Next night she questioned the spectre, and it replied:
"Fear nothing; but take the whole four thousand pounds into your own possession, and when you have paid twenty pounds of it to one Sarah Goodwin, of Tower Hill, the rest is your own; and be sure you dig it up on the night of Thursday, the 7th December!"
Accordingly men were set to work, and certainly a great iron chest "was found under an old wall in the very place which the spirit had described."
One of the diggers, John Fishpool, a private of the Guards, "has been under examination about it, and 'tis thought that the gentleman who owns the ground will claim the treasure as his right, and 'tis thought there will be a suit of law commenced on it." Many persons crowded to see the hole from whence the chest had been exhumed in Rosemary Lane, and, by a date upon the lid, it would seem to have been made or concealed in the ninth year of the reign of Henry the Eighth.*
* London: printed for John Green, near the Exchange, 1705.
The dreadful effects of going to conjurers next occupied the mind of the public.
Mr. Rowland Rushway, a gentleman of good reputation, having lost money and plate to a considerable amount, Hester, his wife, took God to witness, "that if all the cunning men in London could tell, she should discover the thief, though it cost her ten pounds!"
With this view she repaired to the house of a judicial astrologer in Moorfields, about noon, when the day was one of great serenity and beauty. After some preliminary mummery or trickery, the wizard placed before her a large mirror, wherein she saw gradually appear certain indistinct things, which ultimately assumed "the full proportion of one man and two women."
"These are the persons who stole your property," said the astrologer; "do you know them?"
"No," she replied.