The Book of Dreams and Ghosts by Andrew Lang (inspirational books TXT) 📖

from his labour, he was taken up by the skirt of his doublet by this female daemon, and carried a height into the air.  He was soon missed by his Master and some other servants that had been at labour with him, and after diligent enquiry no news could be heard of him, until at length (near half an hour after) he was heard singing and whistling in a bog or quagmire, where they found him in a kind of trance or extatick fit, to which he hath sometimes been accustomed (but whether before the affliction he met with from this spirit I am not certain).  He was affected much after such sort, as at the time of those fits, so that the people did not give that attention and regard to what he said as at other times; but when he returned again to himself (which was about an hour after) he solemnly protested to them that the daemon had carried him so high that his master’s house seemed to him to be but as a hay-cock, and that during all that time he was in perfect sense, and prayed to Almighty God not to suffer the devil to destroy him; and that he was suddenly set down in that quagmire.

The workmen found one shoe on one side of his master’s house, and the other on the other side, and in the morning espied his perriwig hanging on the top of a tree; by which it appears he had been carried a considerable height, and that what he told them was not a fiction.

“After this it was observed that that part of the young man’s body which had been on the mud in the quagmire was somewhat benummbed and seemingly deader than the other, whereupon the following Saturday, which was the day before Low Sunday, he was carried to Crediton, alias Kirton, to be bleeded, which being done accordingly, and the company having left him for some little space, at their return they found him in one of his fits, with his forehead much bruised, and swoln to a great bigness, none being able to guess how it happened, until his recovery from that fit, when upon enquiry he gave them this account of it: that a bird had with great swiftness and force flown in at the window with a stone in its beak, which it had dashed against his forehead, which had occasioned the swelling which they saw.

“The people much wondering at the strangeness of the accident, diligently sought the stone, and under the place where he sat they found not such a stone as they expected but a weight of brass or copper, which it seems the daemon had made use of on that occasion to give the poor young man that hurt in his forehead.

“The persons present were at the trouble to break it to pieces, every one taking a part and preserving it in memory of so strange an accident.  After this the spirit continued to molest the young man in a very severe and rugged manner, often handling him with great extremity, and whether it hath yet left its violences to him, or whether the young man be yet alive, I can have no certain account.”

I leave the reader to consider of the extraordinary strangeness of the relation.

The reader, considering the exceeding strangeness of the relation, will observe that we have now reached “great swingeing falsehoods,” even if that opinion had not hitherto occurred to his mind.  But if he thinks that such stories are no longer told, and even sworn to on Bible oath, he greatly deceives himself.  In the chapter on “Haunted Houses” he will find statements just as hard narrated of the years 1870 and 1882.  In these, however, the ghosts had no purpose but mischief. {118}

We take another “ghost with a purpose”.

SIR GEORGE VILLIERS’ GHOST.

The variations in the narratives of Sir George Villiers’ appearance to an old servant of his, or old protégé, and the warning communicated by this man to Villiers’ son, the famous Duke of Buckingham, are curious and instructive.  The tale is first told in print by William Lilly, the astrologer, in the second part of a large tract called Monarchy or No Monarchy in England (London, 1651), twenty-three years after Buckingham’s murder.  But while prior in publication, Lilly’s story was probably written after, though independent of Lord Clarendon’s, in the first book of his History of the Rebellion, begun on 18th March, 1646, that is within eighteen years of the events.  Clarendon, of course, was in a position to know what was talked of at the time.  Next, we have a letter of Mr. Douch to Glanvil, undated, but written after the Restoration, and, finally, an original manuscript of 1652.

Douch makes the warning arrive “some few days” before the murder of Buckingham, and says that the ghost of Sir George, “in his morning gown,” bade one Parker tell Buckingham to abandon the expedition to La Rochelle or expect to be murdered.  On the third time of appearing the vision pulled a long knife from under his gown, as a sign of the death awaiting Buckingham.  He also communicated a “private token” to Parker, the “percipient,” Sir George’s old servant.  On each occasion of the appearance, Parker was reading at midnight.  Parker, after the murder, told one Ceeley, who told it to a clergyman, who told Douch, who told Glanvil.

In Lilly’s version the ghost had a habit of walking in Parker’s room, and finally bade him tell Buckingham to abstain from certain company, “or else he will come to destruction, and that suddenly”.  Parker, thinking he had dreamed, did nothing; the ghost reappeared, and communicated a secret “which he (Buckingham) knows that none in the world ever knew but myself and he”.  The duke, on hearing the story from Parker, backed by the secret, was amazed, but did not alter his conduct.  On the third time the spectre produced the knife, but at this information the duke only laughed.  Six weeks later he was stabbed.  Douch makes the whole affair pass immediately before the assassination.  “And Mr. Parker died soon after,” as the ghost had foretold to him.

Finally, Clarendon makes the appearances set in six months before Felton slew the duke.  The percipient, unnamed, was in bed.  The narrative now develops new features; the token given on the ghost’s third coming obviously concerns Buckingham’s mother, the Countess, the “one person more” who knew the secret communicated.  The ghost produces no knife from under his gown; no warning of Buckingham’s death by violence is mentioned.  A note in the MS. avers that Clarendon himself had papers bearing on the subject, and that he got his information from Sir Ralph Freeman (who introduced the unnamed percipient to the duke), and from some of Buckingham’s servants, “who were informed of much of it before the murder of the duke”.  Clarendon adds that, in general, “no man looked on relations of that sort with less reverence and consideration” than he did.  This anecdote he selects out of “many stories scattered abroad at the time” as “upon a better foundation of credit”.  The percipient was an officer in the king’s wardrobe at Windsor, “of a good reputation for honesty and discretion,” and aged about fifty.  He was bred at a school in Sir George’s parish, and as a boy was kindly treated by Sir George, “whom afterwards he never saw”.  On first beholding the spectre in his room, the seer recognised Sir George’s costume, then antiquated.  At last the seer went to Sir Ralph Freeman, who introduced him to the duke on a hunting morning at Lambeth Bridge.  They talked earnestly apart, observed by Sir Ralph, Clarendon’s informant.  The duke seemed abstracted all day; left the field early, sought his mother, and after a heated conference of which the sounds reached the ante-room, went forth in visible trouble and anger, a thing never before seen in him after talk with his mother.  She was found “overwhelmed with tears and in the highest agony imaginable”.  “It is a notorious truth” that, when told of his murder, “she seemed not in the least degree surprised.”

The following curious manuscript account of the affair is, after the prefatory matter, the copy of a letter dated 1652.  There is nothing said of a ghostly knife, the name of the seer is not Parker, and in its whole effect the story tallies with Clarendon’s version, though the narrator knows nothing of the scene with the Countess of Buckingham.

CAVALIER VERSION {121}

“1627.  Since William Lilly the Rebells Jugler and Mountebank in his malicious and blaspheamous discourse concerning our late Martyred Soveraigne of ever blessed memory (amongst other lyes and falsehoods) imprinted a relation concerning an Aparition which foretold several Events which should happen to the Duke of Buckingham, wherein he falsifies boeth the person to whom it appeared and ye circumstances; I thought it not amis to enter here (that it may be preserved) the true account of that Aparition as I have receaved it from the hande and under the hande of Mr. Edmund Wyndham, of Kellefford in the County of Somersett.  I shall sett it downe (ipsissimis verbis) as he delivered it to me at my request written with his own hande.

WYNDHAM’S LETTER

“Sr.  According to your desire and my promise I have written down what I remember (divers things being slipt out of my memory) of the relation made me by Mr. Nicholas Towse concerning the Aparition wch visited him.  About ye yeare 1627, {122} I and my wife upon an occasion being in London lay att my Brother Pyne’s house without Bishopsgate, wch. was ye next house unto Mr. Nicholas Towse’s, who was my Kinsman and familiar acquaintance, in consideration of whose Society and friendship he tooke a house in that place, ye said Towse being a very fine Musician and very good company, and for ought I ever saw or heard, a Vurtuous, religious and wel disposed Gentleman.  About that time ye said Mr. Towse tould me that one night, being in Bed and perfectly waking, and a Candle burning by him (as he usually had) there came into his Chamber and stood by his bed side an Olde Gentleman in such an habitt as was in fashion in Q: Elizebeth’s tyme, at whose first appearance Mr. Towse was very much troubled, but after a little tyme, recollecting himselfe, he demanded of him in ye Name of God what he was, whether he were a Man.  And ye Aparition replyed No.  Then he asked him if he were a Divell.  And ye answer was No.  Then Mr. Towse said ‘in ye Name of God, what art thou then?’  And as I remember Mr. Towse told me that ye Apparition answered him that he was ye Ghost of Sir George Villiers, Father to ye then Duke of Buckingham, whom he might very well remember, synce he went to schoole at such a place in Leicestershire (naming ye place which I have forgotten).  And Mr. Towse tould me that ye Apparition had perfectly ye resemblance of ye said Sr George Villiers in all respects and in ye same habitt that he had often seene him weare in his lifetime.

“The said Apparition then tould Mr. Towse that he could not but remember ye much kindness that he, ye said Sr George Villiers, had expressed to him whilst he was a Schollar in Leicestershire, as aforesaid, and that as out of that consideration he believed that he loved him and that therefore he made choyce of him, ye sayde Mr. Towse, to deliver a message to his sonne, ye Duke of Buckingham; thereby to prevent such mischiefe as would otherwise befall ye said Duke whereby he would be inevitably ruined.  And then (as I remember) Mr. Towse tould me that ye Apparition instructed him what message he should deliver unto ye Duke.  Vnto wch.