A book of the west. Volume 1, Devon

by S. Baring-Gould

There are several suspicious points about the story. No such a monument exists or has existed in South Tawton Church, nor is one such known to have been set up in any other in the county. The stone was of marble, and therefore not for the graveyard, but for the interior of the church.

According to the registers there was a John Oxenham, senior, died, and was buried May 2nd, 1630, but not one of the others mentioned. There were two John Oxenhams in the parish: John, son of James and Elizabeth, born in 1613; and John, son of William and Mary, born in 1614. Mary was the sister of the latter, and their father was the village doctor. But it was Elizabeth, according to Howell, who was the mother. No James, son of John, was baptised at the time at South Tawton. Elizabeth, the mother, according to Howell, died about 1616. No such a person was buried at South Tawton at any date near that.

The persons named in the tract of 1635—three years after Howell's letter—are also four, but they are of Zeal Monachorum. But the name of Oxenham does not occur at all in the registers of that parish, and in the tract, apparently, South Zeal has been mistaken for Zeal Monachorum.[23] In the first edition of Howell's epistles there is no date to the letter; that was supplied later, probably by the publisher. Now it is curious that in 1635 the name John Oxenham does occur as having been buried at South Tawton on July 31st, aged twenty-one. He was baptised July 10th, 1614. But there are no entries of Thomasine, wife of James, nor of Rebecca, aged eight, either baptised or buried; nor of Thomasine the babe.

In the tract we are informed that the white-breasted bird appeared when Grace, the grandmother of John Oxenham, died, in 1618.

And in fact we do find in the South Tawton registers for that date, September 2nd, 1618, Grace, the wife of John Oxenham, was buried.

That Howell's quotation from memory refers to the same four as are named in the tract is, I think, probable. He had not seen the tract, or he would have quoted the names correctly. The letter was not written at the date added to it at a later period, but in the same year as the tract appeared, when he was a prisoner in the Fleet for debt. Whether he ever saw the monument may be doubted, and he may have merely written for publication with mention of the story which he had from hearsay. As to the tract, it was one of those pious frauds by no means uncommon among the "goody-goody" writers of that and other days, and the incident of the white-breasted bird was an invention employed to "catch" the attention of readers, and lead on to the moral and pious sentiments that stuff the remainder of the tract. The trick of giving a list of witnesses was one resorted to by the ballad and tract mongers of the period, and it is noticeable that those whose names are appended as witnesses never existed at South Zeal, in South Tawton parish.

When once this pious fraud had been launched, it rolled on by its own weight, and it became a point of honour in the family to uphold it; and plenty of after-apparitions were feigned or fancied to have been seen.

The whole story of the alleged appearances of the white bird has been gone into with thoroughness by Mr. Cotton, of Exeter, who to some extent credits it; that is to say, he thinks that some real instances of birds fluttering at the window may have given rise to the story. But the basis is rotten, and the superstructure accordingly will not stand.[24]

A mine had been worked formerly above South Zeal. It had been under a "captain," of practical experience but no scientific knowledge. It yielded a small but steady profit. Then the directors and shareholders became impatient. They discharged the old captain, and sent down a fellow who had passed through the mining college, had scientific geology and mineralogy at his fingers' ends. He scouted the machinery that had been hitherto in use, sneered at the old-fashioned methods that had been pursued, boasted of what he was going to do, revolutionised the mine, reorganised the plant, had all the old machinery cast aside, or sold for old iron; had down new and costly apparatus—then came heavy calls on the shareholders—renewed calls—and there was an end of profits, and as finis a general collapse.