadge for the sake of Imogen and was arrested by Lewis, who also arrived with the police team. Around the time Morse discovered Copley-Barnes' demise, a drunken Philip delibrately smashed all of the vases and flowers he planted in a fit of rage, so that he could draw police attentions and give himself in. When the police also came for him, Philip let his anger go and silently accepted his arrest.
Lewis sympathized with Philip's motive, because whilst Philip killed Dr. Dear by mistake, all he tried to do was for the sake of his daughter, in order to make the real villain pay for his crime. In the end, Morse and Lewis both agreed that Matthew Copley-Barnes was an incarnation of the serpent from Eden.
Victims[]
- Total count: 3 (all raped)
- Imogen Copley-Barnes
- Sylvie Maxton
- Mandy Hopkirk
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- He is one of the few Inspector Morse villains that had made appearance in Endeavour as minor characters, alongside Gwen Morse and Marion Brooke.
- Whilst not being a culprit, Copley-Barnes is one of the only two Inspector Morse villain that is incesteous, and he is the only one who raped his own child.
- The other one is the novel version of Ted Brooks, the murder victim in The Daughters of Cain, who had sexually abused his step-daughther (an act which was omitted in the TV series adaptations). Therefore, Copley-Barnes is the only incesteous villain that was originated from the Inspector Morse TV series.
- He is one of the few Inspector Morse villains that never killed anyone, but his pedophilia, child rape and his sexual abuse on his own daughter still made him one of the most evil and disturbing villains in the franchise.
External links[]
- Matthew Copley-Barnes on the Pure Evil Wiki.
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 Villains
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