A bad bargain, for three years after the Reform Bill was passed, and S. Ives ceased to be a pocket borough.
ANNE JEFFERIES
Moses Pitt, a publisher in London, a native of S. Teath, in 1696 published the following letter to the Bishop of Gloucester. There are two editions of it, with slight and insignificant variations both in the preliminary address and in the account of Anne Jefferies.
The preamble we omit.
"Anne Jefferies (for that was her maiden name), of whom the following strange things are related, was born in the parish of S. Teath, in the county of Cornwall, in December, 1626, and she is still living in 1696, being in the seventieth year of her age. She is married to one William Warren, formerly hind to the late eminent physician Dr. Richard Lewes, deceased, and now lives as a hind to Sir Andrew Slanning, of Devon, Bart.
"In the year 1691 I wrote into Cornwall to my sister Mary Martyn's son, attorney, to go to the said Anne and discourse her, as from me, about the most strange passages of her life. He answers my letter September 13th, 1691, and saith: 'I have been with Anne Jefferies, and she can give me no particular account of her condition, it being so long since. My grandmother and mother say that she was in Bodmin jail three months, and lived six months without meat; and during her continuance in that condition several eminent cures were performed by her; the particulars no one can now state. My mother saw the fairies once, and heard one say that they should give some meat to the child, that she might return unto her parents, which is the fullest relation can now be given.' But I, not being satisfied with the answer, did in the year 1693 write into Cornwall and my sister's husband, Mr. Humphry Martyn, and desired him to go to Anne Jefferies to see if he could persuade her to give me what account she could remember of the many and strange passages of her life. He answered by letter, January 31st, 1693, and saith: 'As for Anne Jefferies, I have been with her the greatest part of one day, and did read to her all that you wrote to me; but she would not own anything of it as concerning the fairies, neither of the cures she then did. I endeavoured to persuade her she might receive some benefit by it. She answered that if her own father were now alive she would not discover to him those things which did happen to her. I asked her the reason why she would not do it; she replied that if she should discover it to you, that you would make either books or ballads of it; and she said that she would not have her name spread about the country in books or ballads, or such things, if she might have £500 for doing it; for she said she had been questioned before justices, and at the sessions, and in prison, and also before the judges at the assizes, and she doth believe that if she should discover such things now she would be questioned again for it. As for the ancient inhabitants of S. Teath Church-town, there are none of them now alive but Thomas Christopher, a blind man. (Note: This Thomas Christopher was then a servant in my father's house, when these things happened, and he remembers many of the passages you write of her.) And as for my wife, she then being so little did not mind it, but heard her father and mother relate most of the passages you wrote of her.'
"This is all I can, at present, possibly get from her, and therefore I now go on with my relation of the wonderful cures and other strange things she did, or happened to her, which is the substance of what I wrote to my brother and that he read to her.
"It is the custom in our county of Cornwall for the most substantial people of each parish to take apprentices the poor children, and to breed them up till they attain to twenty-one years of age, and for their services to give them meat, drink, and clothes. This Anne Jefferies, being a poor man's child of the parish, by Providence fell into our family, where she lived many years. Being a girl of a bold, daring spirit, she would venture at those difficulties and dangers that no boy would attempt.