A Reputed Changeling; Or, Three Seventh Years Two Centuries Ago

Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
I do not think I have here forced the hand of history except by giving Portchester to two imaginary Rectors, and by a little injustice to her whom Princess Anne termed ‘the brick-bat woman.’
The trial is not according to present rules, but precedents for its irregularities are to be found in the doings of the seventeenth century, notably in the trial of Spencer Cowper by the same Judge Hatsel, and I have done my best to represent the habits of those country gentry who were not infected by the evils of the later Stewart reigns.
There is some doubt as to the proper spelling of Portchester, but, judging by analogy, the t ought not to be omitted.
C. M. YONGE. 2 d May 1889.
“Dear Madam, think me not to blame; Invisible the fairy came. Your precious babe is hence conveyed, And in its place a changeling laid. Where are the father’s mouth and nose, The mother’s eyes as black as sloes? See here, a shocking awkward creature, That speaks a fool in every feature.” GAY.
“He is an ugly ill-favoured boy—just like Riquet à la Houppe .”
“That he is! Do you not know that he is a changeling?”
Such were the words of two little girls walking home from a school for young ladies kept, at the Cathedral city of Winchester, by two Frenchwomen of quality, refugees from the persecutions preluding the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and who enlivened the studies of their pupils with the Contes de Commère L’Oie .
The first speaker was Anne Jacobina Woodford, who had recently come with her mother, the widow of a brave naval officer, to live with her uncle, the Prebendary then in residence. The other was Lucy Archfield, daughter to a knight, whose home was a few miles from Portchester, Dr. Woodford’s parish on the southern coast of Hampshire.
In the seventeenth century, when roads were mere ditches often impassable, and country-houses frequently became entirely isolated in the winter, it was usual with the wealthier county families to move into their local capital, where some owned mansions and others hired prebendal houses, or went into lodgings in the roomy dwellings of the superior tradesmen. For the elders this was the season of social intercourse, for the young people, of education.