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

by Charlotte M. Yonge

After a couple of young men had been called who could speak to some outbreaks of dislike to poor Peregrine, in which all had shared, the case for the prosecution was completed. Cowper, in a speech that would be irregular now, but was permissible then, pointed out that the jealousy, dislike, and Jacobite proclivities of the Archfield family had been fully made out, that the coincidence of visits to the castle at that untimely hour had been insufficiently explained, that the condition of the remains in the vault was quite inconsistent with the evidence of the witness, Mistress Woodford, unless there were persons waiting below unknown to her, and that the prisoner had been absent from Fareham from four or five o’clock in the morning till nearly three in the afternoon. As to the strange story she had further told, he (Mr. Cowper) was neither superstitious nor philosophic, but the jury would decide whether conscience and the sense of an awful secret were not sufficient to conjure up such phantoms, if they were not indeed spiritual, occurring as they did in the very places and at the very times when the spirit of the unhappy young man, thus summarily dismissed from the world, his corpse left in an unblessed den, would be most likely to reappear, haunting those who felt themselves to be most accountable for his lamentable and untimely end.

The words evidently told, and it was at a disadvantage that the prisoner rose to speak in his own defence and to call his witnesses.

“My lord,” he said, “and gentlemen of the jury, let me first say that I am deeply grieved and hurt that the name of my poor young wife has been brought into this matter. In justice to her who is gone, I must begin by saying that though she was flattered and gratified by the polite manners that I was too clownish and awkward to emulate, and though I may have sometimes manifested ill-humour, yet I never for a moment took serious offence nor felt bound to defend her honour or my own. If I showed displeasure it was because she was fatiguing herself against warning. I can say with perfect truth, that when I left home on that unhappy morning, I bore no serious ill-will to any living creature. I had no political purpose, and never dreamt of taking the life of any one. I was a heedless youth of nineteen. I shall be able to prove the commission of my wife’s on which this learned gentleman has thought fit to cast a doubt. For the rest, Mistress Anne Woodford was my sister’s friend and playfellow from early childhood. When I entered the castle court I saw her hurrying into the keep, pursued by Oakshott, whom I knew her to dread and dislike. I naturally stepped between. Angry words passed. He challenged my right to interfere, and in a passion drew upon me. Though I was the taller and stronger, I knew him to be proud of his skill in fencing, and perhaps I may therefore have pressed him the harder, and the dislike I acknowledge made me drive home my sword. But I was free from all murderous intention up to that moment. In my inexperience I had no doubt but that he was dead, and in a terror and confusion which I regret heartily, I threw him into the vault, and for the sake of my wife and mother bound Miss Woodford to secrecy. I mounted my horse, and scarcely knowing what I did, rode till I found it ready to drop. I asked for rest for it in the first wayside public-house I came to. I lay down meanwhile among some bushes adjoining, and there waited till my horse could take me home again. I believe it was at the White Horse, near Bishops Waltham, but the place has changed hands since that time, so that I can only prove my words, as you have heard, by the state of my horse when I came home. For the condition of the remains in the vault I cannot account; I never touched the poor fellow after throwing him there. My wife died a few hours after my return home, where I remained for a week, nor did I suggest flight, though I gladly availed myself of my father’s suggestion of sending me abroad with a tutor. Let me add, to remove misconception, that I visited Paris because my tutor, the Reverend George Fellowes, one of the Fellows of Magdalen College expelled by the late King, and now Rector of Portchester, had been asked to provide for Miss Woodford’s return to her home, and he is here to testify that I never had any concern with politics. I did indeed accompany him to St. Germain, but merely to find the young gentlewoman, and in the absence of the late King and Queen, nor did I hold intercourse with any other person connected with their Court. After escorting her to Ostend, I went to Hungary to serve in the army of our ally, the Emperor, against the Turks, the enemies of all Christians. After a severe wound, I have come home, knowing nothing of conspiracies, and I was taken by surprise on arriving here at Winchester at finding that my cousin was on his trial for the unfortunate deed into which I was betrayed by haste and passion, but entirely without premeditation or intent to do more than to defend the young lady. So that I plead that my crime does not amount to murder from malicious intent; and likewise, that those who charge me with the actual death of Peregrine Oakshott should prove him to be dead.”

Charles’s first witness was Mrs. Lang, his late wife’s ‘own woman,’ who spared him many questions by garrulously declaring ‘what a work’ poor little Madam had made about the rose-coloured sarcenet, causing the pattern to be searched out as soon as she came home from the bonfire, and how she had ‘gone on at’ her husband till he promised to give it to Mistress Anne, and how he had been astir at four o’clock in the morning, and had called to her (Mrs. Lang) to look to her mistress, who might perhaps get some sleep now that she had her will and hounded him out to go over to Portchester about that silk.

Nothing was asked of this witness by the prosecution except the time of Mr. Archfield’s return. The question of jealousy was passed over.

Of the pond apparition nothing was said. Anne had told Charles of it, but no one could have proved its identity but Sedley, and his share in it was too painful to be brought forward. Three other ghost seers were brought forward: Mrs. Fellowes’s maid, the sentry, and the sexton; but only the sexton had ever seen Master Perry alive, and he would not swear to more than that it was something in his likeness; the sentry was already bound to declare it something unsubstantial; and the maid was easily persuaded into declaring that she did not know what she had seen or whether she had seen anything.

There only remained Mr. Fellowes to bear witness of his pupil’s entire innocence of political intrigues, together with a voluntary testimony addressed to the court, that the youth had always appeared to him a well-disposed but hitherto boyish lad, suddenly sobered and rendered thoughtful by a shock that had changed the tenor of his mind.

Mr. Baron Hatsel summed up in his dreary vacillating way. He told the gentlemen of the jury that young men would be young men, especially where pretty wenches were concerned, and that all knew that there was bitterness where Whig and Tory were living nigh together. Then he went over the evidence, at first in a tone favourable to the encounter having been almost accidental, and the stroke an act of passion. But he then added, it was strange, and he did not know what to think of these young sparks and the young gentlewoman all meeting in a lonely place when honest folks were abed, and the hiding in the vault, and the state of the clothes were strange matters scarce agreeing with what either prisoner or witness said. It looked only too like part of a plot of which some one should make a clean breast. On the other hand, the prisoner was a fine young gentleman, an only son, and had been fighting the Turks, though it would have been better to have fought the French among his own countrymen. He had come ingenuously forward to deliver his cousin, and a deliberate murderer was not wont to be so generous, though may be he expected to get off easily on this same plea of misadventure. If it was misadventure, why did he not try to do something for the deceased, or wait to see whether he breathed before throwing him into this same pit? though, to be sure, a lad might be inexperienced. For the rest, as to these same sights of the deceased or his likeness, he (the judge) was no believer in ghosts, though he would not say there were no such things, and the gentlemen of the jury must decide whether it was more likely the poor youth was playing pranks in the body, or whether he were haunting in the spirit those who had most to do with his untimely end. This was the purport, or rather the no-purport, of the charge.

The jury were absent for a very short time, and as it leaked out afterwards, their intelligence did not rise above the idea that the young gentleman was thick with they Frenchies who wanted to bring in murder and popery, warming-pans and wooden shoes. He called stoning poultry a trifle, so of what was he not capable? Of course he spited the poor young chap, and how could the fact be denied when the poor ghost had come back to ask for his blood?

So the awful suspense ended with ‘Guilty, my Lord.’