Another circumstance connected with this seemingly mysterious business was, that the author’s servant coming up to him in the morning, told him, that one of his horses, the one which he had rode, was all in a sweat, and appeared in every other respect as if it had been out all night. His friend and him went down to the stable, and actually found him in the state he was represented to be. On inquiry how the horse had been treated, he was assured that the animal had been well fed, and taken care of as he used to be; his servant besides was extremely careful of his horses. “The horse,” says the author, “I had had a good time, and never knew but he was very sound. But after I had rid him a mile or two very gently over a plain down from Mr. Monpesson’s house, he fell lame, and having made a hard shift to bring me home, died in two or three days, no one being able to imagine what he ailed. This, I confess, might be the consequence of an accident, or some unusual distemper, but all things put together, it seems very probable that it was somewhat else.”
Mr. Monpesson then stated, that one morning a light appeared in the children’s chamber, and a voice was heard crying—a witch! a witch! for at least an hundred times together. At another time, seeing some wood move on the chimney of a room where he was, he fired a pistol among it; and on examining the place afterwards, several drops of blood were discovered on the hearth, and on several parts of the stairs. For two or three nights after the discharge of the pistol nothing was heard, but it returned, and so persecuted a little child newly taken from the nurse, that the poor infant was not suffered to rest either day or night; nor would the mischievous demon suffer a candle to burn in the room, but either ran up the chimney with them alight, or threw them under the bed. It so frightened this child by leaping upon it, that it continued in fits for several hours; and ultimately they were obliged to remove the children out of the house. Something was heard the next night, about the hour of midnight, coming up stairs; it knocked at Mr. Monpesson’s door, but he not answering, it went up another pair of stairs to his man’s chamber, and appeared to him at his bed foot. The exact shape and proportion of the demon he could not discover; all he saw was a great body, with two red and glaring eyes, which for some time were steadily fixed upon him; and at length they disappeared.
On another occasion, in the presence of strangers, it purred in the children’s bed like a cat, and lifted the children up so forcibly, that six men could not keep them down; upon which they removed the children to another bed, but no sooner were they laid here than this became more troubled than the first. In this manner it continued for four hours, and so unmercifully beat the poor children’s legs against the posts, that they were obliged to sit up all night. It then emptied chamber-pots, and threw ashes into the beds, and placed a long iron pike in Mr. Monpesson’s, and a knife into his mother’s. It would fill porringers with ashes, throw every thing about, and kick up the devil’s diversion from morning till night, and from night till morning.
About the beginning of April, 1663, a gentleman that lay in the house, had all his money turned black in his pockets; and one morning Mr. Monpesson going into his stable, found the horse he was accustomed to ride upon, lying on the ground with one of its hind legs in its mouth, and fastened there in such a manner, that several men with a leaver, had the greatest difficulty in getting it out. After this there were a number of other remarkable things occurred, but the author’s account extends no farther; with the exception that Mr. Monpesson wrote him word, that the house was afterwards, for several nights, beset with seven or eight beings in the shape of men, who, as soon as a gun was discharged, would scud away into an adjoining arbour.
The drummer, however, it appears, was apprehended in consequence of these strange and mysterious occurrences. He was first, it seems, committed to Gloucester jail for stealing, where a Wiltshire man going to see him, the drummer enquired the news in Wiltshire: the reply was, none: No, returned he, do you not hear of the drumming at a gentleman’s house at Tedworth? That I do, said the other, enough: “I, quoth the drummer, I have plagued him (or something to that purpose) and he never shall be quiet until he has made me satisfaction for taking away my drum. Upon information made to this effect, the drummer was tried for a wizzard at Sarum, and all the main circumstances here related being sworn to at the assizes, by the minister of the parish, and several others of the most intelligent and substantial inhabitants, who had been eye and earwitnesses of them, from time to time, for many years past; the drummer was sentenced to transportation, and accordingly sent away; and as the story runs, ’tis said, that by raising storms, and terrifying the seamen, he contrived, some how or other, to get back again. And what is still as remarkable, is, that during his restraint and absence, Mr. Monpesson’s house remained undisturbed; but as soon as the demon of his quiet returned, he fell to his old tricks again as bad as ever.”
The drummer had been a soldier under Cromwell, and used to talk much of “gallant books” which he had of an old fellow, who was counted a wizzard.
On the authority of Mr. Glanvil, who had it from Mr. Monpesson, we have the following story.
“The gentleman, Mr. Hill, who was with me, being in company with one Compton of Somersetshire, who practised physic, and pretends to strange matters, related to him this story of Mr. Monpesson’s disturbance. The physician told him, he was sure it was nothing but a rendezvous of witches, and that for an hundred pounds he would undertake to rid the house of all disturbance. In pursuit of this discourse, he talkt of many high things, and having drawn my friend into another room, apart from the rest of the company, said, he would make him sensible that he could do something more than ordinary, and asked him who he desired to see; Mr. Hill had no great confidence in his talk, but yet being earnestly pressed to name some one, he said he desired to see no one so much as his wife, who was then many miles distant from them at her home. Upon this, Compton took up a looking-glass that was in the room, and setting it down again, bid my friend look into it, which he did, and then, as he most solemnly and seriously professeth, he saw the exact image of his wife, in that habit which she then wore, and working at her needle in such a part of the room, there also represented, in which and about which time she really was, as he found upon enquiring upon his return home. The gentleman himself averred this to me, and he is a sober, intelligent, and credible person. Compton had no knowledge of him before, and was an utter stranger to the person of his wife. The same man is again alluded to, in the story of the witchcrafts of Elizabeth Styles, whom he discovered to be a witch, by foretelling her coming into a house, and going out again without speaking. He was by all accounted a very odd person.”
THE DEMON OF JEDBURGH.
In 1752, when Captain Archibald Douglass, who was then on a recruiting party in the South of Scotland, his native country, lay in the town of Jedburgh, his serjeant complained to him that the house in which he was quartered was haunted by a spirit, which had several times appeared to him by candle light in a very frightful form. The captain, who was a man of sense and far from being superstitious, treated the serjeant as a person who had lost his reason, threatened to cane him as a coward, and told him that goblins and spirits were beneath the notice of a soldier. The captain the night following had a strange dream, in which he saw the landlady of the inn, where the serjeant lay, in company with a great number of other females, ascending in the air, some riding on brooms, some on asses, and others on cats, &c. The landlady invited him to accompany them in their aërial excursion, to which consenting, he got upon a goat behind one of the women, and was carried with great velocity to a large heath near London, which he well knew on their arrival.