Part 22

The writer of the notice of Sir Lewis Stukeley in the _Dictionary of National Biography_ takes a lenient view of Stukeley’s conduct. “Stukeley certainly gave hostile, not necessarily false evidence against Raleigh. He seems to have been a harsh, narrow-minded, and vulgar man, glad to have his cousin in his power, to revenge himself on him for the pecuniary loss his own father had entertained.” Gardiner says: “Stukeley seems to have thought it no shame to act as a spy upon the man who had called upon him to betray his trust;” but it is precisely this charge that cannot be established. We have no good evidence that Raleigh did attempt to bribe him. Popular opinion ran strongly against Stukeley, and he was nicknamed Sir Judas. He tried to hold up his head at Court, but no man would condescend to speak to him. He met on all sides with glances full of contempt and gestures of disgust. He hurried to James, and offered to take the Sacrament upon the truth of a story Raleigh had denied on the scaffold--that he had been offered a commission by the French King (the story came through Mannourie); but no one would have believed Stukeley a whit the readier had he done this.

Indeed, Mannourie subsequently admitted that it was false, when he was arrested for clipping the gold, the blood money, he had received for spying on Sir Walter. In a letter from the Rev. T. Lorkin to Sir T. Puckering on 16 February, 1618-19, he says: “Manourie, the French Apothecary, (who joigned with Stukely in the accusation of Syr Walter Raleigh) is at Plimouth for clippyng of gold ... his examination was sent up hether to the King, wherein ... (as I hear from Syr Rob. Winde, cupbearer I thincke to his Majesty, who saith he read the examination) that his accusation against Raleigh was false, and that he was wonne thereto by the practise and importunity of Stukely, and now acknowledges this his present miserable condition a judgment of God upon him for that.”

When Stukeley made this offer to King James, a bystander dryly observed that if the King would order him to be beheaded, and if he would then confirm the truth of his story with an oath while on the scaffold, then possibly he might be believed.

One day Sir Judas went to call on the old Earl of Nottingham, who was Lord High Admiral, and asked to be allowed to speak to him. The Earl turned on him instantly. “What,” he said, “thou base fellow! Thou who art reputed the scorn and contempt of men, how darest thou offer thyself into my presence? Were it not in my own house, I would cudgel thee with my staff for presuming to be so saucy.” Stukeley ran off to whine to the King, but even there he met with no redress. “What,” said James, “wouldst thou have me do? Wouldst thou have me hang him? On my soul, if I should hang all that speak ill of thee, all the trees in the country would not suffice.” It was even said, probably without truth, that James had said to Stukeley, “Sir Walter’s blood be on thy head.”

A few days after the scene with the King, it was discovered that Stukeley had been for many years engaged in the nefarious occupation of clipping coin. It was even said that he tampered in this way with the very gold pieces which had been paid to him as the price of his services for lodging Raleigh in the Tower and betraying him. When arrested he endeavoured to excuse himself by inculpating his son. Could meanness descend to a lower depth?

“1618-19. Jan. 12.... Upon Twelf night Stukely was committed close prisoner in the Gate house for clipping of gould. He had receyved of the Exchequer some weeks before £500 in recompense for the service he had performed in the business of Syr Walter Raleigh, and beganne (as is said) to exercise the trade upon that ill-gotten money (the price of blood). Upon examination he endeavoured to avoid it from himself, by casting the burden either upon his sonne or man. The former playes least in sight and can not be found. The servant is committed to the Marshalsay, who, understanding that his Master would shift over the business to him, is willing to sett the saddle upon the right horse, and accuses his Master.”[15]

But the accusation was not pressed. King James owed Stukeley too deep a debt to let him suffer, and he threw him a pardon, so that the evidence against him was not gone into. It may be remembered that “Lusty” Stukeley had also been implicated in clipping and coining, and had only escaped arrest by flying the country.

Stukeley, an outcast from society in London, went down to Affeton. But even there he was ill-received. The gentry would not speak to him, his own retainers viewed him with a cold, if not hostile, eye, and rendered him but bare obedience.

The brand of Cain was on him, and he fled from the society of his fellow men to the isle of Lundy, and shut himself up in the lonely, haunted tower of the De Mariscoes. There he went raving mad and perished (1620), a miserable lunatic on that rock, surrounded by the roaring of the waves and the shrieks of the wind. His body was conveyed to South Molton, so that he was denied even a grave beside his ancestors at Affeton.

For authorities, see Gardiner, _Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage_, Vol. I, London, 1869; Dr. Brushfield’s _Raleghana_, Part VII; the _Dictionary of National Biography, s.n._; and the various Lives of Raleigh.

THE SAMPFORD GHOST

In 1810, considerable commotion was caused by the rumour that spread concerning a house in Sampford Peverell reputed to be haunted. The house belonged to a Mr. Tally, who let it to a Mr. Chave, son of a well-to-do yeoman of the neighbourhood, for a general shop and residence. The rumours reached the ears of the Rev. C. Colton, /M.A./, a clergyman at Tiverton, and he visited Sampford to investigate the matter, and wrote his experiences to the editor of the _Taunton Courier_ on 18 August. The tone of the letter is frank and sincere.

“I am well aware that all who know me would not require the sanction of an oath, but as I am now addressing the public, I must consider myself before a tribunal of which my acquaintance constitutes a very small part. And first, I depose that after six nights at Mr. Chave’s house, and with a mind perfectly unprejudiced, after the most minute investigation and closest inspection of the premises, I am utterly unable to account for any of the phenomena.

“I further depose, that in my visits to Mr. Chave’s house, I never had any other motive, direct or indirect, but an earnest wish to trace these phenomena to their true and legitimate cause. Also that I have in every instance found the people of the house most willing and ready to contribute everything in their power to co-operate with me in the detection of the cause of these unaccountable sights and violent blows and sounds. Also, that I have affixed a seal with a crest to every door, cavity, etc., in the house, through which any communication could be carried--that this seal was applied to each end of sundry pieces of paper in such a manner that the slightest attempt to open such doors, or pass such cavities, must have broken these papers--that none of these papers were deranged or broken; and also, that the phenomena that night were as unaccountable as ever.

“Also, that it appears that this plot, if it be a plot, hath been carried on for many months, that it must be in the hands of more than fifty people, that the present owner is losing the value of his house, the tenant the customers of his shop, whom fear now prevents from visiting it after sunset.”

To this and more, Mr. Colton took oath before B. Wood, Master in Chancery, Tiverton.

This letter was animadverted upon by the editor and by writers to the _Taunton Courier_, as dealing in general, and giving no details.

To this Mr. Colton (14 September) replied, giving particulars of what he had seen and heard.

The house rented by Chave had for some time been looked upon as haunted. An apprentice boy lodging in it had been frightened by the apparition of a woman. Persons passing at night had seen strange lights in the windows. Mr. Colton goes on to say:--

“Rather more than four months ago, this house became extremely troublesome. The inhabitants were alarmed in the following manner: noises and blows by day were heard extremely loud, in every apartment of the house. On going upstairs and stamping on any of the boards of the floor, in any room, say five or six times, corresponding blows, generally louder, and more in number, would be instantly returned. The vibration of the boards caused by the violence of these blows would be sensibly felt through a shoe or boot. Observe, the floors underneath which these noises were heard are all of them immediately over rooms that are ceiled. An effect not to be produced by any blows on the ceiling was that the dust was thrown up from such boards as were beaten with such velocity as to affect the eyes of the spectators.

“At midday the cause of these effects would announce its approach by amazing and loud knockings in some apartment or other of the house, above stairs or below, as might happen. The moment they were heard, any person on ascending the stairs, and stamping with the feet, would be answered somewhat louder; and then, what is extremely curious, these noises would absolutely follow the persons through any of the upper apartments. The joists and beams of the flooring opposed not the slightest obstacle to its progress. Walls it would penetrate with equal facility, as was manifest by its following any person into different apartments.

“These phenomena by day continued almost incessantly for about five weeks, when they gradually gave place to others still more curious and alarming, which succeeded at night. There are two apartments in this house--one within the other. In this room there is but one door, not a single cupboard, and one very small chimney. The walls are of stone, the flooring of new deal, extremely close, and not covered by a carpet. There is one large modern window in the room. There is no visible access to this room but through another, in which they who wish to satisfy their curiosity constantly sit. The partition is thin, there is also a window in it (it is of lath and plaster). In the room where strangers sit, there is also one door only; and there is a kind of landing-room at the top of the stairs opposite to this door.”

In the further room the servant-maids were sent to sleep. These were now violently beaten, during the night, producing bruises and swellings. Those who sat in the outer room could hear the blows being administered. Mr. Colton went into the inner room and stood by the bed where the maids were, and heard the blows rained on them. When he cried for a light, it was brought in, but no person could be seen by him who could have administered these blows.

The next phenomenon was this, not witnessed by Mr. Colton. He says: “Mr. Chave, of Mere, no relation at all to Mr. Chave who rents the house, can swear to the following fact. Sitting up to hear and see these phenomena, he was alarmed by one or two loud shrieks; on rushing into the room his course at the threshold of the door was arrested by the following phenomenon. Every curtain of that bed was agitated and the knots thrown and whirled about with such rapidity, all at the same time, that it would have been by no means pleasant to have been in their vortex, or within the sphere of their action.” The moon at the time was full, and was shining into the room.

“This scene, accompanied with such a violent noise of the rings as could not have been exceeded by four persons stationed one at each curtain for the purpose, continued for about two minutes, when it concluded with a noise resembling the tearing of a sheet from top to bottom. Candles were then instantly produced, and many rents, one very large one _across_ the grain of strong new cotton curtains, were discovered.” Mr. Colton, however, on other occasions professes to have seen the curtains violently agitated and a heavy Greek Testament placed on the bed flung across the room. But it is worth noticing that these things only took place when the women were in the bed, and never when the candle was in the room. The maids now pretended to be so frightened that they dared no longer sleep in their room, whereupon Mr. and Mrs. Chave allowed them to remove into their apartment. The noises followed them, an iron candlestick was flung across the room at Mr. Chave’s head. Another significant matter noted by Mr. Colton, was that the maids after one of these violent exhibitions were found bathed in perspiration, the drops rolling from their brows.

Such is a brief summary of Mr. Colton’s narrative. It called forth a pamphlet by Mr. Marriott, the editor of the _Taunton Courier_, that had been prompted by Mr. Tally who was much annoyed at the probable depreciation of the value of his house, and who gave notice to Mr. Chave to quit it.

Mr. Marriott was doubtless right in his conjecture that there was a plot among the servants, and that it was they who produced the phenomena. He conjectured that the raps were dealt by a mop-stick at the ceiling below the floors that seemed to be struck. He pointed out that there were marks on the ceiling as if the mop-stick had been so used, and he intimated that the set of hauntings was due to Mr. Chave trying by this means to avenge a quarrel he had had with his landlord over a bill.

To this Mr. Colton promptly replied, that it was true that there was a mop-stick in the house, but that by means of the mop-stick the sounds heard and the vibration of the boards casting up dust could not have been effected. He and others had tried, and the marks observed on the ceiling were caused by these trials. As to the quarrel over a bill, it had not occurred. It was not to Mr. Chave’s interest to give the house a bad name, for he had but recently rented and fitted it up, and it would be an inconvenience to him to move; moreover, these supernatural phenomena were doing him much harm, in injuring his business.

Mr. Colton now added further mysterious sights, but they rested on nothing better than the testimony of the maids. One had seen a white hand come out from under the bed, another had seen a livid arm hanging down from the ceiling.

There can, I think, be little doubt that it was not Mr. Chave, but the servant-maids who managed the whole series of phenomena. These knockings could easily be transmitted through boards, and the curtains tossed about, and books and candlesticks flung across the room, by having horsehair attached to them. That is the true secret of the Poltergeist manifestations in England, France, and Germany.

The authorities are:--

“Sampford Ghost. A Plain and Authentic Narrative of those Extraordinary Occurrences, etc., by the Rev. C. Colton, /M.A./, Reg. Col. Soc., Tiverton” (1810).

“Sampford Ghost!!! A Full Account of the Conspiracy at Sampford Peverell, near Tiverton; Containing the Particulars of the Pretended Visitations of the Monster. Taunton, 1810.” (This by Marriott.)

“Sampford Ghost. Stubborn Facts against Vague Assertions, etc., by the Rev. C. Colton, M.A., Reg. Col. Soc., Tiverton” (1810). Answer to Mr. Marriott.

“Sampford Ghost! Facts Attested and Delivered to the Public Relative to these Extraordinary Occurrences, etc., by the Rev. C. Colton.... London (n.d.).”

PHILIPPA CARY AND ANNE EVANS

In the month of August, 1672, the wife of a dyer of Plymouth, one William Weeks, died after “many and frequent vomitings.” Shortly after that Mr. Weeks and his daughter were seized with the same symptoms--violent pains internally, cold sweats, faintings and vomitings; and in an engraving of the period relative to the tragic event about to be related, Mr. Weeks is shown in bed affected by this last symptom. At the outset the physician who attended them suspected poison, and he was confirmed in his suspicions when a neighbour who had entered the house found a pot in the kitchen with “crude arsenick” in it. Moreover, Mr. Weeks’s grand-daughter, child of a Mistress Pengelly, was affected in precisely the same manner.

Philippa Cary, the nurse, together with Anne Evans, the servant, first drew attention to themselves by counterfeiting sickness and vomiting, but the general prostration and agony were lacking in their case. The administration of emetics led to the recovery of the child and of Mr. Weeks, but Mistress Pengelly died in great agonies.

This “horrid accident” caused much commotion, and the nurse and the girl were arrested. The first brought before the mayor was Anne Evans, “apprentice to the said Mistress Weeks, a poor child, whose mother being dead, had been bound out in the Mayoralty of Mr. Peter Schaggel, Anno 1672, by the Churchwardens and overseers of Charles parish, being then about twelve or thirteen years old.”

The poor child Anne, on being questioned by the mayor, allowed that she bought “a pottle of girts” in the market, and that when they had been cooked she had noticed “some yellow thing in the girts,” and the family were afflicted by incessant tortures after they had partaken of it. There had been a dispute between Mrs. Weeks and the nurse, and the latter had asked Evans whether she knew where she could get some rat’s-bane. Cary admitted that there had been words between her and the old lady, and said that it arose over the frying of some pilchards. She added that Anne Evans was on bad terms with her mistress, and that the girl had threatened to run away and join “the mountebanks.”

The mayor plied one witness against the other. Next Evans said that as she was gathering herbs she found a packet of rat’s-bane, and on showing it to Cary the latter exclaimed that was just the very thing needed to “fit” Mrs. Weeks, and that a little dose of it would soon “make work.” Next the girl mentioned that Cary abused her for removing a great spider from some beer that Mrs. Weeks was about to drink. A spider was, according to popular belief, a concentration of deadly poison. Cary had said, “Thou shouldst have let it alone, thou Fool, and not have taken it out, but shouldst have squatted it amongst the beer.” When Cary was taxed with this, she denied having said any such thing, but asserted that Evans had threatened to do away with her mistress “on Saturday week was fortnight.”

The mayor continued his interrogations of each witness separately, playing the statements of one against the other. Then Evans improved her story by asserting that she saw Cary crush the rat’s-bane into fine powder between two tiles, and she added that when she asked the nurse what she was about Cary replied that she was making a medicine to “fit” the old woman.

Having placed the powder in a cloam dish, she added small beer, and allowed it to steep overnight. She then gave some of the poison to Anne to put in the “Old Woman’s Dish” of porridge, adding, “You shall see what sport we shall have with her to-morrow.”

But the amount then administered was small: it was designed to cause only preliminary discomfort. After that, Cary said, “We shall live so merry as the days are long.” She cautioned the girl to hold her tongue, and told her that if she did so nothing could come out; and she threatened that if Evans betrayed what had been done, she would lay all the blame upon her. In due time Mrs. Weeks asked for her porridge, and the girl put the arsenic into the bowl according to the instructions she had received from the nurse. Later on Cary drank from a jug; and after pouring in the poisoned liquor, administered it to Mr. Weeks, but he did not relish the taste of it and passed it on to the others to try. They all averred that it had a “keamy” taste, but, small though the quantity was that they drank, all who tasted it had convulsions. In some concern at seeing her master and mistress in such anguish, the girl affirmed that she had exclaimed, “Alas! nurse, what have you done that our master and mistress are so very ill?”

Cary replied, according to Anne’s statement, that “she had done God good service in it to rid her out of the way, and that she had done no sin in it.”

This confession was read over to Cary, who denied every particular.

Cary and the little girl--who, be it remembered, was only twelve or thirteen years of age--were put in prison, and were to appear at the next assizes. Cary and Evans found themselves “in the very suburbs of Hell,” for the local prison was no better than “a seminary of all vilainies, prophaneness and impieties.”

After months of waiting, the prisoners were sent to Exeter, where they were tried for their lives. They responded “with heavy hearts though with undejected countenances.” Sentence of death was pronounced against them both, but they petitioned to be transported.

The unfortunate little girl was sentenced “to be drawn on a hurdle to the place where she shall be executed, and there burnt to death.”

John Quicke was a Nonconformist minister, and he interested himself in the criminals. “Methinks,” said he, “the very sentence should have struck her dead; an emblem and lively picture of Hell’s torments. Drawn as if dragged by devils. Burnt alive, as if in the Lake of Fire and Brimstone already.”

The nurse, Philippa Cary, was ordered to hang till she was dead. “Too gentle a death,” wrote the harsh Quicke, “for such a prodigy of ungodliness. She pleads stiffly her innocence, disowns her guilt, takes no shame, her brow is brass, she is impudent and hath a whore’s forehead. If ever there were a daughter of Hell, this is one in her proper colours. No evidence shall convince her. ‘Confess,’ saith she, ‘then I shall hang indeed. I deny the fact, none saw, none knew it but the girl; it may be that vile person, my husband, hath a hand in it, but he is gone. Some will pity me, though none will believe me, none can help me.’” And now, according to Quicke, Satan helps Cary to “an expedient that may help her life.” She pleaded before the judge that she was in the family way. “If I must dye, let my child live.”

Thereupon the judge ordered a jury of matrons to be empanelled, but they found that the plea of Cary was false.

As Plymouth had been the scene of the murder, the judge had little difficulty in consenting to the petition of the relatives of Mrs. Weeks that the execution should take place there. “Provided that the magistrates of the towne, or Mr. Weeks, whose wife was by the malefactors above named poysoned, shall defray the extraordinary charges thereof, and shall undertake for the same before Easter Day, being Sunday next. The day of execution is to bee on Thursday in Easter weeke, but if you, the magistrate of the said towne, or Mr. Weeks, shall fail to undertake before Easter Day to defray the extraordinary charges thereof, then the execution on these malefactors is to be done at the common-place of execution for this Countie,” i.e. at Exeter.

The local authorities gladly undertook the arrangements for carrying out Lord Chief Justice North’s sentence, and for affording to the citizens of Plymouth an exciting scene, and for the domestic servants of that borough a moral warning.