One evening a young farmer arrived at Mr. Karslake’s door, at Meshaw, and entreated an interview on urgent business. On being admitted he told the magistrate that an atrocious crime had been undoubtedly perpetrated at Knowstone that very day. A little girl of eleven years of age had left the village in the afternoon to return to her parents, who occupied a small farm-house a mile or two distant, and had not been seen since. When search was made for her, on the roadside were found a child’s shoe and a bonnet stained with blood, but no body could be discovered. Karslake took the matter up. He was in the saddle from morning till night, the local constables were stirred up, but all in vain. No further traces of the child were to be found, no clue to the mystery discovered. Karslake then, at his own expense, went up to London, and returned with a first-class detective from Bow Street. But in vain. He was as unable to unriddle the mystery as were the local constables.
About ten days later the baffled magistrate was sitting hearing cases in the court-house at Southmolton, wearied and dejected at his failure, when Mr. Froude walked in, accompanied by a child. “Good morning, Mr. Karslake. I am told you’ve been looking for a little maid lately, and I’ve brought this one for you to see, in case her’s the one you be wanting.”
The child had been kept secreted at the rectory, and the parents had lent themselves to the deception, they being tenants and allies of the rector. What the cost was to Mr. Karslake in money, vexation, wear and tear, and ridicule—to which he was particularly sensitive—nobody knows; but one can conceive his annoyance when the whole court-house—bench and audience—broke out into a roar of laughter at his expense, he being chairman.
Froude had a nicely adjusted scale of punishments for all who offended him, and he had ready assistants to administer them.
From his first arrival at Knowstone he encouraged about him a lawless company of vagabonds who, when they were not in prison, lived roughly at free quarters at the rectory, and from thence carried on their business of petty larceny; and who were, moreover, ready to execute vengeance upon the rector’s enemies, and these enemies, although they lived in continual terror, were numerous.
His satellites ran errands, beat covers, broke in horses, did light farm-work, and found hares for the hounds, which were kept at the rectory.
Blackmore has described him and his gang in The Maid of Sker, in which he calls Froude Parson Chowne. If Froude desired to damage an obnoxious farmer who did not pay his tithes punctually, or who had otherwise offended him, he gave a hint, and the man’s ricks were burnt, or his horses houghed.
As Henry II did not order the murder of Becket, but threw out a hint that it would be an acceptable thing to him to be rid of the proud prelate, so was it with Parson Froude. He never ordered the commission of a crime, but he suggested the commission. For instance, if a farmer had offended him, he would say to one of these men subject to his influence, “As I’ve been standing in the church porch, Harry, I thought what a terrible thing it would be if the rick over yonder of Farmer G—— were to burn. ’Twould come home to him pretty sharp, I reckon.”