“Tell my brother the sprite was with us last night, and heard by many of our family.” There are no other contemporary letters preserved, but we may note Mrs. Wesley’s opinion (25th January) that it was “beyond the power of any human being to make such strange and various noises”.
The next evidence is ten years after date, the statements taken down by Jack Wesley in 1726 (1720?). Mrs. Wesley adds to her former account that she “earnestly desired it might not disturb her” (at her devotions) “between five and six in the evening,” and it did not rout in her room at that time. Emily added that a screen was knocked at on each side as she went round to the other. Sukey mentioned the noise as, on one occasion, coming gradually from the garret stairs, outside the nursery door, up to Hetty’s bed, “who trembled strongly in her sleep. It then removed to the room overhead, where it knocked my father’s knock on the ground, as if it would beat the house down.” Nancy said that the noise used to follow her, or precede her, and once a bed, on which she sat playing cards, was lifted up under her several times to a considerable height. Robin, the servant, gave evidence that he was greatly plagued with all manner of noises and movements of objects.
John Wesley, in his account published many years after date in his Arminian Magazine, attributed the affair of 1716 to his father’s broken vow of deserting his mother till she recognised the Prince of Orange as king! He adds that the mastiff “used to tremble and creep away before the noise began”.
Some other peculiarities may be noted. All persons did not always hear the noises. It was three weeks before Mr. Wesley heard anything. “John and Kitty Maw, who lived over against us, listened several nights in the time of the disturbance, but could never hear anything.” Again, “The first time my mother ever heard any unusual noise at Epworth was long before the disturbance of old Jeffrey . . . the door and windows jarred very loud, and presently several distinct strokes, three by three, were struck. From that night it never failed to give notice in much the same manner, against any signal misfortune or illness of any belonging to the family,” writes Jack.
Once more, on 10th February, 1750, Emily (now Mrs. Harper) wrote to her brother John, “that wonderful thing called by us Jeffery, how certainly it calls on me against any extraordinary new affliction”.
This is practically all the story of Old Jeffrey. The explanations have been, trickery by servants (Priestley), contagious hallucinations (Coleridge), devilry (Southey), and trickery by Hetty Wesley (Dr. Salmon, of Trinity College, Dublin). Dr. Salmon points out that there is no evidence from Hetty; that she was a lively, humorous girl, and he conceives that she began to frighten the maids, and only reluctantly exhibited before her father against whom, however, Jeffrey developed “a particular spite”. He adds that certain circumstances were peculiar to Hetty, which, in fact, is not the case. The present editor has examined Dr. Salmon’s arguments in The Contemporary Review, and shown reason, in the evidence, for acquitting Hetty Wesley, who was never suspected by her family.
Trickery from without, by “the cunning men,” is an explanation which, at least, provides a motive, but how the thing could be managed from without remains a mystery. Sam Wesley, the friend of Pope, and Atterbury, and Lord Oxford, not unjustly said: “Wit, I fancy, might find many interpretations, but wisdom none”. [{220}]
As the Wesley tale is a very typical instance of a very large class, our study of it may exempt us from printing the well-known parallel case of “The Drummer of Tedworth”. Briefly, the house of Mr. Mompesson, near Ludgarshal, in Wilts, was disturbed in the usual way, for at least two years, from April, 1661, to April, 1663, or later. The noises, and copious phenomena of moving objects apparently untouched, were attributed to the unholy powers of a wandering drummer, deprived by Mr. Mompesson of his drum. A grand jury presented the drummer for trial, on a charge of witchcraft, but the petty jury would not convict, there being a want of evidence to prove threats, malum minatum, by the drummer. In 1662 the Rev. Joseph Glanvil, F.R.S., visited the house, and, in the bedroom of Mr. Mompesson’s little girls, the chief sufferers, heard and saw much the same phenomena as the elder Wesley describes in his own nursery. The “little modest girls” were aged about seven and eight. Charles II. sent some gentlemen to the house for one night, when nothing occurred, the disturbances being intermittent. Glanvil published his narrative at the time, and Mr. Pepys found it “not very convincing”. Glanvil, in consequence of his book, was so vexed by correspondents “that I have been haunted almost as bad as Mr. Mompesson’s house”. A report that imposture had been discovered, and confessed by Mr. Mompesson, was set afloat, by John Webster, in a well-known work, and may still be found in modern books. Glanvil denied it till he was “quite tired,” and Mompesson gave a formal denial in a letter dated Tedworth, 8th November, 1672. He also, with many others, swore to the facts on oath, in court, at the drummer’s trial. [{221}]
In the Tedworth case, as at Epworth, and in the curious Cideville case of 1851, a quarrel with “cunning men” preceded the disturbances. In Lord St. Vincent’s case, which follows, nothing of the kind is reported. As an almost universal rule children, especially girls of about twelve, are centres of the trouble; in the St. Vincent story, the children alone were exempt from annoyance.