"After this, one John Tregeagle, Esq., who was steward to John, Earl of Radnor, being then a Justice of Peace in Cornwall, sent his warrant for Anne, and sent her to Bodmin jail, and there kept her a long time. That day the constable came to execute his warrant, Anne milking the cows, the fairies appeared to her and told her that a constable would come that day with a warrant to carry her before a justice of the peace, and she would be sent to jail. She asked them if she should hide herself. They answered, No, she should fear nothing, but go with the constable. So she went with the constable to the justice, and he sent her to Bodmin jail and ordered the prison-keeper that she should be kept without victuals; and she was so kept, and yet she lived, and that without complaining. When the sessions came, the justices of the peace sent their warrant to one Giles Bawden, a neighbour of ours, who was then a constable, for my mother and myself to appear before them, at the sessions, to answer such questions as should be demanded of us about our poor maid Anne.
"Bodmin was eight miles from my father's. When we came to the sessions, the first who was called in before the justices was my mother. What questions they asked her I do not remember. When they had done examining her, they desired her to withdraw. As soon as she came forth I was brought in, and called to the upper end of the table to be examined, and there was the clerk of the peace, with the pen ready in his hand, to take my examination. The first question they asked me was, 'What have you got in your pockets?' I answered, 'Nothing, sir, but my cuffs': which I immediately plucked out and I showed them. The second question to me was, If I had any victuals in my pockets for my maid Anne? I answered I had not; and so they dismissed me, as well as my mother. But poor Anne lay in jail for a considerable time after; and also Justice Tregeagle, who was her great persecutor, kept her in his house some time as a prisoner, and that without victuals. And at last when Anne was discharged out of prison, the justice made an order that Anne should not live any more with my father. Whereupon my father's only sister, Mrs. Frances Tom, a widow, near Padstow, took Anne into her family, and there she lived a considerable time and did many cures; but what they were, my kinsman, Mr. William Tom, who there lived in the house with his mother, can give your lordship the best account of any I know living, except Anne herself. And from hence she went to live with her own brother, and, in process of time, married, etc.
"I am your lordship's most humble and dutiful servant,
"Moses Pitt.
"May 1st, 1699."
There are several points to be considered in this curious story. It is written in all good faith, and is an honest account of what Pitt remembered of events that took place some fifty years previously, when he was a boy.
There is nothing in the first portion of the story that cannot be explained without the intervention of fairies or pixies; but it is not so easy to account for Anne's abstaining wholly from the food of mortals like herself and being sustained on fairy food. It is not uncommon for women to pretend that they do not eat; there have been many "fasting girls," but all have been shown up to be impostors. In this case, however, Anne Jefferies did not pretend to be a fasting girl, but to be nourished by fairies. In the house of the Pitts she might have surreptitiously procured food, but this she could not do in the jail at Bodmin, nor in the house of Justice Tregeagle.
As to the cures she wrought, they are to be put in the same category as faith cures all the world over, whether performed at Lourdes, or by Christian scientists, or by Shamans in the steppes of Tartary.
Moses Pitt, the writer of the letter, was the son of John Pitt, yeoman, of S. Teath; he was bound apprentice to Robert Litterbury, citizen and haberdasher, in London, for seven years from October 1st, 1654. He became a foreman of the Haberdashers' Company 8th November, 1661, and started as a publisher and speculative builder. In 1680 he began to issue The English Atlas at his shop "The Angel," in S. Paul's Churchyard. It was to be in twelve volumes, and was dedicated to the King, but was never completed, as he got into difficulties. In the first place he became sole executor to a Captain Richard Mill, who had tenant right to the "Blue Boar's Head," in King Street, Westminster, at an annual rent of £20. Pitt had to pay this, and also Captain Mill's widow an annuity of £50. But he found the "Blue Boar's Head" so dilapidated that he had to rebuild it at a heavy outlay before he could let it. Then he had a quarrel with a neighbour about a party wall he was rebuilding, leading to law proceedings, and Pitt was cast in costs and damages. But his most serious loss was entailed by his building a house for Lord Chancellor Jeffreys, which that judge agreed to take at £300 per annum. As part of the land on which it was to be built was Crown property, Jeffreys guaranteed Pitt that he would obtain a lease for ninety-nine years of it, and bade him hurry on the building. When Pitt had spent £4000 on it, Jeffreys was disgraced and fell, owing to the flight of James II and the advent of William of Orange. Pitt, greatly embarrassed for money, fled to Ireland; he mortgaged his estates for £3000, but as his creditors were not satisfied, he was finally arrested and sent to the Fleet Prison April 18th, 1689, where he remained till the 16th May, 1691, when he was transferred to the King's Bench.