Devonshire Characters and Strange Events

by S. Baring-Gould

This latter he had violently raided, though he is said to have soon returned it undespoiled, and without having mastered its contents, he being “a man of very slender understanding in matters of the law.” But “his specious pretence to do his nephew good and undertake his tuition,” had been vehemently rejected by the mother, to whom it may have occurred that if little John and his sister were to be confided to their grasping uncle’s control, such another tragedy as that of the Babes in the Wood might stain the annals of Dartmoor!

Mistress Weekes who, as Mary Southcote, had married before the settlements were executed, had received no jointure. She could expect no generosity from uncle John, and was naturally anxious about her future.

She accordingly preferred—in both senses—Richard’s claim, and—apparently by mutual understanding—the deed by which young John’s grandfather had entailed the estate on the heirs male was suppressed.

In the summer of 1661, young John being evidently in a rapid decline, was persuaded to ride to Plymouth to be treated by Dr. Anthony Salter, and his son-in-law Dr. William Durston, Richard’s cousin. When young John was in Salter’s house, another cousin of Richard’s, a barrister, was introduced, and by his advice—and it is more than insinuated under undue pressure—on 29 August John signed a conveyance of his estates on the prearranged lines, to Salter and Durston as trustees on behalf of Richard Weekes of Hatherleigh and his heirs for ever. But John had sufficient wit to insist upon endorsing the settlement with a clause giving him power of revocation.

Shortly after the execution of this deed, at his urgent request, John was carried home to North Wyke on a horse-litter, accompanied by Richard of Hatherleigh, Dr. Durston, and others, and three days later, i.e. on or about 1 September, he departed this life. By that time, the attitude of Katherine Weekes, the sister of John, had undergone a complete volte-face. This defection may safely be attributed to the treacherous influence of Dr. Salter, who, having seen North Wyke, evidently thought that it might as well come into his family as go to Richard Weekes; for at this period he began to make strenuous efforts to bring about a marriage between Katherine and his son, and she, it is said, “did entertain his son to be a suitor.” The plan was now to secure the whole estate to herself. She accordingly declared that young John had always promised that she should be his heir, and that on his death-bed he had repented of his conveyance to Richard, and had by word of mouth, in the presence of several witnesses, revoked it.

Scarcely was the breath out of the body of young John, says one deponent, before she drew from beneath his pillow a “portmantea” containing the said writing, and concealed it with intention to burn it; but Richard came upstairs into the room where she was with this deponent and others, and took it from where it was hidden, “and did keep the same.” Thus was war openly declared between Richard Weekes on the one side, and his quondam confederate Salter and Katherine on the other.

The funeral did not take place till three weeks after the decease, a fact somewhat remarkable, but not extraordinary.[57] To do Richard justice, he had the funeral conducted with all the pomp befitting the old position of the family, and “was at about £400 or £500 charges over it.”

On “the day after the day of the funeral,” i.e. on Sunday, 22 September, Richard proceeded in a very practical manner to take possession. A company of fifteen or sixteen persons, mostly relations of the deceased, had been invited by him to sup in the hall, and scarcely was the meal over when Richard, proclaiming that he was “now to do the Divell’s work and his own,” rose, and drawing his sword, commanded all to quit the house, saying that, as God was his judge, if they did not presently depart he would run them through. Several resisted, including Mr. Richard Parker, of Zeal Monachorum, Katherine’s trustee, whose brother, Edmund Parker, of Boringdon (ancestor of Lord Morley) she eventually married. Katherine, her mother, and the other ladies endeavoured to return to their chambers, but Richard Weekes, with bared sword, stood in the doorway of the parlour, from which room the stairs ascended to that part of the house in which the deeds were kept, and swore that he would suffer no one to go up the said stairs. On Katherine’s making a second attempt to do so, he “threw her violently on the ground upon her head.” Mr. Parker, seeing this done in the presence of a justice of the peace, Alexander Wood, of North Tawton, rightly apprehended that he was a partisan of Richard, and determined to ride off in quest of a more impartial justice.

Stepping out of the house in his “pantables” (pantoufles, slippers) to get his horse in readiness, and returning to the hall door for his boots, Parker was refused admittance, “and his boots denied to be delivered to him, although he desired they might be delivered to him out of the window, so that he was forced, having been indisposed that day, and by that means in his pantables, to take his servant’s boots, which he caused to be pluckt off on purpose.”

Richard then turned the guests out into the dark, many of whom, “though gentlewomen of quality,” were forced to sleep “at mean houses, and some to lie in hay-lofts.” But Katherine, her mother, and grandmother were allowed to sit up all night in the hall. At about midnight, to their dismay, Katherine and her companions heard Richard Weekes and his myrmidons go up the stairs and smash open, “with hatchet and iron bar,” the locked doors of her own chamber and of the muniment-room.