All except Patty were very lively young people, and Hetty, afterwards a copious poet, “was gay and sprightly, full of mirth, good-humour, and keen wit. She indulged this disposition so much that it was said to have given great uneasiness to her parents.” The servants, Robin Brown, Betty Massy and Nancy Marshall, were recent comers, but were acquitted by Mrs. Wesley of any share in the mischief. The family, though, like other people of their date, they were inclined to believe in witches and “warnings,” were not especially superstitious, and regarded the disturbances, first with some apprehension, then as a joke, and finally as a bore.
The authorities for what occurred are, first, a statement and journal by Mr. Wesley, then a series of letters of 1717 to Sam at Westminster by his mother, Emily and Sukey, next a set of written statements made by these and other witnesses to John Wesley in 1726, and last and worst, a narrative composed many years after by John Wesley for The Arminian Magazine.
The earliest document, by a few days, is the statement of Mr. Wesley, written, with a brief journal, between 21st December, 1716, and 1st January, 1717. Comparing this with Mrs. Wesley’s letter to Sam of 12th January, 1716 and Sukey’s letter of 24th January, we learn that the family for some weeks after 1st December had been “in the greatest panic imaginable,” supposing that Sam, Jack, or Charlie (who must also have been absent from home) was dead, “or by some misfortune killed”. The reason for these apprehensions was that on the night of 1st December the maid “heard at the dining-room door several dreadful groans, like a person in extremes”. They laughed at her, but for the whole of December “the groans, squeaks, tinglings and knockings were frightful enough”. The rest of the family (Mr. Wesley always excepted) “heard a strange knocking in divers places,” chiefly in the green room, or nursery, where (apparently) Hetty, Patty and Keziah lay. Emily heard the noises later than some of her sisters, perhaps a week after the original groans. She was locking up the house about ten o’clock when a sound came like the smashing and splintering of a huge piece of coal on the kitchen floor. She and Sukey went through the rooms on the ground floor, but found the dog asleep, the cat at the other end of the house, and everything in order. From her bedroom Emily heard a noise of breaking the empty bottles under the stairs, but was going to bed, when Hetty, who had been sitting on the lowest step of the garret stairs beside the nursery door, waiting for her father, was chased into the nursery by a sound as of a man passing her in a loose trailing gown. Sukey and Nancy were alarmed by loud knocks on the outside of the dining-room door and overhead. All this time Mr. Wesley heard nothing, and was not even told that anything unusual was heard. Mrs. Wesley at first held her peace lest he should think it “according to the vulgar opinion, a warning against his own death, which, indeed, we all apprehended”. Mr. Wesley only smiled when he was informed; but, by taking care to see all the girls safe in bed, sufficiently showed his opinion that the young ladies and their lovers were the ghost. Mrs. Wesley then fell back on the theory of rats, and employed a man to blow a horn as a remedy against these vermin. But this measure only aroused the emulation of the sprite, whom Emily began to call “Jeffrey”.
Not till 21st December did Mr. Wesley hear anything, then came thumpings on his bedroom wall. Unable to discover the cause, he procured a stout mastiff, which soon became demoralised by his experiences. On the morning of the 24th, about seven o’clock, Emily led Mrs. Wesley into the nursery, where she heard knocks on and under the bedstead; these sounds replied when she knocked. Something “like a badger, with no head,” says Emily; Mrs. Wesley only says, “like a badger,” ran from under the bed. On the night of the 25th there was an appalling vacarme. Mr. and Mrs. Wesley went on a tour of inspection, but only found the mastiff whining in terror. “We still heard it rattle and thunder in every room above or behind us, locked as well as open, except my study, where as yet it never came.” On the night of the 26th Mr. Wesley seems to have heard of a phenomenon already familiar to Emily—“something like the quick winding up of a jack, at the corner of the room by my bed head”. This was always followed by knocks, “hollow and loud, such as none of us could ever imitate”. Mr. Wesley went into the nursery, Hetty, Kezzy and Patty were asleep. The knocks were loud, beneath and in the room, so Mr. Wesley went below to the kitchen, struck with his stick against the rafters, and was answered “as often and as loud as I knocked”. The peculiar knock which was his own, 1-23456-7, was not successfully echoed at that time. Mr. Wesley then returned to the nursery, which was as tapageuse as ever. The children, three, were trembling in their sleep. Mr. Wesley invited the agency to an interview in his study, was answered by one knock outside, “all the rest were within,” and then came silence. Investigations outside produced no result, but the latch of the door would rise and fall, and the door itself was pushed violently back against investigators.
“I have been with Hetty,” says Emily, “when it has knocked under her, and when she has removed has followed her,” and it knocked under little Kezzy, when “she stamped with her foot, pretending to scare Patty.”
Mr. Wesley had requested an interview in his study, especially as the Jacobite goblin routed loudly “over our heads constantly, when we came to the prayers for King George and the prince”. In his study the agency pushed Mr. Wesley about, bumping him against the corner of his desk, and against his door. He would ask for a conversation, but heard only “two or three feeble squeaks, a little louder than the chirping of a bird, but not like the noise of rats, which I have often heard”.
Mr. Wesley had meant to leave home for a visit on Friday, 28th December, but the noises of the 27th were so loud that he stayed at home, inviting the Rev. Mr. Hoole, of Haxey, to view the performances. “The noises were very boisterous and disturbing this night.” Mr. Hoole says (in 1726, confirmed by Mrs. Wesley, 12th January, 1717) that there were sounds of feet, trailing gowns, raps, and a noise as of planing boards: the disturbance finally went outside the house and died away. Mr. Wesley seems to have paid his visit on the 30th, and notes, “1st January, 1717. My family have had no disturbance since I went away.”
To judge by Mr. Wesley’s letter to Sam, of 12th January, there was no trouble between the 29th of December and that date. On the 19th of January, and the 30th of the same month, Sam wrote, full of curiosity, to his father and mother. Mrs. Wesley replied (25th or 27th January), saying that no explanation could be discovered, but “it commonly was nearer Hetty than the rest”. On 24th January, Sukey said “it is now pretty quiet, but still knocks at prayers for the king.” On 11th February, Mr. Wesley, much bored by Sam’s inquiries, says, “we are all now quiet. . . . It would make a glorious penny book for Jack Dunton,” his brother-in-law, a publisher of popular literature, such as the Athenian Mercury. Emily (no date) explains the phenomena as the revenge for her father’s recent sermons “against consulting those that are called cunning men, which our people are given to, and it had a particular spite at my father”.
The disturbances by no means ended in the beginning of January, nor at other dates when a brief cessation made the Wesleys hope that Jeffrey had returned to his own place. Thus on 27th March, Sukey writes to Sam, remarking that as Hetty and Emily are also writing “so particularly,” she need not say much. “One thing I believe you do not know, that is, last Sunday, to my father’s no small amazement, his trencher danced upon the table a pretty while, without anybody’s stirring the table. . . . Send me some news for we are excluded from the sight or hearing of any versal thing, except Jeffery.”
The last mention of the affair, at this time, is in a letter from Emily, of 1st April, to a Mr. Berry.