Cornish Characters and Strange Events
by S. Baring-Gould · English · Gutenberg #41775 · 1,413,318 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Cornish Characters and Strange Events
Author: S. Baring-Gould
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CORNISH CHARACTERS AND STRANGE EVENTS ***
CORNISH CHARACTERS
AND STRANGE EVENTS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME
DEVONSHIRE CHARACTERS
AND STRANGE EVENTS
With 55 Full-page Illustrations
Reproduced from Old Prints, etc.
[Illustration: THOMAS PITT, LORD CAMELFORD]
CORNISH
CHARACTERS
AND STRANGE EVENTS
BY S. BARING-GOULD, M.A.
WITH 62 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
REPRODUCED FROM OLD PRINTS, ETC.
[Illustration: ONE · AND · ALL]
"We all are men,
In our own natures frail, and capable
Of our flesh; few are angels."
HENRY VIII (Act V, Sc. 2).
LONDON: JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMIX
PLYMOUTH: WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS
PREFACE
Cornwall, peopled mainly by Celts, but with an infusion of English
blood, stands and always has stood apart from the rest of England,
much, but in a less degree, as has Wales. That which brought it into
more intimate association with English thought, interests, and
progress was the loss of the old Cornish tongue.
The isolation in which Cornwall had stood has tended to develop in it
much originality of character; and the wildness of the coast has bred
a hardy race of seamen and smugglers; the mineral wealth, moreover,
drew thousands of men underground, and the underground life of the
mines has a peculiar effect on mind and character: it is cramping in
many ways, but it tends to develop a good deal of religious
enthusiasm, that occasionally breaks forth in wild forms of
fanaticism. Cornwall has produced admirable sailors, men who have won
deathless renown in warfare at sea, as "Old Dreadnought" Boscawen,
Pellew, Lord Exmouth, etc., and daring and adventurous smugglers, like
"The King of Prussia," who combined great religious fervour with
entire absence of scruple in the matter of defrauding the king's
revenue. It has produced men of science who have made for themselves a
world-fame, as Adams the astronomer, and Sir Humphry Davy the
chemist; men who have been benefactors to their race, as Henry
Trengrouse, Sir Goldsworthy Gurney, and Trevithick. It has sent forth
at least one notable painter, the miner's boy Opie, and a dramatist,
Samuel Foote, and a great singer in his day, Incledon. But it has not
given to literature a great poet. Minor rhymes have been produced in
great quantities, but none of great worth. Philosophers have issued
from the mines, as Samuel Drew, eccentrics many, as Sir James Tillie,
John Knill, and Daniel Gumb. And Cornwall has contributed a certain
number of rascals--but fewer in number than almost any other county,
if we exclude wreckers and smugglers from the catalogue of rascality.
Strange superstitions have lingered on, and one very curious story of
a girl fed for years by fairies has been put on record.
It is somewhat remarkable that Cornwall has produced no musical genius
of any note; and yet the Cornishman is akin to the Welshman and the
Irishman.
Cornwall has certainly sent up to London and Westminster very able
politicians, as Godolphin, Sir William Molesworth, and Sir John Eliot.
It furnished Tyburn with a victim--Hugh Peters, the chaplain of Oliver
Cromwell, a strange mixture of money-grasping, enthusiasm, and humour.
It has been the object of the author, not to retell the lives of the
greatest of the sons of Cornwall, for these lives may be read in the
_Dictionary of National Biography_, but to chronicle the stories of
lesser luminaries concerning whom less is known and little is easily
accessible. In this way it serves as a companion volume to
_Devonshire Characters_; and Cornwall in no particular falls short of
Devonshire in the variety of characters it has sent forth, nor are
their stories of less interest.
The author and publisher have to thank many for kind help: Mr. Percy
Bate, Mr. T. R. Bolitho, Rev. A. T. Boscawen, Mr. J. A. Bridger, Mr.
T. Walter Brimacombe, Mr. A. M. Broadley, Mr. R. P. Chope, Mr. Digby
Collins, Mr. J. B. Cornish, Mrs. Coryton of Pentillie Castle, Miss
Loveday E. Drake, Mr. E. H. W. Dunkin, F.S.A., Mr. J. D. Enys of Enys,
the Rev. Wm. Iago, Mrs. H. Forbes Julian, Mrs. de Lacy Lacy, the Rev.
A. H. Malan, Mr. Lewis Melville, Mr. A. H. Norway, Captain Rogers of
Penrose, Mr. Thomas Seccombe, Mr. Henry Trengrouse, Mr. W. H. K.
Wright, and Mr. Henry Young of Liverpool--and last, but not least,
Miss Windeatt Roberts for her admirable Index to the volume.
The publisher wishes me to say that he would much like to discover the
whereabouts of a full-length portrait of Sir John Call, with a view of
Bodmin Gaol in the background.
S. BARING-GOULD.
CONTENTS
PAGE
WILLIAM PENGELLY, GEOLOGIST 1
SIR CHARLES WILLS, K.B. 12
LIEUTENANT GOLDSMITH AND THE LOGAN ROCK 18
HUGH PETERS, THE REGICIDE 26
JAMES POLKINGHORNE, THE WRESTLER 54
HENRY TRENGROUSE, INVENTOR 59
THE BOTATHAN GHOST 72
JOHN COUCH ADAMS, ASTRONOMER 83
DANIEL GUMB 91
LAURENCE BRADDON 96
THOMASINE BONAVENTURA 108
THE MURDER OF NEVILL NORWAY 117
SIR WILLIAM LOWER, KNT. 126
THE PIRATES AT PENZANCE 130
DAME KILLIGREW 133
TWO NATURALISTS IN CORNWALL 141
John Ralfs
George Carter Bignell
SIR JOHN CALL, BART. 154
JOHN KNILL 169
THOMAS TREGOSS 176
ANTHONY PAYNE 181
NEVIL NORTHEY BURNARD 186
SIR GOLDSWORTHY GURNEY, KNT., INVENTOR 192
THE JANES 206
THE PENNINGTONS 222
DOCTOR GLYNN-CLOBERY 228
THREE MEN OF MOUSEHOLE 232
DOLLY PENTREATH 238
ROBERT JEFFERY OF POLPERRO 247
ADMIRAL RICHARD DARTON THOMAS 258
COMMANDER JOHN POLLARD 269
THE CASE OF BOSAVERN PENLEZ 270
SAMUEL FOOTE 280
THE LAST LORD MOHUN 298
THE LAST LORD CAMELFORD 318
WILLIAM NOYE 329
WILLIAM LEMON 342
SAMUEL DREW 346
THE SIEGE OF SKEWIS 364
THE VOYAGE OF JOHN SANDS 370
CHARLES INCLEDON 375
THE MURDER OF RICHARD CORYTON 388
SIR JAMES TILLIE, KNT. 399
LIEUTENANT JOHN HAWKEY 408
DR. DANIEL LOMBARD 424
THE DREAM OF MR. WILLIAMS 427
SIR ROBERT TRESILIAN 432
PIRATE TRELAWNY 441
JAMES SILK BUCKINGHAM 455
MARY ANN DAVENPORT, ACTRESS 466
THE ROYAL FAMILY OF PRUSSIA 470
CAPTAIN RICHARD KEIGWIN 479
THE LOSS OF THE "KENT" 489
VICE-ADMIRAL SIR CHARLES V. PENROSE 500
SIR CHRISTOPHER HAWKINS, BART. 515
ANNE JEFFERIES 531
THOMAS KILLIGREW, THE KING'S JESTER 544
NICOLAS ROSCARROCK 554
LIEUTENANT PHILIP G. KING 559
HICKS OF BODMIN 569
CAPTAIN TOBIAS MARTIN 579
THE MAYOR OF BODMIN 586
JOHN NICHOLS TOM, _ALIAS_ SIR WILLIAM COURTENAY, K.M. 593
THE BOHELLAND TRAGEDY 614
MARY KELYNACK 620
CAPTAIN WILLIAM ROGERS 623
JOHN BURTON OF FALMOUTH 627
THE FATE OF SIR CLOUDESLEY SHOVEL 637
FRANCIS TREGIAN 652
ANN GLANVILLE 663
JONATHAN SIMPSON, HIGHWAYMAN 670
DAVIES GILBERT 675
JAMES HOSKIN, FARMER 682
JOHN HARRIS, THE MINER POET 692
EDWARD CHAPMAN 701
JOHN COKE OF TRERICE 704
THOMAS PELLOW OF PENRYN 707
THE ORIGIN OF THE ROBARTES FAMILY 718
THEODORE PALEOLOGUS 727
ILLUSTRATIONS
THOMAS PITT, LORD CAMELFORD _Frontispiece_
TO FACE PAGE
WILLIAM PENGELLY 2
From a painting by A. S. Cope, reproduced by permission of Mrs. H.
Forbes Julian
LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SIR CHARLES WILLS 12
From an engraving by Simon, after a picture by M. Dahl
A VIEW OF THE CELEBRATED LOGAN ROCK, NEAR LAND'S END
IN CORNWALL 18
Taken after the Rock was displaced on the 8th of April, 1824. From
a lithograph by Vibert, after a drawing by Tonkin
A VIEW OF THE SOUTHERN PART OF CASTLE TRERYN, SHOWING
THE MACHINERY ERECTED FOR THE PURPOSE OF REPLACING THE
LOGAN ROCK 22
From a lithograph by Vibert, after a drawing by Tonkin
HUGH PETERS 26
From an old engraving
JAMES POLKINGHORNE, THE FAMOUS CORNISH WRESTLER 54
From a drawing as he appeared in the Ring at Devonport on Monday,
23 October, 1826, when he threw Aḇͫ. Cann, the Champion of
Devonshire, for a stake of 200 sovereigns
HENRY TRENGROUSE, THE INVENTOR OF THE ROCKET APPARATUS
FOR SAVING LIFE AT SEA 60
From an oil painting by Opie the younger, reproduced by permission
of Mr. H. Trengrouse
THE WRECK OF THE "ANSON" 66
From a sketch by Mr. H. Trengrouse
"PARSON RUDALL" 72
From a painting in the possession of the Rev. S. Baring-Gould
JOHN COUCH ADAMS 84
From a mezzotint by Samuel Cousins, A.R.A., after a picture by
Thomas Mogford. From the collection of Mrs. Lewis Lane
JOHN COUCH ADAMS 88
THE CHEESE-WRING 92
From an etching by Letitia Byrne, after a drawing by J. Farington,
R.A.
NEVILL NORWAY 118
From a painting in the possession of Miss A. T. Norway
SIR WILLIAM LOWER 126
THE KILLYGREW CUP 134
"1633. FROM MAIOR TO MAIOR TO THE TOWNE OF PERMARIN,
WHERE THEY RECEIVED MEE THAT WAS IN GREAT MISERY"
JANE KILLYGREW
This cup has been recently valued at the sum of £4000. It measures
just two feet in height
GEORGE CARTER BIGNELL 142
From a photograph
JOHN RALFS 146
Reproduced by permission of Miss Loveday E. Drake
SIR JOHN CALL, BART. 154
From a portrait (by A. Hickle) in the possession of his
great-granddaughter, Mrs. de Lacy Lacy
WHITEFORD--THE RESIDENCE OF SIR JOHN CALL 164
From a drawing in the possession of Mrs. de Lacy Lacy
JOHN KNILL 170
After a picture by Opie in the possession of Captain Rogers, of
Penrose
GLASS INSCRIBED "SUCCESS TO THE EAGLE FRIGATE, JOHN KNILL,
COMMANDER" 172
From the collection of Percy Bate, Esq., of Glasgow
ANTHONY PAYNE 182
From a painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller, purchased by Sir Robert
Harvey, High Sheriff of Cornwall, 1901, and presented to the
Institute of Cornwall
NEVIL NORTHEY BURNARD 186
From a bas-relief by the sculptor himself, in the possession of S.
Pearn, Esq., Altarnon
WESLEY'S HEAD OVER THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE, PENPONT,
ALTARNON. Cut by Burnard when 16 years of age 188
TOMBSTONES CUT BY BURNARD 188
That on the right is upon the grave of his grandfather in Altarnon
Churchyard, and was cut when the sculptor was only 14 years old;
the one on the left is in Bodmin Churchyard
TOMBSTONES IN ALTARNON CHURCHYARD. Cut by Burnard 190
SIR GOLDSWORTHY GURNEY 192
From a lithograph by W. Sharp, after a drawing by S. C. Smith
DOROTHY PENTREATH OF MOUSEHOLE IN CORNWALL. THE LAST
PERSON WHO COULD CONVERSE IN THE CORNISH LANGUAGE 232
From a drawing by R. Scadden
MONSCHOLE, IN MOUNT'S BAY, FROM THE ISLAND 238
From a drawing by Captain Tremenhere
SAMUEL FOOTE 280
THE LAST LORD MOHUN 298
From a mezzotint by I. Faber, after a picture by Sir Godfrey
Kneller
THE DUEL BETWEEN LORD MOHUN AND THE DUKE OF HAMILTON 312
From a contemporary mezzotint in the British Museum
SIR WILLIAM NOYE, ATTORNEY-GENERAL TO KING CHARLES THE
FIRST 330
SIR WILLIAM LEMON, BART., M.P. FOR CORNWALL 342
From an engraving by J. H. Meyer
SAMUEL DREW 346
From an engraving by R. Hicks, after a painting by F. Moore
HENRY ROGERS, PEWTERER 364
CHARLES INCLEDON, AS MACHEATH 376
From an engraving by J. Thomson, after a painting by Singleton
SIR JAMES TILLIE, KNT. 400
SIR JAMES TILLIE'S MONUMENT AT PENTILLIE 406
EDWARD JOHN TRELAWNY 442
From a drawing by D. Lucas
JAMES SILK BUCKINGHAM 456
MRS. DAVENPORT, IN THE CHARACTER OF MRS. GRUNDY 466
From an engraving by Ridley, after a picture by De Wilde
AT PRUSSIA COVE. "BESSY'S" COVE FROM BATTERY POINT 470
From a drawing in the possession of J. B. Cornish, Esq.
JOHN CARTER'S HOUSE AT PRUSSIA COVE. (DEMOLISHED IN 1906) 476
From a photograph by Gibson & Sons, Penzance
VICE-ADMIRAL SIR CHARLES V. PENROSE, K.C.B. 500
From a picture by Allingham
THOMAS KILLIGREW, GROOM OF THE BEDCHAMBER TO KING
CHARLES THE SECOND 544
From an engraving by I. Vander vaart, after a picture by W.
Wissens
LIEUTENANT PHILIP GIDLEY KING 560
From an engraving by W. Skelton, after a drawing by J. Wright
WILLIAM R. HICKS 570
WILLIAM R. HICKS OF BODMIN 576
From a Caricature
JOHN THOMAS, OTHERWISE SIR WILLIAM COURTENAY, WHO SHOT
LIEUTENANT BENNET IN BASENDEN WOOD, BOUGHTON, NEAR
CANTERBURY, AND THE CONSTABLE MEARS, ON THURSDAY,
MAY 31ST, 1838. 594
PERCY HONEYWOOD COURTENAY, KNIGHT OF MALTA, ETC. ETC.,
AS HE APPEARED AT THE ELECTION IN 1832 608
MARY KELYNACK 620
CAPTAIN W. ROGERS 624
From an engraving by Ridley and Blood, after a picture by Drummond
JOHN BURTON OF FALMOUTH 628
SIR CLOUDESLEY SHOVEL 638
ANN GLANVILLE 664
DAVIES GILBERT 676
From a mezzotint by Samuel Cousins, A.R.A., after a picture by
Henry Howard, R.A. From the collection of Mrs. Lewis Lane
JOHN HARRIS, THE MINER POET 692
THE RIGHT HON. JOHN EARL OF RADNOR: BARON ROBERTS OF
TRURO 718
After Sir Godfrey Kneller
MEMORIAL BRASS IN THE CHURCH OF LANDULPH. 728
Reproduced by permission of E. H. W. Dunkin, Esq., F.S.A., from
his book on Cornish Brasses
CORNISH CHARACTERS
AND STRANGE EVENTS
CORNISH
CHARACTERS
AND STRANGE EVENTS
WILLIAM PENGELLY, GEOLOGIST
William Pengelly was born at East Looe on January 12th, 1812, and was
the son of the captain of a small coasting vessel and nephew of a
notorious smuggler. The Pengellys had, in fact, been connected with
the sea for several generations. His mother was a Prout of the same
family as the famous water-colour artist.
As a child his career was almost cut short by fire. An aunt came to
stay with the Pengellys, arriving a day before she was expected. Early
on the following morning, when sitting in her bedroom window, wrapped
in a thick woollen shawl, she saw her little nephew William rush out
of the house enveloped in flames. She hurried after him, and managed
to smother the fire with her woollen garment, and thus saved the
child's life, though she was herself so badly burnt that she carried
the scars to her dying day. The little boy had risen early, and had
kindled a fire so that he might go on with his lessons before any one
else was astir in the house, with the result that he set light to his
clothes, and except for the premature arrival of his aunt, must
certainly have been burnt to death.
At the age of twelve he went to sea. He says:--
"Our voyages were short. I do not remember an instance of being at sea
more than three consecutive days; so that, except when windbound, we
were almost always taking in or taking out cargo. The work was hard,
but the food was abundant, and on the whole the life, though rough,
was not unpleasant.
"To me--thinking nothing of the pecuniary aspects of the question--the
most enjoyable occasions were those which fierce contrary winds brought
us, when we had to seek some harbour of refuge. These were by no means
necessarily holidays, for, if the weather were dry, advantage was taken
of the enforced leisure to give our craft a thorough cleaning, or to
repair her rigging, or to make up the books. Moreover, the crew employed
me to write letters to their wives from their dictation. These epistles
were generally of a remarkable character, and some of them remain firmly
fixed in my memory. The foregoing labours disposed of, and foul winds
still prevailing, we had a washing day, or, better than all, a bout of
tailoring, which did not generally get beyond repairing, though
occasionally the ambitious flight of making a pair of trousers was
attempted. On tailoring days it was understood that my clothes should be
repaired for me, in order that I might read aloud for the general
benefit. We assembled in our little cabin, where the stitching and
smoking went on simultaneously, and with great vigour. My poor library
consisted of a Bible, the eighth volume of the _Spectator_, Johnson's
_English Dictionary_, a volume of the _Weekly Miscellany_, the _History
of John Gilpin_, _Baron Munchausen's Travels_, Walkinghame's
_Arithmetic_, and a book of songs. My hearers were not very fastidious,
but allowed me to read pretty much what I pleased, though, truth to
tell, the _Spectator_ was not a favourite; some portions of it were held
to be nonsensical, and others were considered to be so lacking in
truthfulness that it was generally termed the 'lying book.' This ill
repute was largely due to the story of Fadlallah (No. 578). Walkinghame
was by no means unpopular. I occasionally read some of the questions,
and my shipmates endeavoured to solve them mentally; and as the answers
were all given by the author, I had to declare who had made the nearest
guess, for it was very often but little more. Of all the questions, none
excited so much interest as that which asks, What will be the cost of
shoeing a horse at a farthing for the first nail, two for the second,
and so on in geometrical progression for thirty-two nails, and which
gives for the answer a sum but little short of four and a half million
pounds sterling. This was so utterly unexpected that it went far to
confer on Walkinghame the same name that Fadlallah had given to the
_Spectator_."
[Illustration: A. S. Cope, pinxt.
_Reproduced by permission of Mrs. H. Forbes Julian_]
William Pengelly tells a curious story of his father, Richard
Pengelly:--
"After completing his fifteenth year he was thinking of going to sea.
When he was sixteen, his father, who was a sailor, was drowned almost
within sight of his home. The effect on the boy was to make him pause,
and on his friends, to urge him to give up the idea. For some months
these influences kept him quiet, but at length his restlessness
returned so strongly, that he would have gone to sea at once, had he
felt satisfied that his father would have approved the step. To
ascertain this point he prayed frequently and earnestly that his
father's spirit might be allowed to appear to him, with a pleasing or
frowning aspect, according as he might approve or disapprove. At
length he believed his prayer to have been answered, and that when in
the field ploughing he saw his father, who passed by looking intently
and smilingly at him. This decided him. He became a sailor at
seventeen, and as such died at a good old age."
One bitterly cold night at sea, young Pengelly and some other of his
shipmates having closed the cabin door, lit a charcoal fire, and
speedily fell asleep, succumbing to the fumes of carbonic acid.
Happily one of the crew who had been on deck entered the cabin. He
found the greatest difficulty in awakening his comrades to sufficient
consciousness to enable them to stumble up the ladder to get a breath
of fresh air, for their sleep had well-nigh become that of death. The
strong and hardy seamen soon recovered, but the boy was so seriously
affected that, long after he had been carried upon deck, he could not
be roused, and was only restored to consciousness by means of
prolonged exertions on the part of his shipmates. His earliest
geological experience was made when a sailor-boy weather-bound on the
Dorsetshire coast, and he was wont to relate it thus:--
"I received my first lesson in geology at Lyme Regis, very soon after
I had entered my teens. A labourer, whom I was observing, accidentally
broke a large stone of blue lias and thus disclosed a fine ammonite
--the first fossil of any kind that I had ever seen or heard of.
"In reply to my exclamation, 'What's that?' the workman said, with a
sneer, 'If you had read your Bible you'd know what 'tis.' 'I _have_
read my Bible. But what has that to do with it?'
"'In the Bible we're told there was once a flood that covered all the
world. At that time all the rocks were mud, and the different things
that were drowned were buried in it, and there's a snake that was
buried that way. There are lots of 'em, and other things besides, in
the rocks and stones hereabouts.'
"'A snake! But where's his head?'
"'You must read the Bible, I tell 'ee, and then you'll find out why
'tis that some of the snakes in the rocks ain't got no heads. We're
told there, that the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's
head, that's how 'tis.'"
When in his sixteenth year William Pengelly lost his younger brother,
and after that his mother would not suffer him to go to sea. Some
years were spent at Looe in self-education.
While still quite young he was induced by a relative of his mother to
settle at Torquay, at that time a small place, but rapidly growing and
attracting residents to it. Here he opened a small day-school on the
Pestalozzian system, and was one of the first to introduce the use of
the blackboard and chalk. The school opened with six scholars, but
rapidly increased to about seventy.
It was now that scientific studies began to occupy Pengelly's
attention, and above all, geology.
In 1837 he married Mary Anne Mudge, whose health was always delicate.
Little by little his renown as a geologist spread, and he did not
confine himself to the deposits in Devonshire, but travelled to
Scotland and elsewhere to examine the rocks, and to meet and consult
with eminent scientists.
In 1846 his private pupils had grown so numerous that he was able to
give up his school altogether and become a tutor of mathematics and
the natural sciences. He tells a very amusing story of a visit made
during holiday time to an old friend.
"I one day learned that my road lay within a couple of miles of the
rectory of my old mathematical friend D----. We had been great friends
when he was a curate in a distant part of the country, but had not met
for several years, during which he had been advanced from a curacy of
about £80 to a rectory of £200 per year, and a residence, in a very
secluded district. My time was very short, but for 'auld lang syne' I
decided to sacrifice a few hours. On reaching the house Mr. and Mrs.
D---- were fortunately at home, and received me with their wonted
kindness.
"The salutations were barely over, when I said--
"'It is now six o'clock; I must reach Wellington tonight, and as it is
said to be fully eight miles off, and I am utterly unacquainted with
the road, and with the town when I reach it, I cannot remain with you
one minute after eight o'clock.'
"'Oh, very well,' said D----, 'then we must improve the shining hour.
Jane, my dear, be so good as to order tea.'
"Having said this he left the room. In a few minutes he returned with
a book under his arm and his hands filled with writing materials,
which he placed on the table. Opening the book, he said--
"'This is Hind's _Trigonometry_, and here's a lot of examples for
practice. Let us see which can do the greatest number of them by eight
o'clock. I did most of them many years ago, but I have not looked at
them since. Suppose we begin at this one'--which he pointed out--'and
take them as they come. We can drink our tea as we work, so as to lose
no time.'
"'All right,' said I; though it was certainly not the object for which
I had come out of my road.
"Accordingly we set to work. No words passed between us; the servant
brought in the tray, Mrs. D---- handed us our tea, which we drank now
and then, and the time flew on rapidly. At length, finding it to be a
quarter to eight--
"'We must stop,' said I, 'for in a quarter of an hour I must be on my
road.'
"'Very well. Let us see how our answers agree with those of the author.'
"It proved that he had correctly solved one more than I had. This
point settled, I said 'Good-bye.'
"'Good-bye. Do come again as soon as you can. The farmers know nothing
whatever about Trigonometry.'
"We parted at the rectory door, and have never met since; nor shall we
ever do so more, as his decease occurred several years ago. During my
long walk to Wellington my mind was chiefly occupied with the mental
isolation of a rural clergyman."
In 1851 he lost his wife, and some years after both his children by her.
In 1853 he married a Lydia Spriggs, a Quakeress.
William Pengelly's scientific explorations may be divided under three
heads. The first was his minute and accurate examination of the
deposits that form Bovey Heathfield, where there are layers of clay,
sand, and lignite. He was able to extract numerous fossil plants, and
thereby to determine the approximate age of the beds.
Next he took up the exploration of ossiferous caves; and he began this
work with that of Brixham, in Windmill Hill.
The floor of this cavern was excavated in successive stages or layers,
starting from the entrance. Bones were found in the stalagmite and in
the first, third, and fourth beds, and worked flints in the third and
fourth beds only; but where the third bed filled the cavern up to the
rock, its upper portion contained neither bones nor flints. The bones
were those of the mammoth, the rhinoceros, the urus, hyæna, cave lion
and cave bear, etc.
But by far the most laborious scientific undertaking of Pengelly's
life was the exploration of Kent's Cavern, near Torquay. This cave was
known as far back as 1824, when a Mr. Northmore, of Cleve, near
Exeter, made a superficial examination of it to ascertain whether it
had been a temple of Mithras, and quite satisfied himself on this
point. He was followed by Sir W. C. Trevelyan and by the Rev. J.
MacEnery. But it was not till 1865 that a complete, scientific, and
exhaustive exploration was undertaken by the British Association,
which made a grant of £100 for the purpose. Mr. Pengelly was appointed
secretary and reporter to the committee for the examination of the
cave and its deposits.
It was found that the floor of the cave exhibited the following
succession: (1) Blocks of limestone sometimes large, clearly fallen
from the roof. (2) A layer of black mould ranging from a few inches to
upwards of a foot in depth. (3) Beneath this came a floor of granular
stalagmite, about a foot in thickness, formed by the drip of water
from the roof. (4) A red loam containing a number of limestone
fragments. (5) A breccia of angular fragments of limestone and pebbles
and sandstone embedded in a reddish sandy calcareous paste.
On June 19th, 1880, the exploration of Kent's Hole was brought to an
end. It was the most complete and systematic investigation of a cavern
that had ever been undertaken, and on a much greater scale than that
at Brixham. A task of this kind is peculiarly exacting. It cannot be
entrusted to workmen; it cannot be left to a committee whose members
pay but intermittent visits: it demands the constant oversight of one
man; and this superintendence was given to Pengelly. The total amount
spent on this exploration was £2000. Pengelly states in one of his
papers that in the fifteen and a quarter years during which the
excavation was in progress he visited Kent's Hole almost daily, and
spent over the work, on an average, five hours a day.
"Above the stalagmite, and principally in the black mould, have been
found a number of relics belonging to different periods, such as
socketed celts, and a socketed knife of bronze, and some small fragments
of roughly smelted copper, about four hundred flint flakes, cores, and
chips, a polishing stone, a ring (made of Kimmeridge clay), numerous
spindle whorls, bone instruments terminating in comb-like ends, pottery,
marine shells, numerous mammalian bones of existing species, and some
human bones, on which it has been thought there are traces indicative of
cannibalism. Some of the pottery is distinctly Roman in character; but
many of the objects belong, no doubt, to pre-Roman times."
What was found beneath the stalagmite belonged to a long anterior
period, where it had lain sealed up for, at the very least, two thousand
years. In this deposit of the cave earth were found a large number of
chips, flakes, and implements of flint and chert, stones that had served
as pounders, and some pins, needles, and harpoons of bone.
Some mammoth bones were found in Kent's Cavern, and those of the cave
lion, the sabre-toothed tiger, the glutton, cave bear, woolly
rhinoceros, horse, reindeer, and beaver.
Mr. W. Pengelly died on March 17th, 1894.
A writer in the _Transactions of the Devonshire Association_ for 1894
says: "For science he lived, and for science he laboured, even long
after the age when the average man seeks rest and quiet. Starting out in
original lines of thought, and untrammelled by traditions of years long
ago, he met with many rebuffs, and the conclusions which he derived from
his investigations and minute and patient inquiry were almost laughed to
scorn. But he adhered to his work and clung to his beliefs, with
enthusiastic devotion, and in the end he lived to see even those who had
originally stoutly opposed his views convinced of their verity, and
their inestimable value to archæological and geological science."
Pengelly himself left this piece of advice to the student:--
"Be careful in scientific inquiries that you get a sufficient number
of perfectly trustworthy facts; that you interpret them with the aid
of a rigorous logic; that on suitable occasions you have courage
enough to avow your convictions; and don't be impatient, or annoyed,
if your friends don't receive all your conclusions, or even if they
call you bad names."
It must be remembered that Pengelly and Sir Charles Lyell were those
who startled English minds with the revelation of the enormous period
of time in which man had lived on the earth, and of the slow
progression of man through vast ages in the development of
civilization. How that he began with the rudest flint implements, and
progressed but very slowly to the perfection of these stone tools; how
that only in comparatively recent times did he discover the use of
metals and pottery; how of metals he first employed bronze, and not
till long after acquired the art of smelting iron and fashioning tools
and weapons of iron. All this startled the world, and men were very
unwilling to accept the doctrine propounded and to acknowledge the
facts on which this doctrine was based.
The _Life of William Pengelly_ was written by his daughter Hester
Pengelly, and published by Murray, 1897. Reference has been made as
well to the obituary notice in the _Transactions of the Devonshire
Association_ for 1894.
SIR CHARLES WILLS, K.B.
Sir Charles Wills belonged to a very ancient and widely ramified family
in Cornwall. The first, however, of whom anything authentic is known was
Anthony Wills, of Saltash, who died in 1576. They were settled at
Landrake, at Morval, Botusfleming, Wyvelscombe, Exeter, and Gorran.
Anthony Wills, of Gorran, youngest son of Digory Wills, of Botusfleming,
had a son, Anthony Wills, who was the father of the Right Hon. Sir
Charles Wills, K.B., general of His Majesty's forces, baptized at Gorran
23rd October, 1666. Sir Charles had two brothers, Richard, of Acombe, in
the county of York, and Anthony, of the Inner Temple, who died in
Ireland 1689. The arms of the family are, _arg_. three griffins passant,
in pale, _sa._, within a bordure engrailed of the last _besantée_.
Sir Charles was a subaltern in 1693, when serving in the Low Countries
under William III. The King went to Holland at the end of March in that
year, and returned on the last day of October, when the armies went into
winter quarters. Wills was in the battle of Landen and at the siege of
Namur. On the 13th October, 1705, he was appointed colonel of the 30th
Regiment, and sailed with it to Spain. He acted as quartermaster-general
to the troops in that country, was present at Llenda, Almanza, and
Saragossa, and was made prisoner in 1711 with the army under General
Stanhope, but was released at the end of the war.
[Illustration: _Lieutenant General Wills Commander of his Maj.^{ties}
Forces in the Action against the Rebells at Preston in Lancashire._]
He had been appointed brigadier-general in 1707, major-general on 1st
January, 1709, and lieutenant-general 16th November, 1710. After the
peace of 1715, being in command of the troops in the Midland district,
he marched northwards to meet the rebels from Scotland, and he and
General Carpenter met them at Preston. Preston was a town both Jacobite
and Roman Catholic; and in it was the army of the Pretender, composed of
Scottish Highlanders and Lancashire gentry and their retainers.
General Carpenter, who had been marching into Scotland, turned back
into Northumberland, and by forced marches had reached Durham, where
he combined with General Wills, who had been sent some time before
into the north to quell the many riots that preluded the insurrection.
Wills concentrated six regiments of cavalry, for the most part newly
raised, but commanded by experienced officers, at Manchester, whence
he moved to Wigan. There it was arranged that Wills should march
straight upon Preston, while Carpenter, advancing in another
direction, should take the insurgents in flank. As the Hanoverians
approached, General Forster, who commanded the Jacobites, gave
satisfactory evidence that he was no soldier; he fell into a fright
and confusion, and betook himself to bed. But Lord Kenmure roused him,
and in a hurried council, where all the gentlemen had a voice, and
where those spoke loudest who knew least of war, a plan of defending
Preston was adopted. But the plan, at least as executed, consisted
merely in throwing up some barricades in the streets and in posting
some men in defence of them. Brigadier Mackintosh either knew not the
ground or his better judgment was overruled; for Preston offered many
advantages as a defensive position which were altogether neglected. In
front of the town was a bridge over the Ribble, that might have been
held by a handful of men, and from the bridge to the town, for a
distance of a mile, the road ran through a hollow between steep banks
for a mile. But river, bridge, and road were all left undefended. When
Wills rode up to the bridge and saw that it was unprotected he could
hardly believe his eyes; and then he concluded that the insurgents
must have abandoned Preston and begun their retreat into Scotland, so
that there would be no fighting that day.
But as he came to the outskirts of the town, he heard a tumultuous
noise within, and saw the barricades that Forster had thrown up, and
was saluted by a shower of bullets. He ordered his dragoons to
dismount and attack two of the barricades. This service was gallantly
performed; but the regulars were sorely galled by a fire from the
houses as well as from the barricades.
As night was falling Wills withdrew his men, after they had suffered
considerable loss. Early on the following morning General Carpenter
came up with a part of his cavalry; and then Forster, who had scarcely
lost a man, and whose force more than doubled that of the regular
troops, lost heart entirely, and without consulting his friends, sent
Colonel Oxburgh to propose a capitulation.
General Wills, irritated at the loss he had sustained on the preceding
evening, seemed at first disposed to reject the proposition altogether;
but at last he agreed "that, if the rebels would lay down their arms and
surrender at discretion, he would protect them from being cut to pieces
by the soldiers, until further orders from the Government."
When Oxburgh's mission was known in the town, and the result of it,
the more warlike portion of the insurgents were indignant and railed
against the coward Forster; and so incensed were they against him
that, according to an eye-witness, if he had ventured into the street,
he would infallibly have been torn to pieces.
The brave Highlanders, seeing that nothing was to be expected from the
Lancastrian boors who had joined them, proposed rushing with sword in
hand and cutting their way through the King's troops. But their
leaders thought this too hazardous a proceeding and counselled
surrender. They gave up Lord Derwentwater and Colonel Mackintosh as
hostages, and induced the clans to lay down their arms and submit.
Including English and Scotch, only seventeen men had been killed in
the defence of Preston.
The Lancastrian peasants got away out of the town, but fourteen
hundred men were made prisoners by a thousand, or at the outside
twelve hundred English horse. Among those captured were Lords
Derwentwater, Widdrington, Nithsdale, Winton, Carnwark, Kenmure,
Nairn, and Charles Murray. There were others, members of ancient and
honourable families of the north, of Scotland, and of Lancashire.
The invasion of England by the Jacobites had thus ended ingloriously.
The noblemen and gentlemen of rank and influence who were taken were
sent to London in charge of Brigadier Panter and a hundred men of
Lumley's Horse.
On January 5th, 1716, Wills was appointed to the colonelcy of the 3rd
Regiment of the line, and on the death of Lord Cadogan was transferred
in August, 1726, to that of the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards.
It was customary at all times for the King's company of the 1st
Guards to fly the Royal Standard, which was carried by that company on
all state occasions. It was of crimson silk throughout, with the
King's cypher and crown in the middle and the arms of the three
kingdoms quartered in the four corners. The staff of this standard was
also more ornamented than that of the other twenty-seven companies.
The lieutenant-colonel's colours were also of crimson silk throughout.
These colours were renewed every seven years.
In 1723 the King went to Hanover, when a camp was formed in Hyde Park
under the command of Lieut.-Colonel Wills. He had been elected M.P.
for Totnes in 1714, and he represented that borough till 1741. In 1725
he was made Knight of the Bath and Privy Councillor.
In 1733, in consequence of the increase of smuggling carried on even
in London, Strickland, Secretary for War, addressed a letter in the
form of a warrant to the Governor of the Tower and to the officers in
command of the Guards, authorizing them to furnish detachments of men
to assist in securing contraband goods; and in consequence of the
increase of the duties to be performed by the men of the Foot Guards,
their establishment was raised in 1739 by ten men per company.
In 1740, as the political horizon on the Continent was threatening,
Walpole had to choose between declaring war with Spain and resigning. He
disapproved of war, but rather than resign declared it. The people of
London were delighted and rang the bells in the steeples. "Ah!" said
Walpole; "they are ringing the bells now; they soon will be wringing
their hands." Camps, in anticipation of hostilities, were ordered to be
formed in various parts of England. In March orders were conveyed to Sir
Charles Wills and others to direct their officers to provide themselves
with tents and everything needful for encamping, and those troops under
Sir Charles were to occupy Hounslow. He superintended the formation of
the camp where the whole of the Horse and Foot Guards were to assemble,
and previous to departing they paraded in Hyde Park, on June 15th, under
Sir Charles, who had a lieutenant-general and a major-general on the
staff with him. Thence he proceeded to the encampment on the Heath
marked out for the purpose.
The twenty-four companies of the 1st Guards under the command of
Colonel Richard Ingoldsby, second major of the regiment, remained
encamped on Hounslow from June 16th for several months--in fact, till
the middle of October.
Sir Charles Wills was now filling the post of General Commander of the
King's forces, but had been failing in health and strength, and soon
became quite unable to take any active work; and he died on December
25th, Christmas Day, 1741, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
He had never been married. He had purchased land at Claxton, and this
and all he had he bequeathed to Field-Marshal Sir Robert Rich, Bart.,
of Roxhill, in Suffolk, Governor of Chelsea Hospital.
LIEUTENANT GOLDSMITH AND THE
LOGAN ROCK
In the parish of S. Levan is a promontory running out into the sea,
once cut off by embankments on the land side, and converted into a
cliff castle, that bears the name of Trereen-Dinas. The headland
presents a succession of natural piles of granite tors, the first of
which, rising perpendicularly, is crowned by the far-famed Logan Rock,
a mass weighing about ninety tons, and so exactly poised upon one
point that any one, by applying his shoulder to it, could make the
whole mass rock sensibly. Not only so, but in a high wind it could be
seen rolling on its pivot.
Doctor Borlase, in his _Antiquities of Cornwall_, 1754, says: "In the
parish of S. Levan, Cornwall, there is a promontory called Castle
Treryn. This cape consists of three distinct groupes of rocks. On the
western side of the middle groupe, near the top, lies a very large
stone, so evenly poised, that any hand may move it to and fro; but the
extremities of its base are at such a distance from each other, and so
well secured by their nearness to the stone which it stretches itself
upon, that it is morally impossible that any lever, or indeed force
(however applied in a mechanical way), can remove it from its present
situation."
This overbold statement, added to the persistence of the people of the
neighbourhood, that no man could throw the Logan Rock from its
balance, stirred up a silly young lieutenant, Hugh Colvill Goldsmith,
of H.M.S. cutter _Nimble_, on the preventive service, lying off the
Land's End on the look-out for smugglers, to attempt to do what the
popular voice declared to be impossible. Lieut. Goldsmith was a nephew
of the famous Oliver Goldsmith, and had consequently some flighty
Irish blood in his veins.
[Illustration: A VIEW OF THE CELEBRATED LOGAN ROCK, NEAR LAND'S END IN
CORNWALL
_Taken after the Rock was displaced on the 8th of April_, 1824]
"On April 8, 1824," says the _Gentleman's Magazine_, "a party of
sailors belonging to H.M. cutter _Nimble_, commanded by Lieut.
Goldsmith, came on shore for the purpose of removing from its
situation that great curiosity the Logging (rocking) Stone; and which
object they were unfortunately enabled to accomplish. This mass of
granite, which is nearly 100 tons weight, was one of the three objects
that excited the curiosity of every visitor to the west part of
Cornwall. It stood on the summit of a mass of rocks at the Land's End,
and was so poised on a natural pivot, that the force which a man could
exert was sufficient to cause it to vibrate. In this situation it
remained from a period anterior to our authentic records, as it is
noticed by our earliest writers, until the _barbarian_ above
mentioned, in sheer wantonness, removed it from its place. This act of
vandalism has excited the greatest indignation at Penzance, as it will
in every part of Cornwall, and throughout the kingdom. It appears that
Lieut. Goldsmith landed at the head of fourteen of his men, and with
the assistance of handspikes and a handscrew, called by the sailors
jack-in-the-box, with much labour and perseverance threw over the
stone. What renders the act most atrocious is, that two poor families,
who derived a subsistence from attending visitors to the stone, are
now deprived of the means of support."
It was found that the handspikes and jack were of no avail. Accordingly
Goldsmith made his fourteen men put their shoulders to the stone and
bring it into such violent oscillation that at last it toppled over.
The Logan Stone, thus displaced, would have rolled down from the tor
on which it had rested and have shot into the sea, had it not happily
been arrested by a cleft in the rock.
The indignation of the people was great, so that the life of Lieut.
Goldsmith was threatened by the sturdy fishermen, should he land. But
the desire to land was taken from him, for the whole county was
roused, and a gathering of the magistrates was summoned to consider
what could be done, and to memorialize the Admiralty against the
perpetrator of this wanton act of mischief.
Happily Mr. Davies Gilbert was at the time in London, and he at once
proceeded to the Admiralty and complained of the vandalism perpetrated,
and requested that the lieutenant should be ordered to replace the block
as found, and that the proper apparatus, capstan, blocks, chains, etc.,
should be furnished by the dockyard at Devonport.
This was undertaken, and orders were despatched to Lieut. Goldsmith
that he must either restore the Logan Rock to its old position, at his
own cost, or forfeit his commission. As the expense would be wholly
beyond his means, Mr. Davies Gilbert very liberally subscribed £150
for the purpose.
A writer, Lieut. L. Edye, in the _Western Antiquary_ for 1887, says:
"In his trouble he appealed to my grandfather (Mr. William Edye) for
advice and assistance, stating that the Admiralty had called upon him
either to replace the stone or forfeit his commission. My grandfather,
ever ready to render assistance to any one in trouble, readily
assisted, and having travelled into Cornwall (as a friend) and seen
the damage done, applied to the Admiralty for the loan of plant and
men. Their Lordships complied with the request, but stipulated that
the cost must be entirely defrayed by Lieut. Goldsmith."
We will now see what Goldsmith had to say for himself. The following
is an extract from a letter written by him to his mother, dated April
24th, 1824:--
"The facts in question, my dear mother, are these: On the 8th of this
month we were off the Land's End, near the spot where the Rock stood.
Our boats were creeping along shore beneath it for some goods which, we
suspected, might be sunk in the sands near it. I took the opportunity of
landing to look at the Logan Rock with my mate; and hearing that it was
not in the power of men to remove it, I took it into my head to try my
skill, and, at this time (half-past four o'clock p.m.), the boats having
finished what they had to do, and it blowing too fresh for them to creep
any longer, I took them and their crew with me, and, having landed at
the foot of the rocks, we all scrambled up the precipice. We had with
us, at first, three handspikes, with which we tried to move the Rock,
but could not do it." By move the rock he really means--displace it. A
child could move it on its pivot. "The handspikes were then laid aside,
and the nine men who were with me took hold of the Rock by the edge, and
with great difficulty set it in a rocking motion, which became so great,
that I was fearful of bidding them try to stop it lest it should fall
back upon us, and away it went unfortunately, clean over upon its side,
where it now rests. There was not an instrument of any kind or
description near the Rock when thrown over, except one handspike, and
that I held in my hand, but which was of no use in upsetting the Rock;
and this is the truth, and nothing but the truth, as I hope for
salvation.
"For my part, I had no intention, or the most distant thought, of
doing mischief, even had I thrown the Rock into the sea. I was
innocently, as my God knows, employed, as far as any bad design about
me. I knew not that the Rock was so idolized in this neighbourhood,
and you may imagine my astonishment when I found all Penzance in an
uproar. I was to be transported at least; the newspapers have traduced
me, and made me worse than a murderer, and the base falsehoods in them
are more than wicked. But here I am, my dear mother, still holding up
my head, boldly conscious of having only committed an act of
inadvertency. Be not uneasy--my character is yet safe; and you have
nothing on that score to make you uneasy. I have many friends in
Penzance: among them the persons most interested in the Rock, and many
who were most violent now see the thing in its true light. I intend
putting the bauble in its place again, and hope to get as much credit
as I have anger for throwing it down."[1]
[Illustration: A VIEW OF THE SOUTHERN PART OF CASTLE TRERYN, SHEWING
THE MACHINERY ERECTED FOR THE PURPOSE OF REPLACING THE LOGAN ROCK]
The letter is disingenuous, and is the composition of a man impudent
and conceited. He knew the estimation in which the Logan Rock was
held, and it was because Borlase had pronounced it impossible of
displacement that he resolved to displace it. He pretends that he
tried to "move" it, whereas from the context it is clear that he
intended to throw it down, and for this purpose had brought the
handspikes. He boasts vaingloriously of his intention of replacing it
and gaining glory thereby, and never says a word about his having
been given by the Admiralty the alternative of doing that or losing
his commission. Nor does he mention the generous help he received from
Mr. Gilbert and his kinsman Mr. Edye.
On November 2nd, in the presence of vast crowds, ladies waving their
handkerchiefs, and men firing _feux de joie_, the block was raised, Mr.
Goldsmith, his natural conceit overcoming his sense of vexation,
superintending the operation. But, although replaced, it was no longer
so perfectly balanced as before. As one wrote who was present at the
time, "it rocked differently, though well enough to satisfy the people."
An account of the feat, written in the true style of the penny-a-liner,
appeared in the _Royal Cornwall Gazette_ of the 6th November:--
"The Logan Rock is in its place, and _logs_ again. Lieut. Goldsmith
has nobly repaired the error of a moment by a long trial of skill and
energy and courage. I say courage, for it was a work of great peril;
and wherever danger was, there he was always foremost--under the
weight of the mass of machinery, and on the edge of the precipice....
I shall content myself with barely observing, as a proof of the skill
of applying the complicated machinery employed, that many engineers
had their doubts whether it could be so applied, and even when
erected, they doubted whether it would be efficient.
"The moment, therefore (on Friday last), when the men took their
stations at the capstans was an anxious one, and when, after twenty
minutes' toil, Lieut. Goldsmith announced from the stage, 'It moves,
thank God!' a shout of applause burst from all who beheld it.
Endeavour to conceive a group of rocks of the most grand and romantic
appearance, forming an amphitheatre, with multitudes seated on the
irregular masses, or clinging to its precipices: conceive a huge
platform carried across an abyss from rock to rock, and upon it three
capstans manned by British seamen. Imagine the lofty masts which are
seen rearing their heads, from which ropes are connected with chains
in many a fold and of massive strength. A flag waves over all: the
huge stone is in the midst. Every eye is directed to the monstrous
bulk. Will it break its chains? Will it fall and spread ruin? Or will
it defy the power that attempts to stir it? Will all the skill and
energy, and strength and hardihood, have been exerted in vain? We
shall soon know: expectation sits breathless; and at last it moves.
"All's well. Such was the first half-hour. In two hours it was
suspended in the air, and vibrated; but art was triumphant, and held
the huge leviathan fast.
"I will not detail the labour of two successive days; but come to the
last moment. At twenty minutes past four on Tuesday afternoon a signal
was given that the rock was in its place and that it logged again.
This was announced by a spectator. But where was Lieut. Goldsmith? Why
does not he announce it? He has called his men around him: his own and
their hats are off: he is addressing them first, and calling upon them
to return thanks to God, through whose aid alone the work had been
done--a work of great peril and hazard--and by His blessing without
loss of life or limb.
"After this appropriate and solemn act, he called upon them to join in
the British sailors' testimony of joy, three cheers; and then turned
with all his gallant men to receive the re-echoing cheers of the
assembled multitude. That Lieut. Goldsmith, whose character--like the
rock--is replaced on a firm basis, may have an opportunity of
exerting his great talents and brave spirit in the service of his
profession, is the sincere wish of all this neighbourhood."
Lieut. L. Edye, in his communication to the _Western Antiquary_ above
quoted, says: "The result of this foolhardy act was that Lieut.
Goldsmith was pecuniarily ruined, whilst the natives of the locality
reaped a rich harvest by pointing out the fallen stone to visitors."
The Cornish are a forgiving people, and it was actually proposed after
the re-erection of the stone to give to Lieut. Goldsmith a dinner and
a silver cup.
Lieut. Hugh Colvill Goldsmith had been born at St. Andrew's, New
Brunswick, 2nd April, 1789, so that he was aged thirty-five when he
performed this prank. He died at sea off S. Thomas, in the West
Indies, 8th October, 1841, without having obtained advancement.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] The letter is given in _Household Words_, 1852, p. 234.
HUGH PETERS, THE REGICIDE
The life and character of this man present unusual difficulties. On
one side he was unduly lauded, he was represented, especially by
himself, as a paragon of all virtues; on the other he was decried with
virulence, his past life raked over, and every scandal brought to the
surface and exposed to public view, and we cannot be at all sure that
all these scandals laid to his charge were true.
We do not know much about his origin, and why he was named Peters; he
was the son of a Thomas Dickwood, _alias_ Peters, and Martha, daughter
of John Treffry of Treffry. This Dickwood, _alias_ Peters, is said to
have been a merchant of Fowey, descended from Dutch ancestors who had
escaped from Antwerp for their adherence to the Reformed religion; and
Hugh Peters was born in 1599. But Dickwood is not a Flemish or Dutch
name. Henry Peters, M.P. for Fowey, who died in 1619, married Deborah,
daughter of John Treffry of Place, in 1610, and had one son, Thomas,
who was thrown into prison by Cromwell for his loyalty to King
Charles. Neither Hugh Peters nor his father with the _alias_ appears
in the well-authenticated pedigree of the family of Peters of Harlyn.
It may be suspected that the father of Hugh Peters was a bastard of
one of the Peters family.
Be that as it may, Hugh Peters was sent to Trinity College,
Cambridge, at the age of fourteen--his elder brother at the time was a
student at Oxford--and he took his degree of B.A. in 1616. For a time
he led a rather wild life and joined a party of comedians. Dr. William
Yonge says that "he joined a common society of players: when, after
venting his frothy inventions, he had a greater call to a higher
promotion, namely, to be a jester, or rather a fool, in Shakespeare's
Company of Players." Shakespeare died in 1616, so this must have been
his company continuing to bear his name. He, however, became converted
by a sermon he heard at S. Faith's, and "deserted his companions and
employments, and returning to his chamber near Fleet Conduit,
continued between hope and despair a year or more."
[Illustration: HUGH PETERS
_From an old engraving_]
He was ordained deacon 23rd December, 1621, and priest 8th June, 1623,
by Mountain, Bishop of London, and took his M.A. degree in 1622. He
was licensed to preach at S. Sepulchre's. He says of himself:--
"To Sepulchre's I was brought by a very strange providence; for
preaching before at another place, and a young man receiving some good,
would not be satisfied, but I must preach at Sepulchre's, once monthly,
for the good of his friends, in which he got his end (if I might not
show vanity), and he allowed thirty pounds per _ann._ to that lecture,
but his person unknown to me. He was a chandler, and died a good man,
and Member of Parliament. At this lecture the resort grew so great, that
it contracted envy and anger; though I believe above a hundred every
week were persuaded from sin to Christ; there were six or seven thousand
hearers, and the circumstances fit for such good work."
How six or seven thousand persons could be got into St. Sepulchre's
Church passes one's comprehension. According to his own account, he
got into trouble through Nonconformity. Ludlow, in his _Memoirs_, says
that Peters "had been a minister in England for many years, till he
was forced to leave his native country by the persecution set on foot,
in the time of Archbishop Laud, against all those who refused to
comply with the innovations and superstitions which were then
introduced into the public worship."
There is, however, another and less creditable explanation. He is said
to have become entangled in an intrigue with a butcher's wife. But how
far this is true, and whether it be malicious scandal, we have no
means of judging.
He had, however, married the widow of Edmund Read, of Wickford, Essex,
and mother of Colonel Thomas Read, afterwards Governor of Stirling,
and a partisan of Monk at the Restoration. Mrs. Edmund Read also had a
daughter, Elizabeth, who in 1635 married the younger Winthrop,
Governor of Connecticut.
From London Peters went to Rotterdam, where, if Yonge may be trusted,
he paid such court to and attempted such familiarities with a Mrs.
Franklyn, that she complained to her husband, whereupon Mr. Franklyn
"entertains Peters with crab-tree sauce."
At Rotterdam he became preacher in the English chapel. What had become
of his wife, whether she remained in England or accompanied him to
Holland, we are not informed.
It will be well here to say a few words on the condition of religion
in England at the time.
The plan of Henry VIII had been to make the Church of England
independent of the Pope, but to remain Catholic. At his death the
Protector and the Duke of Northumberland, after the fall of Somerset,
had encouraged the ultra-Protestants. The churches had been plundered,
chantries and colleges robbed, the Mass interdicted, and the wildest
fanaticism encouraged. As Froude says: "Three-quarters of the English
people were Catholics; that is, they were attached to the hereditary
and traditionary doctrines of the Church. They detested, as cordially
as the Protestants, the interference of a foreign power, whether
secular or spiritual, with English liberty."
A more disgraceful page of history has never been written than that
regarding the two protectorates during the minority of Edward VI. The
currency was debased, peculation was rife. "Amidst the wreck of
ancient institutions," says Froude, "the misery of the people, and the
moral and social anarchy by which the nation was disintegrated,
thoughtful persons in England could not fail to be asking themselves
what they had gained by the Reformation.
"The movement commenced by Henry VIII, judged by its present results,
had brought the country at last into the hands of mere adventurers.
The people had exchanged a superstition which, in its grossest abuses,
prescribed some shadow of respect for obedience, for a superstition
which merged obedience in speculative belief; and under that baneful
influence, not only the higher virtues of self-sacrifice, but the
commonest duties of probity and morality, were disappearing. Private
life was infected with impurity to which the licentiousness of the
Catholic clergy appeared like innocence. The Government was corrupt,
the courts of law were venal. The trading classes cared only to grow
rich. The multitude were mutineers from oppression.... The better
order of commonplace men, who had a conscience, but no special depth
of insight--who had small sense of spiritual things, but a strong
perception of human rascality--looked on in a stern and growing
indignation, and, judging the tree by its fruits, waited their
opportunity for action."
When Mary came to the throne there was an immense outburst of
enthusiasm, the time of the Protestant protectorates was looked back
on as a bad dream. In spite of the fact that England was under an
interdict, the Mass was restored, and no rector or vicar cared a straw
for the Papal bull, nor indeed did Mary, who heard Mass in the chapel
of the Tower, and afterwards in S. Paul's.
If Mary had only accepted the advice tendered to her by Charles V, she
would have reigned as a popular monarch, and have settled the
condition of the Church of England on lines that commended themselves
to nobles, commons, and clergy alike, Catholic but not Papal. But she
had looked too long to the see of Peter as her support, and she
managed completely to alienate the affections of her people. The fires
of Smithfield brought the fanatics who had been discredited in the
former reign into favour once more; and when Elizabeth came to the
throne, and had been deposed by Pope Pius V, and her subjects released
from allegiance to her, and plots formed for her assassination, under
favour of the Pope, the religious sentiment in England was cleft as
with a hatchet--some who loved the religion of their fathers were
constrained against their will and consciences to become Papists, and
others became wild and reckless fanatics in a Puritan direction.
Between these two parties sat the vast bulk of the English people,
looking this way, that way, and deeming all religion foolishness, and
self-interest the only thing to be sought after. All the foundations
of the religious world were out of course. The _via media_ is all very
well in theory and when well trodden, but when it is experimental,
and one road to the right leads to Rome and that to the left to
Geneva, the _via media_ may be taken to lead nowhere, and those who
tread it have to do so uncertainly. A session between two stools is
precarious, and the Church of England had been forced by the folly of
Mary to adopt this position. The consequence was that in the reigns of
Elizabeth and James and Charles I there was no enthusiasm in the
clergy of the Church. The bishops were grasping, self-seeking
worldlings. Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, was the best
among an ignoble crew. When he died, says Froude, "he left behind him
enormous wealth, which had been accumulated, as is proved from a
statement in the handwriting of his successor, by the same
unscrupulous practices which had brought about the first revolt
against the Church. No Catholic prelate in the old easy times had so
flagrantly abused the dispensation system. Every year he made profits
by admitting children to the cure of souls, for money. He used a
graduated scale in which the price for inducting an infant into a
benefice varied with the age, children under fourteen not being
inadmissible, if the adequate fees were forthcoming."[2]
The great majority of the nobility and gentry of England clung to the
doctrine and ceremonies of the ancient Church, and yet were united in
determination to oppose the Papal claims. Benefices in their
presentation were held by priests who said the Communion Service,
which was but the Mass in English, with the ancient vestments and
ritual; and others, next door, were held by men who could hardly be
compelled to wear even the surplice, and who celebrated the Eucharist
but once in the year.
The Church was a hodgepodge of conflicting doctrines and ceremonial.
As Froude says:--
"So long as a single turn of the wheel, a violent revolution, or the
Queen's death, might place a Catholic (Papist) on the throne, the
Established Church held a merely conditional existence. It had no root
in the nation, for every earnest man who was not a Puritan was a
Catholic; and its officers, for the most part, regarded their tenures
as an opportunity for enriching themselves, which would probably be
short, and should in prudence be made use of while it remained.
Benefices were appropriated to laymen, sold, or accumulated upon
favourites. Churches in many places were left unserved, and cobblers
and tailors were voted by the congregations into the pulpits. 'The
bishops,' said Cecil, 'had no credit either for learning, good living,
or hospitality.' The Archbishop of York had scandalized his province
by being found in bed with the wife of an innkeeper at Doncaster.
Other prelates had bestowed ordination 'on men of lewd life and
corrupt behaviour.' The Bishop of Lichfield had made seventy 'lewd and
unlearned ministers, for money,' in one day."[3]
Bishop Barlow, of S. David's, had torn the lead roof off his palace
and the castle at Lawhadden to provide dowers for his daughters, and
would have unroofed his cathedral had he not been prevented by
Elizabeth, because in it was the monument of Edmund, Earl of Richmond,
the father of Henry VII. When translated to Bath and Wells he
destroyed the lady chapel, the finest Perpendicular building in the
West of England, surpassing even Sherborne and Bath, and sold
it--lead, roof, stones, and all. Some of the clergy were mere
temporizers, without convictions, taking their colour from their
patrons, and ready to believe or pretend to believe this or that, as
suited their pockets. The majority were indifferent--ignorant--not
knowing where they stood. Many had thrust their way into Holy Orders
for the sake of the loaves and fishes that might be obtained in the
Established Church, with no work to do, without education, without
zeal, without convictions, and consequently totally without the least
enthusiasm, without any fixed principles.
Laud and the Star Chamber sought to produce conformity by cutting off
ears and slitting noses. But what Laud failed to see was that the only
men in religious England who knew their minds, who had any fixed
principles in religion, were the Papists and the Puritans. What they
should have done, but what probably they could not do, was to inspire
the clergy of the Church with zeal and enthusiasm. But the clergy
could not catch the fire from off the altar; they had entered Orders
for the sake of a rectory, a glebe and tithe, and cared for nothing
else. If one half--nay, one quarter--of the charges brought against
them by the Tryers be true, they were a most unworthy set. In
Elizabeth's reign there had been a difficulty in filling the
benefices, and any Jack and Tom who could gratify the bishop and could
read was ordained and appointed to a benefice. And these were the men
to maintain the doctrine of the Universal Church and Apostolic
tradition against fiery enthusiasts on one side who took their own
reading of Scripture for divine inspiration, and on the other against
the Papists who set their back against the Rock of Peter.
With churches picked bare, with sermons without fire, services
performed without dignity, often with indecorum, without religious
instruction from teachers who did not know what to teach, it is no
wonder that the people turned away to hot-gospellers and tub-thumpers
who, if they could not kindle in them love and charity, could set them
on fire with self-righteousness and religious animosities.
At Rotterdam Peters threw over creed and liturgy of the Church of
England, and leaving the English chapel, became co-pastor with Dr.
William Ames of an Independent meeting-house at Rotterdam, and Ames
died there in his arms. In Holland Peters made the acquaintance of
John Forbes, Professor of Divinity in the University of Aberdeen, a
great Hebraist. In a pamphlet published by Peters in 1646 he says: "I
lived about six years near that famous Scotsman, Mr. John Forbes, with
whom I travelled into Germany, and enjoyed his society in much love
and sweetness constantly; from whom I received nothing but
encouragement, though we differed in the way of our 'churches.'"
After Peters had spent six years in the United Provinces, he suddenly
threw up his pastoral charge and departed for New England, with five
hundred pounds in his pocket, which his friends furnished, and a young
waiting-maid, Mary Morell, whom he shortly after married to one Peter
Folger.
"In this year (1635)," says one account, "came over that famous
servant of Christ, Mr. Hugh Peters. He was called to office by the
Church of Christ at Salem, their former pastor, the Rev. Mr.
Higginson, having ended his labours resting in the Lord."
Salem had been planted but a few years before, the first colonists in
Massachusetts having settled there in 1628. Here he remained for over
seven years, combining his duties as a minister of religion and
trading, so that he was spoken of as "the father of our commerce and
the founder of our trade."
He was also a militant Christian, and was present in the fighting
against the Pequot Indians. Concerning the prisoners taken, Hugh
Peters wrote:--
"SIR,--Mr. Endicott and myself salute you in the Lord Jesus, etc.
[_sic_]. We have heard of a divisioning of women and children in the
Bay, and would be glad of a share, viz. a young woman or girl, and a
boy if you think good. I wrote to you for some boys to Bermuda.
"HUGH PETERS."
These prisoners were used as slaves, and sold just as were the negroes
later. Peters, we are informed, was not friendly to the notion of
converting the Indians to Christianity. He would entertain compunction
about enslaving them should they embrace the gospel. However, money
was sent over from England for this purpose, and--at the suggestion of
Peters. In the _Colonial State Papers_ (Saintsbury, America and West
Indies, 1661-8, p. 86), is this passage: "Through the motion of Hugh
Peters, England contributed nine hundred pounds per annum to
Christianize the Indians of New England; which money found its way
into private men's purses, and was a cheat of Hugh Peters."
In New England Peters married a second wife, in 1639, another widow,
by name Deliverance Sheffield.
In 1641 he left for England, deputed by the colony to act as ambassador
at the Court of Charles I, to endeavour to procure some mitigation of
the excise and customs duties, which weighed heavily on the colonists.
But on reaching England he found that the Crown and the Parliament
were at variance, and he did not care to return to America and to his
wife whom he had left there, but elected to be the stormy petrel of
the rebellion, flying over the land, and, as Ludlow says, advising the
people everywhere to take arms in the cause of the Parliament.
He was appointed chaplain to a brigade of troops sent into Ireland
against the rebels, and he had no hesitation in wielding the sword as
well as the tongue, the latter to animate the soldiers, the former to
extirpate the Baal-worshippers.
Then he hastened to Holland, where he collected thirty thousand pounds
for the relief of the Protestants of Ireland,[4] who had been
plundered and burnt out of their homes by the rebels.
When Peters had effected his various purposes in Ireland, he returned
to England, and made his report of the condition of affairs there to
Sir Thomas Fairfax and Cromwell.
In 1643 he was appointed, or thrust himself forward, to minister to
Chaloner on the scaffold, as that man had been condemned to death for
participation in Waller's plot. So again in 1644 he was on the
scaffold haranguing and praying for and at Sir John Hotham, who
probably would have preferred to die in quiet.
Peters was now engaged as chaplain to the Parliamentary forces, and
especially as a conveyer of despatches, for all which he received
liberal payment. He was with the Earl of Warwick at the taking of
Lyme, and was despatched by that nobleman to London to give an account
of the affair in Parliament. On another occasion he was entrusted with
letters from Sir Thomas Fairfax relating to the capture of Bridgwater,
on which occasion he was voted a sum of £100. In the same year, 1645,
he was commissioned by Sir Thomas to report the taking of Bristol. In
March of that year Hugh Peters was with the army in Cornwall, and
harangued at Bodmin against the Crown and the Church, and exhorted all
good men and true to adhere to the cause of the Parliament.
Peters had uniformly, since he had been in the Low Countries, postured
as an Independent hot and strong. Hitherto the Presbyterians had the
prevailing party in Parliament, and among the discontents in the
country, but now the Independents began to assert themselves and assume
predominance. Their numbers were greatly increased by the return of the
more fiery spirits who had, like Peters, abandoned England during the
supremacy of Laud. Many of these, coming back from New England, had
carried the doctrines of Puritanism to the very verge of extravagance,
and not the least fiery and extravagant of these was Hugh Peters. These
men rejected all ecclesiastical establishments, would admit of no
spiritual authority in one man above another, and allowed of no
interposition of the magistrate in religious matters. Each congregation,
voluntarily united, was an integral and independent church, to exercise
its own jurisdiction. The political system of the Independents was one
of pure republicanism. They aspired to a total abolition of monarchy,
even of the aristocracy, and projected a commonwealth in which all men
should be equal. Sir Harry Vane, Oliver Cromwell, Nathaniel Fiennes, and
Oliver St. John, the Solicitor-General, were regarded as their leaders,
and Hugh Peters as their prophet.
Peters brought the news to Parliament of the capture of Winchester
Castle, for which service he was paid £50. When Dartmouth was taken,
he hastened thence to London, laden with crucifixes, vestments,
papers, and sundry church ornaments, of which he had despoiled the
beautiful church of S. Saviour's; and received in recompense from the
Parliament an estate of which the House had deprived Lord Craven.
When the city of Worcester was besieged in the year 1646 by the
Parliamentary forces, the governor consented to surrender on condition
that passes were given to the soldiers and to the principal
inhabitants. Peters negotiated the surrender.
A Mr. Habingdon, who wrote an account of the siege at the time, and
who died in the ensuing year, relates that on the 23rd July, 1646,
many gentlemen went to six o'clock prayers at the cathedral to take
the last sad farewell of the church services, the organs having been
removed three days before, and that at ten o'clock in the morning the
several regiments marched forth, and all the gentlemen with the
baggage; and that at one o'clock Peters brought them their passes, and
importuned every one individually to pass his word not again to bear
arms against the Parliament.
Hugh Peters was now such a favourite with the Parliament that they
made an order for £100 a year to himself and his heirs for ever; later
an additional £200 per annum was voted to him, and all this in
addition to his pay as preacher, and to sundry grants as bearer of
news from the army. He was also accorded Archbishop Laud's library.
Nevertheless, as he lamented in his _Legacy of a Dying Father_, he
found it impossible to keep out of debt.
There is this in Peters' favour to be urged, that he opposed the
execution of Archbishop Laud, and urged that instead he should be sent
to New England. So he begged the life of Lord George Goring, Earl of
Norwich, and of the Marquis of Hamilton, and again of the Marquis of
Worcester.
The Presbyterians were in force in the House of Commons, but the army
was composed mainly of Independents, worked up to enthusiasm by their
preachers. It had been six months in the field in the summer of 1648,
engaged against the Cavaliers and Scots. The soldiers were thoroughly
incensed against the King, and they had no respect for the
Presbyterians. Their officers resolved on assuming the sovereign power
in their own hands, and bringing the King to justice, and converting
the Government into a commonwealth.
To accomplish this they presented a remonstrance to the Parliament by
six of their council on November 20th, demanding: (1) that the King be
brought to trial for high treason; (2) that a day be set for the
Prince of Wales and the Duke of York to surrender themselves, or to be
declared incapable of government, and that in future no king should be
admitted but by the free election of the people.
The Commons were struck with dismay, and deferred debate on the
remonstrance for ten days. But the officers despatched Colonel Ewes to
the Isle of Wight with a party of horse to secure the King's person,
and to bring him to Windsor, in order to his trial. The officers then,
on November 30th, sent a declaration to the House to enforce their
late remonstrance, and requiring the majority in the House to exclude
from their councils such as would obstruct the King's trial.
On December 2nd Fairfax arrived in London at the head of the army, and
the House of Commons found itself cornered by the armed force.
Nevertheless, they had the courage to vote that the seizure of the
King, and the conveying him a prisoner to Hurst Castle, had been done
without their advice and consent.
The officers were resolved to carry their point. A regiment of horse and
another of foot were placed at the door of the Parliament House, and
Colonel Pride entered and took into custody about forty of the members
who were disposed to obstruct the cause the army sought to pursue, and
denied entrance to about a hundred more; others were ordered to leave;
and the number of those present was thus thinned down to a hundred and
fifty or two hundred, most of them officers of the army.
The secluded members published a protestation against all these
proceedings as null and void till they were restored to their places;
but the Lords and Commons who remained in the House voted their
protestation false, scandalous, and seditious.
The army, having vanquished all opposition, went on to change the
whole form of government; and to make way for it determined to impeach
the King of high treason, as having been the cause of all the blood
that had been spilt in the late war.
There was commotion in the House and in town and the country. In the
House some declared that there was no need to bring the King to trial;
others said that there existed no law by which he could be tried; but
all this was overruled.
Meanwhile Hugh Peters was not idle. In a sermon addressed to the
members of the two Houses a few days before the King's trial he said:
"My Lords, and you noble Gentlemen,--It is you we chiefly look for
justice from. Do you prefer the great Barabbas, Murderer, Tyrant, and
Traitor, before these poor hearts (pointing to the red coats) and the
army who are our saviour?"
In another sermon before Cromwell and Bradshaw he said: "There is a
great discourse and talk in the world, What, will ye cut off the head
of a Protestant Prince? Turn to your Bibles, and ye shall find it
there, Whosoever sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. I
see neither King Charles, Prince Charles, Prince Rupert, nor Prince
Maurice, nor any of that rabble excepted out of it."
Evelyn in his _Diary_, under date 17th January, 1648-9, says: "I heard
the rebel Peters invite the rebel powers met in the Painted Chamber to
destroy his Majesty." Bishop Burnet says: "That he (Peters) had been
outrageous in pressing the King's death with the cruelty and rudeness
of an inquisitor."
Prynne, one of the secluded members, published "A brief memento to the
present unparliamentary junto, touching their present intentions and
proceedings to depose and execute Charles Stuart, their lawful King of
England."
The officers now decided to gain the approval of the
ministers--Presbyterian--in London, or at least persuade them to
remain neutral.
Hugh Peters was selected for the purpose, and he went among them, but
all his efforts were fruitless. They declared unanimously for the
release of the King. He then invited several of them, Calamy,
Whitaker, Sedgwick, etc., to a conference with some of the officers;
but instead of attending, the ministers assembled in Sion College and
drew up "A serious and faithful representation of the judgment of the
ministers of the Gospel within the province of London," dated 18th
January, 1648-9. In this they protested against the coercive measures
adopted toward the Parliament, and bade them beware of proceeding to
extremities. "Examine your consciences, if any number of persons of
different principles from yourselves had invaded the rights of
Parliament, imprisoned the King, and carried him about from place to
place, and attempted the dissolution of the whole government, whether
you would not have charged them with the highest crimes."
This was subscribed by forty-seven ministers.
A second paper, "A vindication of the London ministers from the unjust
aspersions ... as if they had promoted the bringing of the King to
capital punishment," appeared shortly after, signed by fifty-seven
ministers.
Even the Independent preachers shrank from approving the proceedings of
the council of officers in the trial of the King, with the exception of
Hugh Peters and John Goodwin. Some of the Independent ministers in the
country joined the Presbyterians in protesting against them.
But it was all in vain. The King was tried and sentenced to death, and
executed on 30th January, 1649. Rumour had it that the masked
executioner was none other than Peters himself. This he denied,
asserting that on the day of the King's death he was ill in bed. He
had certainly been about and preaching not many days before.
Who the executioner was, was never discovered, and Peters was not
charged as such when tried for his life in 1660.
In _Epulæ Thyestæ_, printed in 1649, Peters is accused of having been
the executioner of King Charles:--
There's Peters, the Denyer, (nay 'tis sad)
He that, disguised, cut off his Master's head;
That godly pigeon of Apostacy
Does buz about his Ante-Monarchy,
His scaffold Doctrines.
But there was an element of kindness in Hugh Peters that induced him
to do gracious acts even to those whom he hated. Whitelocke assures us
that "at a conference between him (Peters) and the King, the King
desired one of his own chaplains might be permitted to come to him" on
the occasion of his execution; he had refused the ministrations of the
Presbyterian divines, "and thereupon the Bishop of London was ordered
to go to his Majesty."
On a former occasion a message from the Queen was allowed to be
transmitted to the King through the instrumentality of Peters.
In his letter to his daughter Peters says: "I had access to the
King--he used me civilly, I, in requital, offered my poor thoughts
three times for his safety." It was an impertinence in the man to
approach the King, when he had stirred up the army to demand his
death, and had raced about London endeavouring to get the approval of
the sentence from the ministers. Although we cannot believe that Hugh
Peters was the executioner of Charles, yet he cannot be acquitted of
being a regicide, on the same principle as the trumpeter in the fable
was condemned to be hanged. His plea that he had not drawn a sword in
the battle was not held to justify him--he had sounded the charge and
summoned to the battle.
Peters was one of the Triers appointed by Cromwell to test the
parochial clergy, and to eject from their livings such as did not
approve themselves to their judgment as fitting pastors to the flock
either by their morals or theological opinions.
Every parishioner who bore a grudge against his pastor was invited to
lay his grievances before the Grand Committee. Lord Clarendon says:
"Petitions presented by many parishioners against their pastors, with
articles of their misdemeanours and behaviours ... were read with
great delight and promptly referred to the Committee about Religion."
The matter of these accusations was for the most part, as Clarendon
informs us, "bowing at the name of Jesus, and obliging the
communicants to the altar, i.e. to the rails which enclosed the
Communion table, to receive the sacrament." What the Puritans desired
was that the minister should walk about the church distributing to the
people in the pews. The observance of all holy days except Sundays had
already been forbidden. A priest who said service on Christmas Day or
Good Friday was certain of deprivation. But the great question put to
each rector or vicar was, "whether he had any experience of a work of
grace" in his heart, and the answer to this determined whether he
should be allowed to hold his cure or be thrust out, apart from all
question of moral fitness. That there were a host of lukewarm,
indifferent men in the ministry, caring little for religion and
knowing little, without fixed convictions, cannot be wondered at,
after the swaying of the pendulum of belief during the last reigns,
and these would be precisely the men who would be able volubly to
assert their experience of divine grace, and abandon doctrines they
never sincerely held and ceremonies about which they cared nothing.
There were vicars of Bray everywhere.
Butler hits off the work of the Triers in _Hudibras_:--
Whose business is, by cunning sight,
To cast a figure for men's light;
To find in lines of Beard and Face
The Physiognomy of Grace;
And by the Sound and Twang of Nose,
If all the sound within disclose;
Free from a crack or flaw of sinning,
As men try pipkins by the ringing.
Peters was next appointed a commissioner for the amending of the laws,
though he had no knowledge of law. He said himself, in his _Legacy_:
"When I was a trier of others, I went to hear and gain experience,
rather than to judge; when I was called to mend laws, I rather was there
to pray than to mend laws." Whitelocke says: "I was often advised with
by some of this committee, and none of them was more active in this
business than Mr. Hugh Peters, the minister, who understood little of
the law, but was very opinionative, and would frequently mention some
proceedings of law in Holland, wherein he was altogether mistaken."
Peters was chaplain to the Protector, and certainly in one way or
another made a good deal of money. Dr. Barwick in his Life says:[5]
"The wild prophecies uttered by his (Hugh Peters') impure mouth were
still received by the people with the same veneration as if they had
been oracles; though he was known to be infamous for more than one
kind of wickedness. A fact which Milton himself did not dare to deny
when he purposely wrote his Apology, for this very end, to defend even
by name, as far as possible, the very blackest of the conspirators,
and Hugh Peters among the chief of them, who were by name accused of
manifest impieties by their adversaries." Bishop Burnet says as well:
"He was a very vicious man."
Peters by his wife--his second wife, Deliverance, the widow of a Mr.
Sheffield--became the father of the Elizabeth Peters to whom he
addressed his _Dying Father's Last Legacy_.
The Dutch having been disconcerted by the defeats of their fleets by
Admiral Blake, and the messengers they had sent to England having
failed to satisfy Cromwell, in the beginning of the year 1653 they
commissioned Colonel Doleman and others to learn the sentiments of the
leading men in Parliament, and to gain over to the cause of peace Hugh
Peters, as Cromwell's influential chaplain. Peters had always
entertained a tenderness for the Dutch, and he interceded on their
behalf, and the Dutch gave him £300,000 wherewith to bribe and
purchase the amity of Parliament and the Protector. That a good share
of this gold adhered to Peters' fingers we may be pretty confident;
and indeed it was intended that it should do so. The attempt, however,
did not succeed, and when the negotiations were broken off, the Dutch
fitted out another fleet under Van Tromp, De Witt, and De Ruyter, and
appointed four other deputies to go upon another embassy to England.
These men arrived on July 2nd, 1658, and "all joined in one petition
for a common audience, praying thrice humbly that they should have a
favourable answer, and beseeching the God of Peace to co-operate."[6]
These ambassadors, like the foregoing, sought out Peters and engaged
his services. After several interviews, peace was at last concluded
2nd May, 1654. In the _Justification of the War_, by Stubbe, is an
engraving that represents the four deputies presenting their humble
petition to Peters.
In 1655 feeling in England was greatly stirred by the account that
reached the country of the persecution of the Waldenses in the valleys
of Piedmont. Cromwell at once ordered a collection for the sufferers
to be made throughout the kingdom, and it amounted to upwards of
£38,000. In this Peters took an active part. Ludlow says: "He was a
diligent and earnest solicitor for the distressed Protestants of the
valleys of Piedmont."
Soon after the affair of the persecuted Waldenses was concluded the
Protector formed an alliance, offensive and defensive, with the
French, in which it was agreed that Dunkirk should be delivered up to
him. In consequence of this agreement six thousand men were sent over
to join the French army, and Peters received a commission to attend
them thither. The town of Dunkirk, in consequence of this league, was
taken from the Spaniards, and on the 26th of June, 1658, was delivered
to Colonel Lockart, Cromwell's ambassador at the French Court.
Lockart wrote the following letter to Secretary Thurloe:--
"DUNKIRK, _July_ 8-18_th_, 1658.
"May it please your Lordship,
"I could not suffer my worthy friend, Mr. Peters, to come away
from Dunkirk without a testimony of the great benefits we have all
received from him in this place, where he hath laid himself forth
in great charity and goodness in sermons, prayers, and
exhortations, in visiting and relieving the sick and wounded; and,
in all these, profitably applying the singular talent God hath
bestowed upon him to the chief ends, proper for an auditory. For
he hath not only showed the soldiers their duty to God, and
pressed it home upon them, I hope with good advantage, but hath
likewise acquainted them with their obligations of obedience to
his Highness's government and affection to his person. He hath
laboured amongst us here with such goodwill, and seems to enlarge
his heart towards us, and care of us for many other things, the
effects whereof I design to leave upon that Providence which has
brought us hither.... Mr. Peters hath taken leave at least three
or four times, but still something falls out which hinders his
return to England. He hath been twice at Bergh, and hath spoke
with the Cardinal (Mazarin) three or four times; I kept myself by,
and had a care that he did not importune him with too long
speeches. He returns, loaden with an account of all things here,
and hath undertaken every man's business. I must give him that
testimony, that he gave us three or four very honest sermons; and
if it were possible to get him to mind preaching, and to forbear
the troubling himself with other things, he would certainly prove
a very fit minister for soldiers. I hope he cometh well satisfied
from this place. He hath often insinuated to me his desire to stay
here, if he had a call. Some of the officers also have been with
me to that purpose; but I have shifted him so handsomely as, I
hope, he will not be displeased. For I have told him that the
greatest service he can do us is to go to England and carry on his
propositions, and to own us in all other interests, which he hath
undertaken with much zeal."
This letter lets us see what were some of Peters' weaknesses. He was
vastly loquacious, so that Colonel Lockart had to see to it that he
did not "importune the Cardinal with too long speeches," and he was
conceited, self-opinionated, and meddlesome, interfering in matters
beyond his province, so that the Colonel was heartily glad to be rid
of him from Dunkirk.
That there was humour in Hugh Peters, not unfrequently running into
profanity, would appear from a work, "The Tales and Jests of Mr. Hugh
Peters, collected into one volume; published by one that hath formerly
been conversant with the Author in his lifetime; dedicated to Mr. John
Goodwin and Mr. Philip Nye." London, 1660.
These appeared in the same year under a different title--"Hugh Peters,
his figaries, or his merry tales and witty jests both in city, town,
and country." It was reprinted by James Caulfield in 1807.
A few of these will suffice.
Peters had preached for two hours; the sands in the hour-glass had
run out. He observed it, and turning it over, said to his hearers:
"Come, let us have another glass!"
Once he preached: "Beware, young men, of the three W's--Wine, Women,
and Tobacco. Now Tobacco, you will say, does not begin with a W. But
what is Tobacco but a weed?"
Another of his jests in the pulpit was, "England will never prosper
till one hundred and fifty are taken away." The explanation is L L
L--Lords, Lawyers, and Levites.
Preaching on the devils entering into the swine (S. Mark v. 23), he
said that the miracle illustrated three English proverbs:--
1. That the devil will rather play at small game than sit out.
2. That those must needs go forward whom the devil drives.
3. That at last he brought his hogs to a fair market.
It was a favourite saying of Peters that in Christendom there were
neither scholars enough, gentlemen enough, nor Jews enough; for, said
he, if there were more scholars there would not be so many pluralists
in the Church; if there were more gentry, so many born would not be
reckoned among them; if there were more Jews, so many Christians would
not practise usury.
One rainy day Oliver Cromwell offered Peters his greatcoat. "No, thank
you," replied his chaplain; "I would not be in your coat for a
thousand pounds."
Discoursing one day on the advantage Christians had in having the
Gospel preached to them--"Verily," said he, "the Word hath a free
passage amongst you, for it goes in at one ear and out at the other."
Preaching on the subject of duties, he said:--
"Observe the three fools in the Gospel, who, being bid to the wedding
supper, every one had his excuse--
"1. He that had hired a farm and must go see it. Had he not been a
fool, he would have seen it before hiring it.
"2. He that had bought a yoke of oxen and must go try them. He also
was a fool, because he did not try them before he bought them.
"3. He that married a wife, and without complement said he could not
come. He too was a fool, for he showed that one woman drew him away,
more than a whole yoke of oxen did the former."
Peters, invited to dinner at a friend's house, knowing him to be very
wealthy and his wife very fat, said at table to his host, "Truly, sir,
you have the world and the flesh, but pray God you get not the devil
in the end."
The copy of the _Tales and Jests of Hugh Peters_ in the British Museum
has notes to some of them, showing that the writer regarded a certain
number as genuine anecdotes of Peters. Most of the others are either
older stories, or else have little or no wit in them.
The above anecdotes are some of those thus noted.
That Hugh Peters was a wag Pepys lets us know, for he speaks of a
Scottish chaplain at Whitehall, after the Restoration, a Dr.
Creighton, whose humour reminded the diarist of Peters: "the most
comical man that ever I heard; just such a man as Hugh Peters."
At the Restoration he was executed as a regicide. He was not directly
implicated in the King's death, and all that he could be accused of
was using words incentive to regicide. That he had been the
executioner was not charged against him. There was no evidence. The
accusations Hugh Peters had to meet were that he had encouraged the
soldiers to cry out for the blood of the King, whom he had likened to
Barabbas; that he had preached against him; that he had accused the
Levites, Lords, and Lawyers--the three L's, or the Hundred and Fifty,
in allusion to the numerical value of the numbers--as men who should
be swept out of the Commonwealth; that he had declared the King to be
a tyrant, and that the office of King was useless and dangerous.
Peters pleaded that he had been living fourteen years out of England,
and that when he came home he found that the Civil War had already
begun; that he had not been at Edgehill or Naseby; that he had looked
after three things only--the introduction into the country of what he
considered to be sound religion, the maintenance of learning, and the
relief of the poor. He further stated that on coming to England he had
considered it his duty to side with the Parliament, and that he had
acted without malice, avarice, or ambition.
The jury, with very little consultation, returned a verdict of guilty,
and he was sentenced to death.
On the 16th October Coke, the solicitor for the people of England who
had acted against the King at his trial, and Hugh Peters, who had
stood and preached that no mercy should be shown him, were to die.
On the hurdle which carried Coke was placed the head of Harrison, who
had been executed the day before--a piece of needless brutality, which
the people who lined the streets indignantly resented. On the scaffold
Coke declared that for the part he had borne in the trial of Charles I
he in no way repented of what he had done. Hugh Peters was made to
witness all the horrible details of Coke's execution, the hanging, the
disembowelling. He sat within the rails which surrounded the scaffold.
According to Ludlow: "When this victim (Coke) was cut down and brought
to be quartered, one Colonel Turner called to the sheriff's men to bring
Mr. Peters to see what was doing; which being done, the executioner came
to him, and rubbing his bloody hands together, asked him how he liked
that work. He told him he was not at all terrified, and that he might do
his worst, and when he was on the ladder he said to the sheriff, 'Sir,
you have butchered one of the servants of God before my eyes, and have
forced me to see it, in order to terrify and discourage me; but God has
permitted it for my support and encouragement.'"
A man upbraided Peters with the King's death. "Friend," said Peters,
"you do not well to trample upon a dying man: you are greatly
mistaken; I had nothing to do in the death of the King."
As he was going to the gallows, he looked about him and espied a man
with whom he was acquainted, and to him he gave a piece of money,
having first bent it; and he desired the man to carry that piece of
gold to his daughter as a token, and to assure her that his heart was
full of comfort, and that before that piece would reach her hand he
would be with God in glory. Then the old preacher, who had lived in
storms and whirlwinds, died with a quiet smile on his countenance.
That a considerable portion of the community regarded the execution of
the regicides as a crime, and those who suffered as martyrs, would
appear from the pains taken to vilify their memory when dead, and
attempts made to justify their execution.
The authorities for the life of Hugh Peters are mainly: _Memoirs of
Edmund Ludlow_, 1771; B. Whitelocke's _Memorials of English Affairs_,
1732; Rushworth's _Collections_, 1692; Bishop Burnet's _History of His
Own Time_, 1724; John Thurloe's _Collection of State Papers_, 1742; J.
B. Felt's _Ecclesiastical History of New England_, 1855; Benjamin
Brooke's _Puritans_, 1813, Vol. III; _The Trial of Charles I and of Some
of the Regicides_, in Murray's Family Library, 1832; the Rev. Samuel
Peters' _A History of the Rev. Hugh Peters_, New York, 1807; _An
Historical and Critical Account of Hugh Peters_ (with portrait), London,
1751, reprinted 1818; Felt (Joseph B.), _Memoir, a Defence of Hugh
Peters_, Boston, 1857; Colomb (Colonel), _The Prince of Army Chaplains_,
London, 1899; also Gardiner's (S. R.) _History of the Commonwealth_, and
the _Dictionary of National Biography, passim_.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Froude, _Hist. of England_, X, p. 410.
[3] _Ibid._, XI, 471-2.
[4] We have only Peters' own word for this sum. It was probably much
less.
[5] _Vita_, J. Barwick, London, 1721.
[6] Stubbe, _Justification of the War_, 1673, pt. ii. p. 83.
JAMES POLKINGHORNE,
THE WRESTLER
James Polkinghorne, the noted champion wrestler of Cornwall, was the
son of James Polkinghorne, who died at Creed, 18th March, 1836. The
wrestler James was born at S. Keverne in 1788, but there is no entry
of his baptism in the parish register.
Cornish wrestling was very different from that in Devon--it was less
brutal, as no kicking was allowed. The Devon wrestlers wore boots soaked
in bullock's blood and indurated at the fire, and with these hacked the
shins of their opponents, who wore as a protection _skillibegs_, or
bands of hay twisted and wrapped round their legs below the knee.
I have so fully described the wrestling in my _Devonshire Characters
and Strange Events_, that it is unnecessary here to go over the same
ground more than cannot be helped.
There was a Cornish jingle that ran as follows:--
Chacewater boobies up in a tree,
Looking as whish'd as ever could be,
Truro men, strong as oak,
Knock 'em down at every stroke--
that had reference to the wrestling matches.
In 1816 Polkinghorne, who had become the innkeeper of the "Red Lion,"
S. Columb Major, wrestled with Flower, a Devonshire man of gigantic
stature, and threw him. Then Jackman, another Devonian, challenged
Polkinghorne, and he was cast over the head of the Cornishman,
describing the "flying mare." But the most notable contest in which
Polkinghorne was engaged was with Abraham Cann, the Devonshire
champion. The match was for £200 a side, for the best of three
back-falls; and it took place on October 23rd, 1826, on Tamar Green,
Morice Town, Plymouth, in the presence of seventeen thousand
spectators. I have quoted the account already in my _Devonshire
Characters_, but cannot omit it here.
[Illustration: JAMES POLKINHORN, THE FAMOUS CORNISH WRESTLER
_From a drawing as he appeared in the Ring at Devonport on Monday,_ 23
_October_, 1826, _when he threw Abm. Cann, the Champion of Devonshire,
for a stake of_ 200 _sovereigns_]
"Tamar Green, Devonport, was chosen for the purpose, and the West was
alive with speculation when it was known that the backers meant
business. On the evening before the contest the town was inundated,
and the resources of its hotels and inns were taxed to the utmost.
Truculent and redoubtable gladiators flocked to the scene--kickers
from Dartmoor, the recruiting-ground of the Devonshire system, and
bearlike huggers from the land of Tre, Pol, and Pen--a wonderful
company of tried and stalwart experts. Ten thousand persons bought
tickets at a premium for seats, and the hills around swarmed with
spectators. The excitement was at the highest possible pitch, and
overwhelming volumes of cheering relieved the tension as the rivals
entered the ring--Polkinghorne in his stockings, and Cann with a
monstrous pair of shoes whose toes had been baked into flints. As the
men peeled for action such a shout ascended as awed the nerves of all
present. Polkinghorne had been discounted as fat and unwieldy, but the
Devonians were dismayed to find that, great as was his girth, his arms
were longer, and his shoulders immensely powerful. Three stone lighter
in weight, Cann displayed a more sinewy form, and his figure was knit
for strength, and as statuesquely proportioned. His grip, like
Polkinghorne's, was well known. No man had ever shaken it off when
once he had clinched; and each enjoyed a reputation for presence of
mind and resource in extremity beyond those of other masters of the
art. The match was for the best of three back-falls, the men to catch
what hold they could; and two experts from each county were selected
as sticklers. The feeling was in favour of Cann at the outset, but it
receded as the Cornishman impressed the multitude with his muscular
superiority. Repeatedly shifting their positions, the combatants
sought their favourite 'holds.' As soon as Cann caught his adversary
by the collar, after a contending display of shifty and evasive form,
Polkinghorne released himself by a feint; and, amid 'terrible shouts
from the Cornishmen,' he drove his foe to his knees.
"Nothing daunted, the Devonian accepted the Cornish hug, and the efforts
of the rivals were superb. Cann depended on his science to save him, but
Polkinghorne gathered his head under his arm, and lifting him from the
ground, threw him clean over his shoulder, and planted him on his back.
The very earth groaned with the uproar that followed; the Cornishmen
jumped by hundreds into the ring; there they embraced their champion
till he begged to be released; and, amid cheers and execrations, the
fall was announced to have complied with the conditions. Bets to the
amount of hundreds of pounds were decided by this event.
"Polkinghorne now went to work with caution, and Cann was conscious that
he had an awkward customer to tackle. After heavy kicking and attempted
hugging, the Cornishman tried once more to lift his opponent; but Cann
caught his opponent's leg in his descent, and threw him to the ground
first. In the ensuing rounds both men played for wind. Polkinghorne was
the more distressed, his knees quite raw with punishment, and the
betting veered in Cann's favour. Then the play changed, and Cann was
apparently at the mercy of his foe, when he upset Polkinghorne's balance
by a consummate effort, and threw him on his back by sheer strength--the
first that the sticklers allowed him. Cann next kicked tremendously; but
although the Cornishman suffered severely, he remained 'dead game,' and
twice saved himself by falling on his chest.
"Disputes now disturbed the umpires, and their number was reduced to
two. In the eighth round Polkinghorne's strength began to fail, and a
dispute was improvised which occasioned another hour's delay. With
wind regained and strength revived, the tenth round was contested with
absolute fury; and, taking kicking with fine contempt, Polkinghorne
gripped Cann with leonine majesty, lifted him from the earth in his
arms, turned him over his head, and dashed him to the ground with
stunning force. As the Cornishman dropped on his knee the fall was
disputed, and the turn was disallowed. Polkinghorne then left the ring
amid a mighty clamour, and by reason of his default the stakes were
awarded to Cann. The victor emerged from the terrific hug of his
opponent with a mass of bruises, which proved that kicking was only
one degree more effective than hugging.
"A more unsatisfactory issue could hardly have been conceived, and the
rival backers forthwith endeavoured to arrange another encounter.
Polkinghorne refused to meet Cann, however, unless he discarded his
shoes."[7]
Various devices were attempted to bring them together again, but they
failed. Each had a wholesome dread of the other.
An account of the contest was written as a ballad and was entitled "A
New Song on the Wrestling Match between Cann and Polkinghorne," that
was to be sung to the tune "The Night I Married Susy," or else to "The
Coronation."
Full accounts are to be found in _The Sporting Magazine_, London,
LXVII, 165-6; LXIX, 55-6, 215, 314-16, 344. In the _Annual Register_,
chronicle 1826, 157-8.
Polkinghorne died at S. Columb, on September 15th, 1854, at the age of
seventy-six, twenty-eight years after his match with Cann. He was
buried on September 17th.
FOOTNOTE:
[7] Whitfeld, _Plymouth and Devonport in War and Peace_, Plymouth, 1900.
HENRY TRENGROUSE, INVENTOR
Helston is a quaint old town, once of far more importance than at
present. It possessed an old castle, that has now disappeared. It was
one of the six stannary towns, and prior to 1832 returned two members
to Parliament. It still glories in its "Furry Day," when the whole
town goes mad, dancing, in spite of Methodism. It has on some of its
old house-gables pixy seats, and it had a grammar school that has had
notable masters, as Derwent Coleridge, and notable scholars, as Henry
Trengrouse. It is the key and capital to that wonderful district, rich
in geological and botanic and antiquarian interest, the Lizard.
The great natural curiosity of Helston is Loe Pool, formed by the
Comber, a small river, penned back by Loe Bar, a pebble-and-sand ridge
thrown up by the sea. The sheet of water lying between wooded hills
abounds in trout, and white swans float dreamily over the still water.
The banks are rich with fern, and yellow, white, and pink
mesembryanthemum. Formerly the pool rose till it overflowed the lower
parts of the town; now a culvert has been driven through the rocks to
let off the water as soon as it has attained a certain height.
Henry Trengrouse was born at Helston, 18th March, 1772, the son of
Nicholas Trengrouse (1739-1814), and of Mary, his wife, who was a
Williams.
The family had been long among the freeholders of Helston, and
possessed as well a small estate, Priske, in the parish of Mullion;
but the family name is taken from Tref-an-grouse, the House by the
Cross, in the same parish.
Henry was educated in Helston Grammar School, and became, by trade, a
cabinet-maker.
On 29th December, 1807, when he was aged thirty-five, a rumour spread
through the little town that a large frigate, H.M.S. _Anson_, had been
driven ashore on Loe Bar, about three miles distant. Mr. Trengrouse
and many others hastened to the coast and reached the bar.
The _Anson_, forty-four guns, under the command of Captain Lydiard,
had left Falmouth on Christmas Eve for her station off Brest as a
look-out ship for the Channel Fleet.
A gale from the W.S.W. sprang up, and after being buffeted about till
the 28th, with the wind increasing, the captain determined to run to
port. The first land they made was the Land's End, which they mistook
for the Lizard, and only discovered their mistake when the cry of
"Breakers ahead!" was heard from the man on the look-out. They were
now embayed, and in face of the terrible storm it was impossible to
work off, so both cables were let go. The _Anson_ rode to these till
the early morning of the 29th, when they parted, and the captain, in
order to save as many lives as possible, decided to beach her on the
sand off Loe Pool. A tremendous sea was running, and as she took the
beach only sixty yards from the bar, she was dashed broadside on, and
happily for the poor fellows on board, heeled landwards. Seas
mountains high rolled over her, sweeping everything before them. Then
her masts went by the board, her main mast forming a floating raft
from the ship almost to the shore, and over this scrambled through
the maddened waves most of those who were saved.
[Illustration: HENRY TRENGROUSE, THE INVENTOR OF THE ROCKET APPARATUS
FOR SAVING LIFE AT SEA
_From an oil painting by Opie the younger, reproduced by permission of
Mr. H. Trengrouse_]
It was a terrible sight to witness for the hundreds of spectators who
had by this time collected on the beach, but it was almost impossible
for them to render any assistance.
At last, when all hands seemed to have left the ship, two
stout-hearted Methodist local preachers--Mr. Tobias Roberts, of
Helston, and Mr. Foxwell, of Mullion--made an attempt to reach her, so
as to see if any one remained on board. They succeeded, and were soon
followed by others, who found several people, including two women and
as many children. The women and some of the men were safely conveyed
ashore, but the children were drowned. There were altogether upwards
of a hundred drowned, including the captain, who stood by the frigate
to the last. The exact number was never known, as many of the soldiers
deserted on reaching the shore.
The survivors salved a good deal from the wreck, amongst which were
watches, jewellery, and many articles of considerable value. They were
placed all together in a bedroom of the old inn at Porthleven, with a
soldier with drawn sword on guard. One of the beams that bent under
such an unusual weight may be seen bowed to this day. A local militia
sergeant was soon afterwards sent to Helston in charge of a wagon-load
of these valuable goods, and when half-way to his destination was
accosted by a Jew, who offered him £50 in exchange for his load. "Here
is my answer," said the sergeant, presenting a loaded pistol at his
head, and the fellow hurriedly took his departure.
Much indignation was raised at the time by the way in which the victims
of the disaster were buried. They were bundled in heaps into large pits
dug in the cliff above, without any burial service being performed over
them. It was customary everywhere at that time for all bodies washed
ashore to be interred by the finder at the nearest convenient spot. But
as a result of the indecent methods of burial of the _Anson_ victims, an
Act of Parliament was framed by Mr. Davies Gilbert, and passed on 18th
June, 1808, providing "suitable interment in churchyards and parochial
burying-grounds" for all bodies cast up by the sea.
The _Anson_ was a sixty-four gun frigate cut down to a forty-four, and
had seen much service. Among many fights, she figured in Lord Rodney's
action on 12th April, 1782, formed part of the fleet which repulsed
the French squadron in an attempt to land in Ireland in 1796, helped
in the seizure of the French West Indies in 1803, and in 1807 took
part in the capture of Curaçao from the Dutch. It was not long after
her return from this latter place that she left Falmouth for the
cruise on which she met her fate.[8]
In 1902 the hull of the _Anson_, after having been submerged for
ninety-five years, came to light again. She was found by Captain
Anderson of the West of England Salvage Company, whose attention had
been directed to the wreck by a Porthleven fisherman. Unfortunately at
the time the weather was so stormy that Captain Anderson could not
proceed with any efforts of salvage, and with the exception of one
visit of inspection the interesting relic was left untouched. But in
April, 1903, with a bright sky and a light breeze from the north-east,
he proceeded to the spot and inspected the remains. The hull of the
vessel was not intact, and several guns were lying alongside. One of
these, about 10 ft. 6 in. long, Captain Anderson secured and hoisted
on to the deck of the _Green Castle_ by means of a winch, and
afterwards conveyed it to Penzance. It was much encrusted. Amongst the
mass of _débris_ also raised were several cannon-balls.
But to return to Henry Trengrouse, who had stood on the beach watching
the wreck, the rescue of some and the perishing of others.
Drenched with rain and spray, and sick at heart, Henry Trengrouse
returned to his home, and was confined to his bed for nearly a week,
having contracted a severe cold. The terrible scene had made an
indelible impression on his mind, and he could not, even if he had
wished it, drive the thought away. Night and day he mused on the means
whereby some assistance could be given to the shipwrecked, some
communication be established between the vessel and the shore.
He was a great friend of Samuel Drew, whose life was devoted to
metaphysics, and it was perhaps the contrast in the two minds that
made them friends--one an idealist, the other practical.
Trengrouse had a small competence, besides his trade, and he devoted
every penny that he could spare to experiments, first in the
construction of a lifeboat, but without satisfactory results.
The King's birthday was celebrated at Helston with fireworks on the
green; and as Henry Trengrouse looked up at the streak of fire rushing
into the darkness above and scattering a shower of stars, it occurred to
him, Why should not a rocket, instead of wasting itself in an exhibition
of fireworks, do service and become a means of carrying a rope to a
vessel among the breakers? When a communication has been established
between the wreck and the shore, above the waves, it may become an
aerial passage along which those in distress may pass to safety.
Something of the same idea had already occurred to Lieutenant John Bell
in 1791, but his proposal was that a shot with a chain attached to it
should be discharged from a mortar. Captain George William Manby had his
attention drawn to this in February, 1807, and in August of the same
year exhibited some experiments with his improved life-preserving mortar
to the members of the Suffolk House Humane Society. By the discharge of
the mortar a barbed shot was to be flung on to the wreck, with a line
attached to the shot. By means of this line a hawser could be drawn from
the shore to the ship, and along it would be run a cradle in which the
shipwrecked persons could be drawn to land.
Manby's mortar was soon abandoned as cumbrous and dangerous; men were
killed during tests; notwithstanding which he was awarded, £2000. The
great merit of Trengrouse's invention was that the rocket was much
lighter than a shot from a mortar, and was, moreover, more portable,
and there was a special line manufactured for it that would not kink,
nor would it snap, because the velocity of the rocket increased
gradually, whereas that from a discharge of a mortar was sudden and so
great that the cord was frequently ruptured.
The distinctive feature of Trengrouse's apparatus consisted of "a
section of a cylinder, which is fitted to the barrel of a musket by a
bayonet socket; a rocket with a line attached to its stick is so
placed on it that its priming receives fire immediately from the
barrel";[9] whereas a metal mortar could not be conveyed to the cliff
or shore opposite the scene of disaster without being drawn in a
conveyance by horses, and where there was no road with the utmost
difficulty dragged over hedges and ploughed fields by men. Not only
so, but a shot discharged by Captain Manby's mortar was liable to
endanger life. Wrecks generally happened in the dark, and then the
shot would not be visible to those on the wreck. But Trengrouse's
rocket would indicate its track by the trail of fire by which it was
impelled, and could be fired from either the ship or the shore.
Trengrouse expended £3000 on his experiments, and sacrificed to this
one object--that of saving life--his capital, his business, and his
health. He cut off the entail on Priske, which had belonged to the
family for several generations, and sold it to enable him to pursue
his experiments. There was much that was pathetic in his life: there
were the long and frequent journeys to London from Helston, four days
by coach, sometimes in mid-winter and in snowstorms, with the object
of inducing successive Governments to adopt the rocket apparatus,
meeting only with discouragement. Nor was this all. After all his own
means had been exhausted, he received a legacy of £500 under a
brother's will, and this sum he at once devoted to further endeavours
with H.M. Government for the general adoption of his rocket apparatus.
The Russian ambassador now stepped forward and invited Trengrouse to
S. Petersburg, where he assured him that, instead of rebuffs, he would
experience only the consideration due to him for his inventions. But
Trengrouse's reply was, "My country first"; and that country allowed
him, after the signal services he had rendered to humanity--to die
penniless.
His original design was to supply every ship with a rocket apparatus;
as vessels were almost invariably wrecked _before_ the wind, the line
might the more easily be fired from a ship than from the shore.
Trengrouse once met Sir William Congreve, who also claimed to be the
inventor of the war-rocket; and Trengrouse said to him in the course
of their discussion, "As far as I can see, Sir William, your rocket is
designed to _destroy_ life; mine is to save life; and I do claim to be
the first that ever thought of utilizing a rocket for the saving of
human lives."[10]
Trengrouse moreover invented the cork jacket or "life preserver." This
was a success, and has never been improved on. It has been the means
of saving many hundreds of lives. He also built a model of a lifeboat,
that could not be sunk, and was equal to the present lifeboats of the
Royal Lifeboat Association in all respects except the "self-righting"
principle. It was not until February 28th, 1818, after many journeys
to London, and much ignorant and prejudiced objection that he had to
contend against, such as is found so usual among Government officials,
that Trengrouse was able to exhibit his apparatus before Admiral Sir
Charles Rowley. A committee was appointed, and on March 5th it
reported favourably on the scheme.
In the same year the Committee of the Elder Brethren of Trinity House
reported in high terms on the invention, and recommended that "no
vessel should be without it."
Thereupon Government began to move slowly; in the House the matter was
discussed and haggled over. One speaker exclaimed: "You are guilty of
sinful negligence in this matter, for while you are parleying over
this invention and this important subject, thousands of our fellow-men
are losing their lives."
[Illustration: THE WRECK OF THE "ANSON"
_From a sketch by H. Trengrouse_]
At last Government ordered twenty sets of the life-preserving rockets,
but afterwards resolved on making the apparatus itself, and paid
Trengrouse the sum of £50, the supposed amount of profit he would have
made on the order. Fifty pounds was all his ungrateful country could
afford to give him. In 1821, however, the Society of Arts pronounced
favourably on his apparatus, and presented Trengrouse with their
silver medal and a grant of thirty guineas.
Through the Russian ambassador, the then Czar sent him a diamond ring,
in consideration of the great advantage his apparatus had proved in
shipwrecks on the Baltic and the Black Sea. Even this he was constrained
to pledge, that he might devote the money to his darling project.
With these acknowledgments of his services he had to rest contented;
but ever the news of lives having been saved through his invention was
a solace to an even and contented mind.
Henry Trengrouse died at Helston on February 19th, 1854.
As he lay on his death-bed with his face to the wall, he turned about,
and with one of his bright, hopeful smiles said to his son, "If you live
to be as old as I am, you will find my rocket apparatus all along our
shores." They were his last words; in a few minutes he had passed away.
The rocket apparatus is along the shores at 300 stations, but not, as
he had hoped, on board the vessels. He had despaired of obtaining
that, yet that is what he aimed at principally.
In April, 1905, owing to the loss of the _Kyber_ on the Land's End
coast, questions were asked in the House of Commons relative to
wireless telegraphy between the lighthouses and the coast. On that
occasion one of the most valuable suggestions was made by a shipping
expert, who considered that the Board of Trade should make it
compulsory that a light rocket apparatus should be carried by all
vessels, so that, when in distress, if near the coast, the crew could
send a rocket ashore. This marine engineer said: "On shore the rockets
must be fired by practised men, such as coastguards, because they have
to strike a small object; but on a vessel they have only to hit the
land, and if people are about, the line will quickly be seized and
made fast. At present, too, horses and wagons have to be used, and
sometimes it is difficult to find a road leading down to the spot from
which help must be rendered. Probably for twenty pounds an appliance
could be kept on board a vessel which would send a line ashore in less
time and with more certainty than at present. When a vessel is being
blown ashore, I have seen rockets fired from the land return like a
boomerang to the cliff on account of the strength of the gale. In my
judgment, mariners should assist in their own salvation."
On this Mr. H. Trengrouse, grandson of the inventor, wrote to the
_Cornishman_, 24th April, 1905:--
"Your suggestion in the _Cornishman_ of the 15th instant ... that all
vessels should be compelled by the Board of Trade to carry this
apparatus, is very practical, and should, and I trust may, be soon
adopted.
"It may interest your readers to learn that the inventor, my
grandfather, the late Mr. Henry Trengrouse, of Helston, urged this
upon successive Governments without any encouragement whatever, and I
on two occasions have also suggested it to the principals of the
Marine Department of the Board of Trade, who have informed me of a
strong opinion always entertained, that on the occasion of wreck,
there would probably not be any one on board possessing sufficient
knowledge of the use of the apparatus to render it of any value; which
seems very strange indeed, and might be readily obviated by, at least,
the captain and officers of vessels being instructed in its
use--surely simple enough. My grandfather devoted much time to make it
so; and the advantage of an appliance for use on board is so palpable,
and the loss of life during many years by its absence so considerable,
that it is extremely gratifying to observe a renewed and increasing
interest in the subject, which I hope, Sir, as you state, being so
important, may now be kept to the fore.
"I am, Sir,
"Your obedient servant,
"H. TRENGROUSE."
That this admirable letter to the _Cornishman_ should at the time
produce no effect on the Board of Trade is what every one who has had
any dealings with that Board would predicate.
At length, however, some goading has roused that obstructive, inert body
into inquiring into this matter. I read in the _Daily Express_ of 27th
January, 1908: "The question whether the carrying of rockets for
projecting lifelines should be made compulsory on all British ships is
being investigated by a special committee appointed by the Board of
Trade. One witness before the committee said that he had seen fifty men
drowned within sixty yards of the shore in a gale, and that all might
have been saved had the vessel been equipped with line-throwing guns."
So--after the lapse of eighty-six or seven years, and the loss of
thousands of lives that might have been saved had not the Board of
Trade been too inert to move in the matter--an inquiry has once more
been instituted. Let us hope that after this inquiry the matter may
not be allowed to fall again into neglect.
That the rocket _fired from the shore_ has been already the means of
saving lives, the following report on it made to the Board of Trade,
for the year ending 30th June, 1907, will testify:--
"During the year ended as above, 268 lives were saved by means of the
life-saving apparatus, that is to say, 127 more than the number saved
by the same means during the previous year, and 67 more than the
average for the previous ten years. The total number of lives saved by
the life-saving apparatus since 1870 is 8924. This number does not
include the large number of lives saved by means of ropes and other
assistance from the shore."
After the loss of the _Berlin_, belonging to the Great Eastern
Company, in 1907, the attention of the Dutch Government was called to
the advantage of having the rocket apparatus _on board ship_, and
legal instructions were drafted, making it obligatory upon all vessels
of over two hundred tons gross to carry rocket apparatus.
Henry Trengrouse's noble life was a failure in so far as that it
brought him no pecuniary results--covered him with disappointment,
reduced him to poverty. He received, in all, for his life's work, and
the sacrifice of fortune and the landed estate of his ancestors, £50
from Government, £31 10_s._ from the Society of Arts, and a diamond
ring that in his time of need he was constrained to pawn, and which he
was never able to redeem.
Russell Lowell puts these lines into the mouth of Cromwell, in his
_Glance behind the Curtain_:--
My God, when I read o'er the bitter lives
Of men whose eager hearts are quite too great
To beat beneath the cramp'd mode of the day,
And see them mocked at by the world they love,
Haggling with prejudice for pennyworths
Of that reform which this hard toil will make
The common birthright of the age to come--
When I see _this_, spite of my faith in God,
I marvel how their hearts bear up so long;
Nor could they, but for this same prophecy,
This inward feeling of the glorious end.
Henry Trengrouse married Mary, daughter of Samuel and Mary Jenken,
19th November, 1795. She was born at S. Erth, 9th September, 1772, and
died at Helston, 27th March, 1863. By her he had one son only who
reached manhood, Nicholas Trevenen Trengrouse, who died at the age of
seventy-four; and one daughter, Jane, who married Thomas Rogers,
solicitor, of Helston; Emma, who married a Mr. Matthews; and two, Mary
and Anne, who died unmarried, the first at the age of eighty, the
latter at that of ninety-four.
To Mr. Henry Trengrouse, the son of Mr. Nicholas T. Trengrouse, I am
indebted for much information relative to his grandfather, as also to
a lecture, never published, delivered in 1894 by the Rev. James
Ninnis, who says in a letter to Mr. H. Trengrouse, junior: "Most of
the detail I have taken from notes of my father, dated 1878; he got
them from conversation with your respected father."
Mr. J. Ninnis' grandfather had stood on the beach by the side of Henry
Trengrouse, watching the wreck of the _Anson_.
A portrait of the inventor, by Opie the younger, is in the possession
of the family at Helston, as is also the picture of the wreck of the
_Anson_ sketched at the time by Mr. Trengrouse. For permission to
reproduce both I am indebted to the courtesy of the grandson of the
inventor.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] _Morning Leader_, 29th October, 1902.
[9] There is an engraving of it in the _Annual Report of the Society
of Arts_ for 1821. The life-preserving rocket was exhibited on the
Serpentine before the Duke of Clarence, afterwards King William IV, on
May 28th, 1819. People looked on as at some firework display, and
nothing came of it.
[10] Trengrouse's apparatus fitted into a case 4 ft. 3 in. long by 1
ft. 6 in. wide.
THE BOTATHAN GHOST
IN April, 1720, Daniel Defoe published his _History of the Life and
Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell_. In August a second edition was
called for, of which some copies included a pamphlet that had been
printed in June: "Mr. Campbell's Pacquet, for the Entertainment of
Gentlemen and Ladies," and this "Pacquet" contains "A Remarkable
Passage of an Apparition, related by the Rev. Dr. Ruddle, of
Launceston, in Cornwall, in the year 1665."
It has been assumed that this ghost story was a bit of invention of
the lively imagination of Defoe. Mrs. Bray in her _Trelawny of
Trelawne_ stated that the story could not be true, as no such a name
as Dingley, which was that of the ghost, was known in Launceston. As
it happened, James Dingley had been instituted to the vicarage of the
very parish of South Petherwin, in which the ghost appeared, in the
same reign in which the apparition occurred, and he assisted Ruddle in
his ministrations in Launceston, and the name occurs to this day in
the town and neighbourhood. In fact, Dingley, Pethebridge, and Dingley
are bankers there.
In the same heedless fashion Cyrus Redding wrote in 1842 that the
story was "told with so much simplicity of truth that it is difficult
to believe that the tale is not, as novel writers say, 'founded on
fact.'" And he goes on to state: "No clergyman of the name of Ruddle
had been incumbent in Launceston for two hundred years past, at least
in S. Mary's Church." Yet the monument of Parson Ruddle is in the
church, and he occupied the living from 1663 to his death in 1699.
[Illustration: "PARSON RUDALL"
_From a painting in the possession of the Rev. S. Baring Gould_]
Again, Samuel Drew, in his _History of Cornwall_, blunders as to the
locality, making the apparition appear in the parish of Little
Petherick, near Padstow.
Next Mr. Hawker, of Morwenstow, fabricated a "Diurnall" of Ruddle,
which adopted Drew's error, and by altering the date made the story as
given by him disagree with the facts as they stand upon record.
The "Remarkable Passage of an Apparition" was no invention of Defoe;
it was a genuine narrative written by the hand of John Ruddle himself.
This has been conclusively demonstrated by the late Mr. Alfred Robbins
in the _Cornish Magazine_, 1898.
John Ruddle, M.A. of Caius College, Cambridge, was instituted to the
vicarage of Altarnon on May 24th, 1662; and the incumbency of S. Mary
Magdalen, Launceston, becoming vacant by the ejection of the
Independent intrusive pastor, Ruddle was appointed to it, and "began
his ministry at Launceston on y^e Feast of Our Saviour's Nativity,
1663." At the same time he received the appointment to the Launceston
Free School as master.
Now it so fell out that he was invited on the 20th June, 1665, to
preach a funeral sermon on the occasion of the burial of John Eliot at
South Petherwin. John was the son of Edward Eliot, of Trebursey, who
was the third son of Sir John Eliot, who died in the Tower of London.
After the conclusion of the service, Parson Ruddle was leaving the
church, when an "ancient gentleman" addressed him, and, Ruddle says,
"With an unusual importunity almost forced against my humour to see
his house that night; nor could I have rescued myself from his
kindness, had not Mr. Eliot interposed and pleaded title to me for
the whole of the day." However, Ruddle promised to call on the old
gentleman, whose name was Bligh, and whose house was Botathan.
The Blighs were an ancient family, well connected and owning a good
estate, but Botathan was not a house of any pretence, and it is now
the dwelling of a farmer, and has not the appearance of having been
the residence of a county family.
On the following Monday John Ruddle went to Botathan, where he partook
of an early dinner, and a neighbouring parson had been invited to meet
him.
"After dinner this brother of the coat undertook to show me the
gardens, when, as I was walking, he gave me the first discovery of
what was mainly intended in all this treat and compliment. First he
began to tell the infortunity of the family in general, and then gave
an instance in the youngest son. He related what a hopeful, sprightly
lad he lately was, and how melancholic and sottish he was now grown.
Then did he with much passion lament that his ill-humour should so
incredibly subdue his reason; for, says he, the poor boy believes
himself to be haunted with ghosts, and is confident that he meets with
an evil spirit in a certain field about half a mile from this place as
often as he goes that way to school.
"In the midst of our twaddle the old gentleman and his lady came up to
us. Upon their approach, and pointing me to the arbour, the parson
renews the relation to me; and they (the parents of the youth)
confirmed what he said, and added many minute circumstances. In fine,
they all three desired my thoughts and advice in the affair."
Neither the parents nor the parson who made this communication
believed that the boy saw anything; they shrewdly suspected that he
was lazy, and made the apparition an excuse for not going to school.
Ruddle, however, saw the boy, and was convinced of his sincerity. "He
told me with all naked freedom, and a flood of tears, that his friends
were unkind and unjust to him, neither to believe nor pity him; and
that if any man (making a bow to me) would but go with him to the
place, he might be convinced that the thing was real.
"'This woman which appears to me,' saith he, 'lived a neighbour here
to my father, and died about eight years since; her name, Dorothy
Dingley. She never speaks to me, but passeth by hastily, and always
leaves the footpath to me, and she commonly meets me twice or three
times in the breadth of the field.
"'It was about two months before I took notice of it, and though the
shape of the face was in my memory, yet I did not recall the name of
the person, but I did suppose it was some woman who lived there about,
and had frequent occasion that way. Nor did I imagine anything to the
contrary before she began to meet me constantly, morning and evening,
and always in the same field (the Higher Brown Quartils), and
sometimes twice or thrice in the breadth of it.
"'The first time I took notice of her was about a year since, and when
I first began to suspect it to be a ghost, I had courage enough not to
be afraid, but kept it to myself a good while, and only wondered very
much about it. I did often speak to it, but never had a word in
answer. Then I changed my way, and went to school the under Horse
Road, and then she always met me in the narrow lane, between the
Quarry Park and the Nursery, which was worse. At length I began to be
terrified at it, and prayed continually that God would either free me
from it or let me know the meaning of it. Night and day, sleeping and
waking, the shape was ever running in my mind, when, by degrees, I
grew pensive, inasmuch that it was taken notice of by all our family;
whereupon, being urged to it, I told my brother William of it, and he
privately acquainted my father and mother, and they kept it to
themselves for some time.
"'The success of this discovery was only this: they did sometimes
laugh at me, sometimes chide me, but still commanded me to keep to my
school, and put such fopperies out of my head. I did accordingly go to
school often, but always met the woman by the way.'"
When Parson Ruddle had heard this story he promised the boy to go with
him next morning to the field, and went with the lad to the hall,
whither the parents and the parson, the Rev. Samuel Williams, came to
meet them from the parlour. They began at once to importune Ruddle
about the interview and to pass remarks on the boy, who fled from them
to his own room. The vicar of Launceston begged them to restrain their
curiosity till he had made further investigation into the matter.
"The next morning, before five o'clock, the lad was in my chambers,
and very brisk. I arose and went with him. The field he led me to I
guessed to be twenty acres, in an open country, and about three
furlongs from any house. We went into the field, and had not gone
above a third part before the spectrum, in the shape of a woman, with
all the circumstances he had described her to me the day before, met
us and passed by. I was a little surprised at it, and though I had
taken up a firm resolution to speak to it, yet I had not the power,
nor indeed durst I look back; yet I took care not to show any fear to
my pupil and guide, and therefore telling him that I was satisfied in
the truth of his complaint, we walked to the end of the field and
returned, nor did the ghost meet us that time above once.
"At our return the gentlewoman watched to speak with me. I gave her a
convenience, and told her that my opinion was that her son's complaint
was not to be slighted, yet that my judgment in his case was not
settled. I gave her caution that the thing might not take wind, lest
the whole country should ring with what we had yet no assurance of.
"In this juncture of time I had business which would admit no delay,
wherefore I went to Launceston that evening, but promised to see them
again next week. Yet I was prevented by an occasion which pleaded a
sufficient excuse. However, my mind was upon the adventure. I studied
the case, and about three weeks after went again, resolving, by the
help of God, to see the utmost.
"The next morning, the 27th day of July, 1665, I went to the haunted
field by myself, and walked the breadth of the field without any
encounter. I returned and took the other walk, and then the spectrum
appeared to me, much about the same place where I saw it before, when
the young gentleman was with me. In my thoughts it moved swifter than
the time before, and about ten feet distant from me on my right hand,
insomuch that I had not time to speak, as I had determined with myself
beforehand.
"The evening of this day, the parents, the son, and myself being in
the chamber where I lay, I propounded to them our going all together
to the place next morning, and after some asseveration that there was
no danger in it, we all resolved upon it. The morning being come, lest
we should alarm the servants, they went under the pretence of seeing a
field of wheat, and I took my horse and fetched a compass another
way, and so met at the stile we had appointed.
"Thence we all four walked leisurely into the Quartils, and had passed
above half the field before the ghost made appearance. It then came
over the stile just before us, and moved with that swiftness that by
the time we had gone six or seven steps it passed by. I immediately
turned head and ran after it, with the young man by my side; we saw it
pass over the stile by which we entered, but no farther. I stepped
upon the hedge at one place, he at another, but could discern nothing;
whereas I dare aver that the swiftest horse in England could not have
conveyed himself out of sight in that short space of time. Two things
I observed in this day's appearance. (1) That a spaniel dog, who
followed the company unregarded, did bark and run away as the spectrum
passed by; whence it is easy to conclude that it was not our fear or
fancy which made the apparition. (2) That the motion of the spectrum
was not by steps and moving of the feet, but a kind of gliding, as
children upon ice or a boat down a swift river.
"But to proceed. This ocular evidence clearly convinced, but strangely
frightened, the old gentleman and his wife, who knew this Dorothy
Dingley in her lifetime, were at her burial, and now plainly saw her
features in this present apparition.
"The next morning, being Thursday, I went out very early by myself, and
walked for about an hour's space in meditation and prayer in the field
next adjoining the Quartils. Soon after five I stepped over the stile
into the disturbed field, and had not gone above thirty or forty paces
before the ghost appeared at the farther stile. I spake to it with a
loud voice, whereupon it approached, but slowly, and when I came near
it moved not. I spake again, and it answered, in a voice neither very
audible nor intelligible. I was not in the least terrified, and
therefore persisted until it spake again and gave me satisfaction. But
the work could not be finished at this time; wherefore the same evening,
an hour after sunset, it met me again near the same place, and after a
few words on each side it quickly vanished, and neither doth appear
since, nor ever will more to any man's disturbance. The discourse in the
morning lasted about a quarter of an hour.
"These things are true, and I know them to be so, with as much
certainty as eyes and ears can give me; and until I can be persuaded
that my senses do deceive me about their proper object, and by that
persuasion deprive myself of the strongest inducement to believe the
Christian religion, I must and will assert that these things in this
paper are true."
It must be noted that Defoe in his printed account omits the names of
the family of Bligh, and that he changes Dorothy Dingley into Mrs.
Veale. Parson Ruddle's original MS. is not in existence; it was
probably given to Defoe; but a copy is preserved made by the son of
the Rev. John Ruddle. Defoe was in Launceston acting as a spy for the
minister Harley in August, 1705, and at that time he must have got
hold of the MS. After the signature "John Ruddle" at the end of the
narrative and the date is the sentence: "This is a copy of w^t I found
written by my father and signed John Ruddle. Taken by me, William
Ruddle," who had become vicar of South Petherwin in 1695, and who
became subsequently incumbent also of S. Thomas-by-Launceston. This
copy bears the following attestation: "The readers may observe y^t I
borrowed the remarkable passage of y^e grandson of John Ruddle who had
it from his Uncle William Ruddle. I think I'm exact in its
transcription. I well know the s^d John Ruddle to have had (and I
daresay deserved) the character of a learned and eminent Divine, and I
also knew his son y^e sayd William Ruddle, a Divine whose character
was so bright y^t I have no room to add to its lustre, and I hereby
certify y^t I copyed this from y^e very hand-writing of the sayd
William Ruddle. _Quinto die Februarii Anno Dni_, 1730. James Wakeman."
As Mr. Robbins says: "The completeness of the body of proof of the
Ruddle authorship leaves nothing therefore to be desired."
Parson John Ruddle eventually became prebend of Exeter, and held the
vicarage of Altarnon along with that of Launceston to his death.
Ruddle does not state that the boy Bligh was his pupil at Launceston
Free School, but one does not see to what other school he can have
gone, and the readiness with which the lad opened his heart to him
leads to the notion that they had some previous acquaintance. His way
to Launceston would be over the common, on which stand three barrows,
to the road at Penfoot, where he would strike the road. When he
endeavoured to avoid the ghost he took the Under Horse Road between
Quarry Park and the Nursery. The Quarry is still visible with a pool
in it, and a stream flowing into it that rises on the moor where he
saw the ghost, and Under Horse Road still bears its name. The lad
endeavoured to take a short cut, though not as short as across the
Higher Brown Quartils, to reach the Launceston road without having to
go through South Petherwin village.
Parson Ruddle does not give the Christian name of the boy who saw the
ghost, and we are thrown into perplexity at once.
The "ancient gentleman" may have been Thomas Bligh of Botathan, Esq.,
but he was aged no more than fifty-three. Colonel Vivian's pedigree of
the Blighs in his _Visitation of Cornwall_ is most unsatisfactory.
Thomas Bligh was buried at South Petherwin, April 10th, 1692. There is
no entry in Vivian's pedigree of Walter Bligh, gentleman, who was
buried January 29th, 1667-8. Besides, there are many entries of an
Edmund Bligh and Katherine, his wife, and their children. Thomas Bligh
seems to have lived at one time at S. Martin's-by-Looe. Dr. Lee in his
_Glimpses of the Supernatural_ calls Dorothy Dingley, Dorothy Durant;
but on what authority I do not know. There is an entry in the South
Petherwin register of the burial of Dorothy Durant, widow, 1st May,
1677, but according to the story of the boy, Dorothy Dingley died in
or about 1657. Unfortunately the South Petherwin registers do not go
back beyond August, 1656, but there is no entry in them in 1656 or
1657 of the burial of Dorothy Dingley.
The Dingleys had been settled in Lezant and Linkinhorne from 1577, and
owned the place Hall in the latter parish; but they had connections in
Worcestershire; and Dorothy was the youngest daughter of Francis
Dingley, baptized at Cropthorne, in the latter county, in 1596. She
married Richard, son of George Durant, of Blockly, Worcestershire. As
no further trace of her can be found in the register there, it is not
unfair to suppose that having kinsfolk in Cornwall she may have
journeyed there, and both were buried at South Petherwin, Dorothy
Durant, as already stated, in 1677. She was then aged eighty-seven.
She cannot have been the ghost. But was the ghost that of her mother,
a Dorothy, who came to South Petherwin with her, and died there about
the year 1655? We cannot tell, as we do not know her mother's
Christian name. Dr. Lee clearly confused the Dorothy Durant with the
Dorothy Dingley, the ghost.
The Rev. P. T. Pulman, vicar of South Petherwin, writes to me: "In
December, 1896, a labourer died here, aged seventy-two. For upwards of
forty years he had worked at Botathan. He told me that one of the
fields was called the Higher Brown Park (he did not know the name of
Quartells) until the field was ploughed up. He told me there was a
little path in it which they called old Dorothy Dinglet's [_sic_]
path, and that they used to frighten the farm apprentices with stories
about her, but he had never met her himself. The farm has been sold of
recent years. There is a part of the old house left used for a cider
cellar. They call it Dorothy Dingley's chamber."
The Rev. James Dingley was vicar of South Petherwin from 1682 until
1695. He was born 1655, just ten years before the apparition was seen
by young Bligh.
Authorities: A. Robbins, "A Cornish Ghost Story," in the _Cornish
Magazine_, 1898; A. Robbins, _Launceston Past and Present_, 1889. The
portrait of the Rev. John Ruddle is in my possession. The descendants
of Parson Ruddle or Rudall are still on the land, but are in a humble
condition.
JOHN COUCH ADAMS,
ASTRONOMER
Thomas Adams was a small tenant farmer in the parish of Laneast, at
Lidcott, renting under John King Lethbridge, Esq., of Tregeare, in
Laneast. He married Tabitha Knill Grylls, of Stoke Climsland, who
inherited a very little land in this latter parish.
Laneast lies on the Inny River--that is to say, the village with its
church occupies the southern slope of Laneast Down that falls to this
beautiful stream. But Lidcott lies on the north side of the down, that
rises to eight hundred feet above the sea, one long swelling mass of
moor brown with heather, save when in August it blushes like a modest
girl, the heather all a-rose with flower.
For three miles the highway from Camelford to Launceston crosses this
moor, one white strip drawn through a mass of umber. At night the
sheep that grazed on the down would lie on the warm road, and many a
time have the coach-horses stumbled over them in the night.
On this road, about the year 546, S. Samson was pursuing his way from
Padstow, where he had landed, to Southill. He had with him a wagon
drawn by horses he had brought with him from Ireland, and as he
proceeded over the down he was aware of music and dancing on the
left-hand side of the road in the direction of Tregeare, and he found
that the heathen people were having a festival about a rude upright
stone. He stopped, harangued them, condemned their idolatrous
practice, and with his own hand cut a cross upon the stone.
It is possible that this is the very rude stone cross that still
stands on the slope of the moor above Lidcott.
John Couch, son of Thomas Adams and Tabitha, was born at Lidcott on
5th January, 1819, but no notice of his baptism occurs in the parish
register at Laneast. Possibly he may have been taken to Egloskerry.
He received his early education at a dame's school in his native
parish; but was early employed by his father to tend the sheep on
Laneast Down. It was then and there, on that great upland stretch of
moor, with a vast horizon about him, that, lying in the heather and
looking up into the sky, the mystery of the heavenly firmament laid
hold of him. He soon learned to distinguish the planets from the fixed
stars; he watched the rising and the setting of the constellations,
Charles's Wain revolving nightly about the extremest star in what he
called the tail of the Plough; Orion with his twinkling belt and
curved sword, "louting on one knee."
To the west and south stood up against the evening glow the ridge of
the Bodmin Moors, Brown Willy, Rough Tor, Kilmar, and Caradon. To the
north nothing interrupted the view, for there lay the vast Atlantic;
and on stormy nights the boom of its waves might be heard from that
highway over the down. To the east and south-east the far-off range of
Dartmoor, blue as a vein in a girl's temple, on a summer day.
Many a chiding did John Couch get from his father for being out late
at night upon the moor; the old farmer was unable to understand what
the attraction was which drew the lad from home and from his
supper, to be out, either lying on the road or leaning against the
old granite cross, star-gazing. Happily Mrs. Adams had a simple book
on astronomy that had belonged to her father, and this her son Jack
devoured, and now he began to understand something of the motions of
the heavenly bodies. He established a sundial on the window-sill of
the parlour, and constructed out of cardboard an apparatus for taking
the altitude of the sun.
[Illustration: I C ADAMS A M
_From the collection of Mrs. Lewis Lane_]
His father, finding that his inclinations were not for farm work, sent
him to study with a relative of his mother, the Rev. P. Couch Grylls,
who had a school at Devonport, but later moved to Saltash. All his
spare time John Couch spent in reading astronomical works, which he
obtained from the library of the Mechanics' Institute; he drew maps of
constellations and computed celestial phenomena. A day long to be
remembered by him as one of the happiest in his life was that in which
he obtained a look through a telescope at the moon. "Why," he
exclaimed, "they have Brown Willy and Rough Tor up there!"
His account of a solar eclipse viewed at Devonport through a small
spyglass got into print in a London paper. After three weeks' watching
he caught sight of Halley's Comet on 16th October, 1839.
His father now with considerable effort arranged to send him to the
University of Cambridge, and he entered S. John's College as a poor
sizar in October, 1839; he graduated as Senior Wrangler in 1843, and
was first Smith's prizeman, and soon elected Fellow and appointed
tutor of his college.
At the age of twenty-two he was struck with the disturbance in the
course of the planet Uranus, and he perceived that this must be due to
the attraction possessed by some other planet, as yet unseen and
unsuspected, that produced these perturbations. How this led to the
discovery of the planet Neptune shall be told from the _Reminiscences_
of Caroline Fox:--
"1847, October 7th.--Dined at Carclew, and spent a very interesting
evening. We met Professor Adams, the Bullers, the Lord of the Isles,
and others. Adams is a quiet-looking man, with a broad forehead, a
mild face, and an amiable and expressive mouth. I sat by him at
dinner, and by general and dainty approaches got at the subject on
which one most wished to hear him speak. He began very blushingly, but
went on to talk in most delightful fashion, with large and luminous
simplicity, of some of the vast mathematical facts with which he is so
conversant. The idea of the reversed method of reasoning, from an
unknown to a known, with reference to astronomical problems dawned on
him when an undergraduate, with neither time nor mathematics to work
it out. The opposite system had always before been adopted. He, in
common with many others, conceived that there must be a planet to
account for the disturbances of Uranus; and when he had time he set to
work at the process, in deep, quiet faith that the fact was there, and
that his hitherto untried mathematical path was the one which must
reach it; that there were no anomalies in the universe, but that, even
here, and now, they could be explained and included in a higher law.
The delight of working it out was far more than any notoriety could
give, for his love of pure truth is evidently intense, an inward
necessity, unaffected by all the penny trumpets of the world. Well, at
length he fixed his point in space, and sent his mathematical evidence
to Airy, the Astronomer Royal, who locked the papers up in his desk,
partly from carelessness, partly from incredulity, for it seemed to
him impossible that a man whose name was unknown to him should strike
out a new path in mathematical science with any success. Moreover,
his theory was, that if there were a planet, it would not be
discovered for one hundred and sixty years; that is, until two
revolutions of Uranus had been accomplished. Then came Leverrier's
equally original, though many months younger, demonstration; Gull's
immediate verification of it by observation; and then the other
astronomers were all astir. Professor Adams speaks of those about whom
the English scientific world is so indignant in a spirit of Christian
philosophy, exactly in keeping with the mind of a man who has
discovered a planet. He speaks with warmest admiration of Leverrier,
specially of his exhaustive method of making out the orbits of the
comets, imagining and disproving all tracks but the right one--a work
of infinite labour. If the observer could make out distinctly but a
very small part of a comet's orbit, the mathematician would be able to
prove what its course had been through all time. They enjoyed being a
good deal together at the British Association Meeting at Oxford,
though it was unfortunate for the intercourse of the fellow-workers
that one could not speak French nor the other English. He had met with
very little mathematical sympathy, except from Challis, of the
Cambridge Observatory; but when his result was announced there was
noise enough and to spare. He was always fond of star-gazing and
speculation, and is already on the watch for another planet. Burnard
told us that when Professor Adams came from Cambridge to visit his
relatives in Cornwall he was employed to sell sheep for his father at
a fair. He is a most good son and neighbour, and watchful in the
performance of small acts of thoughtful kindness."
"1863, July 2nd.--Have just returned from a visit to Professor Adams at
Cambridge. He is so delightful in the intervals of business, enjoying
all things, large and small, with a boyish zest. He showed and
explained the calculating machine (French, not Babbage's), which saves
him much in time and brain, as it can multiply or divide ten figures
accurately. We came upon an admirable portrait of him at S. John's
College, before he accepted a Pembroke Fellowship and migrated thither."
The first mention of the name of Adams as the discoverer of Neptune was
by Sir John Herschel, in the _Athenæum_, on October 3rd, 1845. And a
letter from Professor Challis to that journal on 17th October described
in detail the transactions between Adams, Airy, and himself. Naturally
enough the French were highly incensed at the notion that an obscure
Englishman had forestalled Leverrier in the discovery, and Airy himself
was annoyed at his own negligence in not looking into the memoir by
Adams, and took up the matter with some personal feeling. It was
certainly startling to realize that the Astronomer Royal had had in his
possession data that would have enabled the planet to be discovered
nearly a year before Leverrier had, by a different course of argument
and calculation, arrived at the conclusion that there existed a planet
which was the disturbing element in the orbit of Uranus. As to Adams
himself, he had not a particle of conceit and pride in him; he did not
care to have his name proclaimed as the discoverer. Forty years later,
he said simply and characteristically that all he had wished for was
that English astronomers to whom he had communicated the result of his
calculations, pointing out the precise spot in the sky where a planet
was to be found, would have taken the trouble to turn their telescopes
upon that point and discover the planet, so that England might have had
the full credit of the discovery.
[Illustration: EX·LIBRIS
JOHANNIS COUCH ADAMS]
His long-suppressed investigation was not laid before the Royal
Astronomical Society till November 13th, 1846.
The publication, of course, stirred up much controversy, and the
scientific world was divided into Adamite and anti-Adamite factions.
Adams refused knighthood in 1847, and declined the office of
Astronomer Royal on Airy's retirement in 1881.
John Couch had a brother, William Grylls, also a man of some eminence
in the scientific world. He was born at Lidcott 12th February, 1836,
and became Professor of Natural Philosophy and of Astronomy in King's
College, London.
I was wont, when at Cambridge, to meet John Couch Adams at Professor
Challis', and also at the house of the Rev. Harvey Goodwin, afterwards
Bishop of Carlisle. Professor Adams took some notice of me, as coming
from his neighbourhood, though not on the Cornish side of the Tamar.
He was a small man, as simple as a child in many things. Indeed, he
struck me forcibly by his great modesty and sweetness of manner. He
loved a joke, and would laugh heartily over the very smallest. He
loved children, and would play with them in their little games with
infinite zest. Professor Glaisher, whom I also knew, wrote of him:
"Adams was a man of learning as well as a man of science. He was an
omnivorous reader, and his memory was exact and retentive. There were
few subjects upon which he was not possessed of accurate information.
Botany, geology, history, and divinity, all had their share of his
care and attention."
He was always happy to return to his humble father's farm; and after
he was a noted man, on one of these occasions the old man sent him
into Launceston with a drove of sheep to sell them in the market. He
complied cheerfully, but how he succeeded in selling them I have not
heard. This is the incident alluded to by Caroline Fox given above.
"The honours showered upon him," wrote Dr. Donald MacAlister, "left
him as they found him--modest, gentle, and sincere." He was not a man
who ever asserted himself.
He married in 1863 Eliza, daughter of Haliday Bruce, of Dublin. He
died of a sudden illness on January 21st, 1892, and was buried in S.
Giles' Churchyard, Cambridge.
Portraits were taken of him by Mogford in 1851, and by Herkomer in 1888;
both are in the Combination-room of St. John's College, Cambridge.
A biographical notice of him was prefixed by Professor Glaisher to his
scientific works, edited by W. G. Adams, in 1896-8.
See also A. De Morgan's _Budget of Paradoxes_, 1872, and the
_Mechanics' Magazine_, 1846.
DANIEL GUMB
All that is really known of this eccentric character is found in a
letter of J. B. to Richard Polwhele, dated September, 1814. His
correspondent says:--
"Daniel Gumb was born in the parish of Linkinhorne, in Cornwall, about
the commencement of the last century, and was bred a stone-cutter. In
the early part of his life he was remarkable for his love of reading
and a degree of reserve even exceeding what is observable in persons
of studious habits. By close application Daniel acquired, even in his
youth, a considerable stock of mathematical knowledge, and, in
consequence, became celebrated throughout the adjoining parishes.
Called by his occupation to hew blocks of granite on the neighbouring
commons, and especially in the vicinity of that great natural
curiosity called the Cheesewring, he discovered near this spot an
immense block, whose upper surface was an inclined plane. This, it
struck him, might be made the roof of a habitation such as he desired;
sufficiently secluded from the busy haunts of men to enable him to
pursue his studies without interruption, whilst it was contiguous to
the scene of his daily labour. Immediately Daniel went to work, and
cautiously excavating the earth underneath, to nearly the extent of
the stone above, he obtained a habitation which he thought
sufficiently commodious. The sides he lined with stone, cemented with
lime, whilst a chimney was made by perforating the earth at one side
of the roof. From the elevated spot on which stood this extraordinary
dwelling could be seen Dartmoor and Exmoor on the east, Hartland on
the north, the sea and the port of Plymouth on the south, and S.
Austell and Bodmin Hills on the west, with all the intermediate
beautiful scenery. The top of the rock which roofed his house served
Daniel for an observatory, where at every favourable opportunity he
watched the motions of the heavenly bodies, and on the surface of
which, with his chisel, he carved a variety of diagrams, illustrative
of the most difficult problems of Euclid, etc. These he left behind
him as evidences of the patience and ingenuity with which he
surmounted the obstacles that his station in life had placed in the
way of his mental improvement.
"But the choice of his house and the mode in which he pursued his
studies were not his only eccentricities. His house became his chapel
also; and he was never known to descend from the craggy mountain on
which it stood, to attend his parish church or any other place of
worship.
"Death, which alike seizes on the philosopher and the fool, at length
found out the retreat of Daniel Gumb, and lodged him in a house more
narrow than that which he had dug for himself."
Bond in his _Topographical and Historical Sketches of the Boroughs of
East and West Looe_, 1873, describes the habitation of Daniel Gumb as
seen by him in 1802:--
"When we reached Cheesewring--our guide first led us to the house of
Daniel Gumb (a stone-cutter), cut by him out of a solid rock of granite.
This artificial cavern may be about twelve feet deep and not quite so
broad; the roof consists of one flat stone of many tons weight;
supported by the natural rock on one side, and by pillars of small
stones on the other. How Gumb formed this last support is not easily
conceived. We entered with hesitation lest the covering should be our
gravestone. On the right-hand side of the door is 'D. Gumb,' with a date
engraved 1735 (or 3). On the upper part of the covering stone, channels
are cut to carry off the rain, probably to cause it to fall into a
bucket for his use; there is also engraved on it some geometrical device
formed by Gumb, as the guide told us, who also said that Gumb was
accounted a pretty sensible man. I have no hesitation in saying he must
have been a pretty eccentric character to have fixed on this place for
his habitation; but here he dwelt for several years with his wife and
children, several of whom were born and died here. His calling was that
of a stone-cutter, and he fixed himself on a spot where materials could
be met with to employ a thousand men for a thousand years."
[Illustration: _J. Farington, R.A., del. Letitia Byrne, sculp._
THE CHEESE-WRING]
The Rev. Robert S. Hawker wrote an account of Daniel Gumb for _All the
Year Round_ in 1866, and this has been reprinted in _Footsteps of
Former Men in Cornwall_.
He pretends that when he visited the Cheesewring in 183-, there still
existed fragments of Daniel Gumb's "thoughts and studies still
treasured up in the existing families of himself and his wife." And he
gives transcripts from these, and also from what must have been a
diary. But Mr. Hawker embroidered facts with so much detail drawn from
his own fancy, that his statements have to be taken with a very large
pinch of salt.
It must be remembered, in his justification, that his stories of
Cornish Characters were intended as magazine articles to amuse, but
without any purpose of having them regarded as strictly biographical
and historical. They were brief historical romances, and were not
intended to be taken seriously.
I will give but one quotation, and the reader can judge for himself
therefrom whether it does not look like an extract "made in
Morwenstow." Mr. Hawker says:--
"On the fly-leaves of an old account book the following strange
statement appears: 'June 23rd, 1764. To-day, at bright noon, I looked
up and saw all at once a stranger standing on the turf, just above my
block. He was dressed like an old picture I remember in the windows of
S. Neot's Church, in a long brown garment, with a girdle; and his head
was uncovered and grizzled with long hair. He spoke to me, and he said
in a low, clear voice, "Daniel, that work is hard!" I wondered that he
should know my name, and I answered, "Yes, sir; but I am used to it
and don't mind it, for the sake of the faces at home." Then he said,
sounding his words like a psalm, "Man goeth forth to his work and to
his labour until the evening. When will it be night with Daniel Gumb?"
I began to feel queer; it seemed to me that there was something awful
about the unknown man. I even shook. Then he said again, "Fear
nothing. The happiest man in all the earth is he that wins his daily
bread by his daily sweat, if he will but fear God and do man no
wrong." I bent down my head like any one dumbfounded, and I greatly
wondered who this strange appearance could be. He was not like a
preacher, for he looked me full in the face; nor a bit like a parson,
for he seemed very meek and kind. I began to think it was a spirit,
only such ones always come by night, and here was I at noonday and at
work. So I made up my mind to drop my hammer and step up and ask his
name right out. But when I looked up he was gone, and that clear out
of my sight, on the bare, wide moor, suddenly.'"
Now, in the first place, no trace or tidings of these notes so
treasured up by the family are to be found in the parish of
Linkinhorne, to which Gumb and his wife belonged.
In the second place, Mr. Hawker makes Daniel remark that his
mysterious visitant was not like a Dissenting preacher because he
looked him straight in the face, and this is significantly like a
remark Hawker often made with regard to these gentry.
Another of these pretended notes refers to the finding of a fossil
fish embedded in granite. This alone suffices to wake suspicion that
the extracts are not genuine. Fossils never have been found in
granite, and never will be. But Hawker himself did not know this, as
he was totally ignorant of the first principles of geology.
LAURENCE BRADDON
Laurence Braddon, second son of Captain William Braddon, of Treworgy,
in S. Gennys, was called to the bar of the Middle Temple, and worked
at his profession diligently. He entered Parliament in 1651, but did
not attract special notice till the occasion of the suicide of the
Earl of Essex in the Tower, in 1683.
The people of England had been, and still were, greatly troubled about
the succession to the throne, in the event of the death of Charles II.
They had no mind to have the throne occupied by a Popish prince, and
several plots were hatched to prevent such a contingency. Monmouth,
with Lord Essex, Shaftesbury, Lord Howard of Escrick, Russell,
Algernon Sidney, and John Hampden, held meetings to found an
association to agitate and compel the King to assemble Parliament, to
take measures to secure a Protestant succession and the exclusion of
the Duke of York. On other points they disagreed. Monmouth hoped to
have his legitimacy established and to secure the crown for his own
brows. Sidney and Essex were for the establishment of a commonwealth.
Russell and Hampden intended only the exclusion of the Duke. As to
Lord Howard, he was a man of no principle, and his sole desire was to
fish in troubled waters and get out of them what he could.
More desperate spirits schemed plans of assassination, and a plot was
formed for murdering Charles and the Duke of York as they passed the
Rye House on the road from London to Newmarket, but there is no evidence
that the noble schemers had any knowledge of the Rye House Plot.
Both projects were betrayed, and though they were wholly distinct from
one another, the cruel ingenuity of the Crown lawyers blended them
into one.
The Earl of Shaftesbury fled to the Continent; Monmouth absconded;
Russell was committed to the Tower; Howard, who had concealed himself in
a chimney, was drawn forth by the heels, and to secure his neck betrayed
Essex, Sidney, and Hampden, who were all committed to the Tower.
Several of the conspirators in the Rye House Plot were sentenced to
death and at once executed. From their confessions it appeared that
the conspiracy had wide ramifications, and that a scheme of
insurrection throughout the country had been formed, and that steps
had been taken to organize it.
On the day upon which Lord Russell was brought to trial the Earl of
Essex was found in the closet of his chamber with his throat cut, and
this but just after a visit to the Tower by the King with the Duke of
York.
An inquest was at once held, at which it was shown that Lord Essex was
a man of a despondent temper, that he had been lately in a lugubrious
mood, and in the depths of melancholy; and evidence was conclusive
that he had cut his own throat with a razor. The jury accordingly
found a verdict of _felo de se_.
Now it so fell out that on the following Sunday Laurence Braddon went
to visit a Mr. Evans, of the Custom House, at his country house at
Wanstead, in Essex, where was also a Mr. Halstead, and Evans was
telling Halstead that he had heard from a kinsman of his named
Edwards, also in the Customs, that his boy had been in the Tower yard
on the morning of the death of Lord Essex, and that he had seen a hand
thrust out of that nobleman's window, and a razor stained with blood
thrown down on the pavement of the yard. Next moment a maid-servant
wearing a white hood had run out, secured the razor and carried it
within, and that he had heard cries from within of "Murder! Murder!"
Braddon listened, walking up and down the room, as Evans told this
story. He was greatly excited by it, and thought that it pointed to a
murder having been committed, and that probably at the instigation of
the Duke of York.
Accordingly Braddon went next day to the quay and got Evans and
Edwards to meet him at the "Star" public-house and repeat the story.
It seemed that Edwards had two boys who were in Merchant Taylors'
School, and that one of their sisters was married and living in the
Tower. On the morning of the death of Lord Essex the lads were on
their way to school, when, passing the Tower, they heard that the King
and the Duke of York were in it, whereupon the younger, an urchin of
twelve or thirteen, gave his brother the slip, and ran in to see the
King and the Duke. After they had departed he remained in the yard
playing chuck-farthing with other boys, when he saw a hand thrust
forth from a window and throw a bloody razor into the court, and after
that a maid or woman in a white hood and stuff coat took it up and
went in, and then he heard a noise as of "Murder!" cried out. Braddon
then went to the house of Edwards to question the boy, who
prevaricated. Braddon believed that the child's mother and sister had
been at him, telling him that he was likely to get them all into
trouble if he persisted in his tale, and urged by them, professed that
he had told a lie.
The matter became common talk on the quay and the purlieus of the Tower.
Braddon had no great difficulty in finding a little girl named Jane
Lodeman, aged thirteen, who was in the same tale. This is what he took
down:--
"Jane Lodeman was in the Tower on Friday morning, 13th July last, and
standing almost over against the late Earl of Essex's lodging window,
she saw a hand cast a razor out of my lord's window, and immediately
upon this she heard shrieks, and that there was a soldier by my lord's
door, who cried out to those within the house that somebody should
come and take up a razor which was thrown out of the window, whereupon
there came a maid with a white hood out of the house, but who took up
the razor she can't tell."
Dated 8th August, 1683.
On July 20th Braddon had gone to Whitehall before he had obtained this
corroborative evidence, and had laid information before the King and
Council, and produced a written deposition as to what the boy Edwards
had said he had seen; but the boy's sister deposed that Mr. Laurence
Braddon had forced her brother to sign it. Soon after Braddon had
taken this step, he heard a rumour that the fact of the violent death
of the Earl of Essex had been known and discussed in Frome Selwood the
same day, and he hurried off to make inquiries into this. But on
reaching Salisbury he was arrested, thrown into prison, and brought
back to London. Another gentleman, a Mr. Speeke, had also been
spreading the report that Lord Essex had been foully murdered, and it
was hinted that the Duke of York, if not the King, had ordered the
assassination. Speeke also was arrested.
Narcissus Luttrell's account of the death of Essex is as follows:--
1683, 13th July.--"About nine in the morning, the Earl of Essex,
prisoner in the Tower of London, upon account of this new plott, did
most barbarously cut his own throat from one ear to the other with a
razor. What occasioned it is doubtfull: some say, the sense of his
guilt; others, the shame for being accused of such a crime, when his
father, the Lord Capell, died for his loyalty to the late King; however,
the coroner's jury have satt on his body, and found him _felo de se_,
tho' some stick not to say 'tis impossible he should murther himself in
so barbarous a manner; and his Majesty hath been pleased to give his
goods, which were forfeited by his killing himself, to his son."
On November 6th he says: "Mr. Speak was brought to the Court of King's
Bench, and charged with two informations: the 1st, for saying the King
was as great a Papist as the Duke of York; that the Duke durst not doe
what he did but that the King did animate him; that what Pilkington
had formerly said of the Duke of York was true; with much other such
scandalous stuff; and 2nd was for sayeing that the Earl of Essex was
killed and murdered by those that attended on him in the Tower; to
both these he pleaded Not Guilty."
1683-4, February 7th.--"Mr. Lawrence Braddon and Mr. Hugh Speke were
tried at the Court of King's Bench, by a jury of Middlesex, upon an
information reciting the commitment of the late Earl of Essex to the
Tower for treason in conspiring the death of the King, etc., and that
the 13th July last he cut his own throat, and was found _felo de se_
by the coroner's inquisition; the said Braddon and Speke did conspire
by writing and otherwise, to spread a false and scandalous report,
that the said Earl was murdered by some persons about him, and
endeavoured to suborn witnesses to testifye the same. The evidence for
the King, was first, the warder of the Tower, who testified as to his
Lordship's commitment; then the coroner, and the inquisition taken
before him, whereby his Lordship was found _felo de se_, was read;
then the particular evidence against Mr. Braddon was, by severall
persons, how busy and sollicitous he was to take persons'
informations, and to examine a little child about ten years old, about
a discourse that ran through the town that a bloody razor was thrown
out of his Lordship's window; and that the cry of Murder was heard;
and that a servant maid came presently out of the house of the Lord of
Essex, and took up the razor, and carried it in; and that then it was
said the Lord of Essex had killed himself. Then the severall
informations Braddon had taken in writing relating to this matter were
read, and some of the informants themselves examined, whose testimony
much differ'd from their informations, then severall testified the
confident and strange discourse this Braddon frequently us'd
concerning the matter. The evidence against Mr. Speke was only a
letter writt by him to Sir Robert Atkins th' elder, and carried by Mr.
Braddon, but was seized about him when he was going thither, which
contained severall expressions in commendation of Mr. Braddon and his
zeale, with reflexions on this matter; then the evidence was given of
his Lordship's cutting his own throat with a razor, which was proved
by his own servant, a Frenchman; by the warder, by the centinell, and
by Capt. Hawley. The defendants' proof was, first, Braddon pretended
he did nothing but out of zeale to have the truth come out: then he
call'd some witnesses to prove that there was a discourse of the Lord
of Essex's being killed, and a razor thrown out, before he concern'd
himself in it. Speke had little to say against the letter, but own'd
it to be his hand; so that the jury, after a little while, agreed of
their verdict, and found the defendant Braddon guilty of all that was
laid in the information, and the defendant Speke guilty of all except
the conspiring to suborn witnesses.
"'Twas strange any man should concern himself in an affair of this
moment on the information of a boy ten years old, who had denied all
after he had confess'd it, and did at his tryall, and make all this
rent that was about it."
April 21st, 1684.--"Mr. Laurence Braddon and Mr. Hugh Speke, convicted
last term upon an endeavour to lay the murder of the late Earl of
Essex upon the Government, were brought to the Court of King's Bench
to receive their judgments; which was, that Braddon should pay a fine
of £2000, and Speke £1000 to the King; that they find sureties for
their good behaviour during their lives, and be committed to the
King's Bench prison till they doe so."
Hugh Speke, who was tried along with Laurence Braddon, was an
inveterate plotter. Macaulay thus describes him: "Hugh Speke (was) a
young man of good family, but of a singularly base and depraved
nature. His love of mischief and of dark and crooked ways amounted
almost to madness. To cause confusion without being found out was his
business and his pastime; and he had a rare skill in using honest
enthusiasts as the instruments of his cold-blooded malice."
Referring to the case of Braddon, Macaulay adds: "He had attempted, by
means of one of his puppets, to fasten on Charles and James the crime
of murdering Essex in the Tower. On this occasion the agency of Speke
had been traced; and though he succeeded in throwing the greater part
of the blame on his dupe, he had not escaped with impunity."
He was certainly a clever scoundrel, for he managed to cover up most
of his traces in the affair of the charge of the murder of Essex.
Braddon was sincere, while Speke was not. Braddon was convinced that a
murder had been committed, and he had not a well-balanced mind to
weigh evidence. Speke cared nothing whether crime had been committed
or not so long as he could disturb men's minds with a suspicion that
one had been committed, and that by the King's brother and heir
presumptive to the Crown.
The evidence produced by Laurence Braddon was practically worthless. He
had but the word of two little children, and the boy had retracted and
acknowledged that he had told lies. As to the fact of the death of Lord
Essex being known at Frome on the 13th, showing that the murder had been
premeditated and was part of a widely ramified scheme of the Papists, it
was shown that nothing was known there of it till many days later.
The evidence for the King was Bomeny, the valet de chambre of Lord
Essex. He stated that the Earl had long nails, and that morning had
asked for a penknife so as to pare them. Bomeny had commissioned a
footman, William Turner, to get one, and bring it along with some
provisions ordered for the Earl's breakfast. Turner brought the
provisions, but had forgotten about the penknife, whereupon Lord Essex
began to cut his nails with his razor, and the footman was again
despatched for a penknife. Just then the King and the Duke of York
arrived at the Tower, and there was great bustle in the yard, and Bomeny
left the Earl's room. When he met the footman with the knife he
returned, but not finding Lord Essex in his chamber, he tried to open
the closet door, when he found that there was an obstruction. Somewhat
alarmed, he ran to Russell, the warder, whose door was almost opposite
on the same staircase, and both went to the closet, and found Lord Essex
lying in it with his throat cut and his feet against the door.
Russell corroborated this evidence, and added that no one could
possibly ascend the stair and enter Lord Essex's chamber without his
knowledge. The soldier, Lloyd, who acted as sentinel at the entrance
to the Earl's quarters, testified that there was no truth in the
children's tale about the razor, and that no maid had issued from the
door to pick one up.
It was further established that the closet window did not look into
the main yard, and was so arranged that a hand could not be passed out
of it.
Judge Jeffreys conducted the investigation, and that in a most
unseemly manner. Apparently he was drunk at the time, and was so
confused that he was not able to follow the evidence. He browbeat the
witnesses in the most offensive way.
On November 6th, 1684, a French Protestant refugee, named Borleau, was
indicted for selling a scandalous book called _L'Esprit de Monsieur
Arnaud_, in which he declared that the Earl of Essex had not cut his
own throat, but had been foully murdered. He pleaded guilty, and the
King graciously allowed him to be fined only 6s. 8d., and to be
discharged without paying his fees. There was most certainly fish made
of one and fowl of another.
Again, in December of the same year a book appeared entitled _An
Enquiry about the Barbarous Murder of the Earl of Essex_, that was
vended surreptitiously, and a broadside written by Colonel Danvers,
giving the evidence that he was murdered, was thrown in at open doors
and distributed in the streets of London. A hundred pounds was offered
for the apprehension of Danvers. As to the book, it was from the pen
of Laurence Braddon, and was later, when it could be done safely,
acknowledged by him. On January 23rd, 1684-5, a Mr. Henry Baker
pleaded guilty to an information for using scandalous words about the
Duke of York, and at the same time a printer, Norden, did the same to
an indictment for publishing the "scandalous libell in vindication of
the lord of Essex." And on February 3rd one of the jury at the
inquest, Launcelot Colston by name, was had up before King's Bench on
a charge of having said that he did not believe that the Earl had cut
his throat, for he could not have done so himself in the way in which
he was found. Norden was sentenced to pay 200 marks, and to stand in
the pillory at Ratcliffe, and to be bound to his good behaviour for
seven years, and be committed to prison till this was done.
In 1685, on the landing of the Duke of Monmouth, in the Proclamation
he published, he charged King James with the murder of Essex, with his
own hand.
In January, 1689, a Captain Hawley, Major Whitley, and some two or
three more were imprisoned for maintaining that Essex had not
committed suicide. But this was at the moment when all power was
slipping out of the hands of King James II; the Prince of Orange came
to the throne, and on February 23rd a Captain Holland was arrested and
thrown into prison on the charge of having been concerned in the
murder of the Earl, and this was followed by numerous other arrests.
But the prison-doors were thrown open for Laurence Braddon to issue
forth and recommence his accusations of murder. He republished the
"Enquiry into and Detection of the Barbarous Murther of the late Earl
of Essex; or a Vindication of that Noble Person from the Guilt and
Infamy of having Destroyed himself."
Even before the throne, vacated by King James, had been filled by the
Prince of Orange, the Lords had appointed a committee to examine into
the truth of the frightful stories circulated relative to the death of
Essex. The committee, which consisted wholly of zealous Whigs,
continued its inquiries till all reasonable men were convinced that he
had fallen by his own hand, and till Lady Essex, his brother, and his
most intimate friends requested that the investigation might be
pursued no further. That under Judge Jeffreys had been open to
suspicion, this could not. But nothing would alter the persuasion of
Braddon that this was a case of murder.
Next year, 1690, he came out with a fresh pamphlet, "Essex's Innocency
and Honour Vindicated, or Murther, Subornation, Perjury, and
Oppression, justly charged on the Murtherers of that Noble and True
Patriot Arthur (late) Earl of Essex," etc.
It had become a matter of party feeling, and it was held by all true
Protestants to be their duty to believe in the murder, so as to
blacken the character of James II. The evidence, however, was too poor
to convince a cool-minded man like Bishop Burnet, and in his _History
of His Own Times_ he spoke of Essex having cut his own throat.
Thereupon Laurence Braddon resumed his pen and published an attack on
the Bishop: "Bishop Burnet's History charged with great partiality and
misrepresentations, to make the present and future ages believe that
Arthur, Earl of Essex, in 1683, murdered himselfe, with observations
upon the suppos'd poysoning of King Charles the Second," 1724.
In 1695 Braddon was appointed solicitor to the wine-licensing office,
with a salary of £100 per annum.
In one point Braddon showed great perspicuity and good feeling. In 1717
he published a pamphlet entitled "The Miseries of the Poor, a National
Sin and Shame"; and when his scheme for the relief of the poor had been
animadverted upon unfavourably, in 1722, he answered these objections in
another tractate: "Particular answers to the most material objections
made to the proposal humbly presented to His Majesty for relieving,
reforming, and employing all the poor of Great Britain," 1722.
Laurence Braddon died on Sunday, 29th November, 1724.
The Braddons must have been a family of some consequence in S. Gennys,
although their arms and pedigree are not recorded in the Heralds'
Visitations. At the trial of Laurence, it was stated that his father's
income from his property was fully £800 per annum. Laurence derived
his fiery Protestantism from his father, who had been a
Parliamentarian officer of some distinction in the Civil War. His
father is buried in the chancel of S. Gennys, and some verses are
inscribed on the ledgerstone, beginning:--
In war and peace I bore command,
Both gun and sword I wore.
The arms borne by the family are: _Sable_, a bend lozengy, _arg._--arms
that in their beautiful simplicity proclaim their antiquity.
The old mansion of the Braddons in S. Gennys has been pulled down and
a modern farm-house erected on the site.
THOMASINE BONAVENTURA
Week S. Mary stands in a treeless wind-swept situation, 530 feet above
the sea, near the source of two small streams rising in the desolate
downs to the south, which unite their waters at Langford, and have
sawn for themselves deep clefts that are well wooded. At a remote
period this district must have been the scene of contests, for it is
studded with earthworks. There was a castle at Week, but camps also
crowning a height in Westwood and in Swannacott Wood; and Week S. Mary
with its castle stood aloft, defended by one of these on each side.
Formerly there was not so much enclosed land as there is at present;
but it was precisely the moorland that extended over so large a
portion of the parish that constituted its wealth, for on this waste
pastured vast flocks of sheep, whose fleeces were in request at a time
when wool was the staple industry in the West of England.
The ridge of bare, uplifted, carboniferous rock and clay, cold and
bleak, was formerly scantily provided with roads, and with homesteads
few and far between; and to guide the traveller through the waste,
certain churches with lofty towers were erected on high
ground--Pancrasweek, Holsworthy, Bridgerule, Week S. Mary--to enable him
to make his way across country from one to the other. A farm or a
manor-house nestled in a combe, sheltered from the wind, from the sea,
and the driving rain; but farmer and squire drew their wealth from the
sheep on the uplands, which were moreover strewn, as they still are,
with barrows, under which lie the dead of the Bronze and Stone ages.
Davies Gilbert absurdly derives the name of the place from the
Cornish, and makes it signify "sweet." No more unsuitable epithet
could have been applied. It signifies _vicus_, a village or hamlet,
and is found also at Pancrasweek, Germansweek, and elsewhere.
In the village are still to be seen the remains of the old school and
chantry founded by Thomasine Bonaventura, a shepherd girl, native of
the place, whose story is told by Carew and by Hall; and from them we
take it.
Thomasine was born about the year 1450, in the reign of Henry VI, and
her father was a small farmer who had his flock of sheep pasturing on
the wild waste common-lands. Thomasine watched it, and spun from her
distaff. Above the desolate moors to the south-west stood up blue
against the sky the rugged height of Brown Willy, crowned by its
mighty cairns; to the west and south-west stretched the Atlantic, into
which the evening sun went down in a blaze of glory.
One day a London merchant, a dealer in wool, came riding over the
moor; probably from Tintagel or Forrabury, and making direct for Week
S. Mary tower, when he passed a barrow on which sat the shepherd girl
spinning, the breeze from the sea blowing her dark hair about, singing
some old ballad, but ever keeping her eye on her father's sheep.
Behind h
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