of York. He had no wish to offend one who could turn a song against him
and his religion. Queen Anne delighted in his wit and gave him fifty
guineas when she admitted him to her at supper, because he lampooned
the Princess Sophia, then next in succession to herself, by his
ditty, “The Crown’s too weighty for shoulders of eighty.” She herself
entertained great dislike towards the Electress Dowager of Hanover.
D’Urfey was attached to the Tory interest; and in the latter part of
the Queen’s reign frequently had the honour of diverting her with witty
catches and humorous songs, suited to the spirit of the times, written
by himself and sung in a droll and entertaining manner.
The Earl of Dorset welcomed him at Knole Park, and had his portrait
painted there. At Wincherdon, Buckingham’s house, Philip, Duke of
Wharton, enjoyed in company D’Urfey singing his songs, which he did
with vivacity, although in speech he stammered. D’Urfey said: “The
town may da-da-da-mn me as a poet, but they sing my songs for all that.”
He collected his songs into six volumes, published under the title
of _Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy_, which went through
several editions. In that for 1719 all the songs in the first two
volumes are his own; other songs, many of them folk ballads, he
tampered with, and added coarsenesses of his own not in the original.
The book was published by Playford, and the melodies are not always
correctly printed. Most of his airs were folk melodies; many of them,
doubtless, heard by him when he was young in Devonshire, for there they
are still employed to ballads he recast.
Writing to Henry Cromwell, 10th April, 1710, Alexander Pope says: “I
have not quoted one Latin author since I came down, but have learned
without book a song of Mr. Thomas Durfey’s, who is your only poet of
tolerable reputation in this country. He makes all the merriment in our
entertainments, and but for him, there would be so miserable a dearth
of catches, that, I fear, they would put either the Parson or me upon
making some of ’em. Any man, of any quality, is heartily welcome to
the best topeing-table of our gentry, who can roar out some rhapsodies
of his works; so that in the same manner as it was said of Homer to
his detractors, What! dares any man speak against him who has given so
many men to _eat_? (meaning the rhapsodists who lived by repeating his
verses). Thus may it be said of Mr. Durfey to his detractors, Dares
any one despise him, who has made so many men _drink_? Alas, Sir! this
is a glory which neither you nor I must ever pretend to. Neither you
with your Ovid, nor I with my Statius, can amuse a board of Justices
and extraordinary Squires, or gain one hum of approbation, or laugh of
admiration. These things (they would say) are too studious, they may do
well enough with such as love reading, but give us your ancient Poet,
Mr. Durfey! ’Tis mortifying enough, it must be confess’d.”
There is a slight allusion to D’Urfey in the _Dunciad_, iii. 146.
Gay mentions that Tom ran his Muse with what was long a favourite
racing song, “To horse, brave boys, to Newmarket, to horse!”
Tom was very irregular in his metres. He had the art of jumbling long
and short quantities so dexterously together that order resulted from
confusion. Of this happy talent he gave various specimens, in adapting
songs to tunes, composing his songs in such measures as scarcely any
instrument but a drum could accompany; as to the tune, it had to
take care of itself. To be even with the musicians who complained of
the irregularity of his metres, and their unusual character, he went
further, composing songs in metres so broken and intricate, that few
could be found who could adapt tunes to them that were of any value. It
is said that he once challenged Purcell to set to music such a song as
he would write, and gave him the ballad that speedily became popular,
“One Long Whitsun Holiday,” which cost the latter more pains to fit
with a tune than the composition of his _Te Deum_.
Tom, at least in the early part of his life, was a Tory by principle,
and never let slip an opportunity of representing his adversaries, the
Whigs, in a ridiculous light. Addison says that the song of “Joy to
Great Cæsar” gave them such a blow that they were not able to recover
during the reign of Charles II.
This song was set to a tune called “Farinelli’s Ground.” Divisions were
made on it by some English master, and it soon became a favourite
air. D’Urfey set words to it in which his old Huguenot execration of
the Papists breaks forth. Farinelli was a Papist, a circumstance that
gave occasion to Addison to remark that his friend Tom had made use
of Italian tunes for promoting the Protestant interest; and turned a
considerable part of the Pope’s music as a battery against the chair of
St. Peter.
D’Urfey’s _Pills to Purge Melancholy_ is a book nowadays to be kept
under lock and key, or else to be bound and lettered “Practical
Sermons,” to avoid its being taken down from its shelf and being looked
into by young people. And yet--“Tempora mutantur et nos mutantur in
illis.” Addison speaks of his songs in No. 67 of _The Guardian_ thus:
“I must heartily recommend to all young ladies, my disciples, the case
of my old friend, who has often made their grandmothers merry, and
whose sonnets have perhaps lulled to sleep many a pleasant toast, when
she lay in her cradle.” In No. 29, 1713, Addison wrote: “A _judicious_
author, some years since, published a collection of sonnets, which
he very successfully called ‘Laugh and be Fat; or, Pills to Purge
Melancholy.’ I cannot sufficiently admire the facetious title of these
volumes, and must censure the world of ingratitude, while they are so
negligent in rewarding the jocose labours of my friend, Mr. D’Urfey,
who was so large a contributor to this treatise, and to whose numerous
productions so many rural squires in the remotest parts of the island
are obliged for the dignity and state which corpulency gives them.”
D’Urfey was the last English poet that appeared in the streets attended
by a page. Many an honest gentleman, it is said, got a reputation in
his county by pretending to have been a boon companion of D’Urfey;
yet, so universal a favourite as he was, towards the latter part of
his life he stood in need of assistance to prevent his passing the
remainder of it in a cage like a singing-bird; for, to use his own
words, “after having written more odes than Horace, and about four
times as many comedies as Terence, he found himself reduced to great
difficulties by the importunities of a set of men who of late years had
furnished him with the accommodations of life, and would not, as we
say, be paid with a song.”
Addison, to relieve the old man, whose sight was then failing, but
whose spirits had not been extinguished, applied to the directors
of the play-house, and they agreed to act _The Plotting Sisters_,
one of his earliest productions, for the benefit of the author. What
the result of this benefit was does not appear, but it was probably
sufficient to make him easy, as we find him living and continuing to
write with the same humour and liveliness to the time of his death,
which happened on 26 February, 1723. He was buried in the churchyard of
St. James’s, Westminster, against the wall on the south-west angle of
which church, on the outside, was erected a stone to his memory, with
this inscription: “Tom Durfey died Feb. 26, 1723.”
THE BIRD OF THE OXENHAMS
The Lysons brothers, in their _Magna Britannia_, Devon, tell the
following story, under the head of South Tawton: “Oxenham gave its
name to an ancient family, who possessed it at least from the time
of Henry III till the death of the late William Long Oxenham, Esq.,
in 1814. Captain John Oxenham, who had been the friend and companion
of Sir Francis Drake, and who, having fitted out a ship on a voyage
of discovery and enterprise on his own account, lost his life in an
engagement with the Spaniards in South America, in 1575, is supposed
to have been of this family. The family has been remarkable also for
the tradition of a bird having appeared to several of its members
previously to their death. Howell, who had seen mention of this
circumstance on a monument at a stonemason’s in Fleet Street, which
was about to be sent to Devonshire, gives a copy of the inscription
in one of his letters. It is somewhat curious that this letter proves
the fact alleged by Wood, that Howell’s work does not consist of
entirely genuine letters, but that many of them were first written
when he was in the Fleet prison to gain money for the relief of his
necessities. This letter, dated July 3, 1632, relates that, as he
passed by the stonecutter’s shop ‘last Saturday,’ he saw the monument
with the inscription relating the circumstance of the apparition. It
appears, however, by a very scarce pamphlet ... that the persons
whose names are mentioned in the epitaph, given in Howell’s letter,
all died in the year 1635, three years after the date of his letter.
The persons to whom the apparition is stated in the pamphlet to have
appeared were John Oxenham, son of James Oxenham, gentleman, of Zeal
Monachorum, aged twenty-one,[11] and said to have been six feet and
a half in height, who died Sept. 5, 1635, a bird with a white breast
having appeared hovering over him two days before; Thomazine, wife of
James Oxenham, the younger, who died Sept. 7, 1635, aged twenty-two;
Rebecca Oxenham, who died Sept. 9, aged eight years; and Thomazine, a
child in the cradle, who died Sept. 15. It is added that the same bird
had appeared to Grace, the grandmother of John Oxenham, who died 1618.
It is stated also that the clergyman of the parish had been appointed
by the Bishop (Hall) to enquire into the truth of these particulars,
and that a monument, made by Edward Marshall, of Fleet Street, had been
put up with his approbation, with the names of the witnesses of each
apparition.
[Illustration: FRONTISPIECE TO “A TRUE RELATION OF AN APPARITION,”
ETC., BY JAMES OXENHAM]
“Another proof that Howell’s letter must have been written from memory
is, that most of the Christian names are erroneous. The pamphlet adds,
that those of the family who had been sick and recovered never saw
the apparition.” The pamphlet to which the brothers Lysons refer is
entitled: “A True Relation of an Apparition in the likeness of a Bird
with a white brest that appeared hovering over the Death-Beds of some
of the children of Mr. James Oxenham, of Sale Monachorum, Devon, Gent.
Confirmed by sundry witnesses as followeth in the ensuing Treatise.
London, printed by I. O. for Richard Clutterbuck, and are to be sold
at the signe of the Gun, in Little Britain, neere St. Botolph’s Church,
1641.”
Now in the first place it is well to observe that the name of the
place is wrong. The Oxenhams did not live at Zeal Monachorum, but at
South Zeal in South Tawton. No Oxenham entries are to be found in the
registers of Zeal Monachorum, no monuments of the family are in the
church. The brothers Lysons examined the registers there, and certified
to this. The Devon volume of the _Magna Britannia_ was published in
1822. Since that date a portion of the page in the Burial Register,
containing the entries of burials in 1635, has been cut out by some
person who has by this means destroyed the evidence that no such
Oxenhams were buried at Zeal Monachorum. Now the pamphlet states that
John, son of James Oxenham, aged twenty-two, died on 5 September, 1635.
The register of South Tawton informs us that John Oxenham was buried on
20 May, 1635, i.e. four months, two weeks, and two days before he died,
according to the tract. He was born in 1613 and baptized 17 October in
that year. His father, James Oxenham, was married to Elizabeth Hellier
in 1608. In 1614, a John Oxenham and his wife Mary had a son John as
well. Others reported to have had the white-breasted bird appear on
their deaths in the same year, were Thomasine, wife of James Oxenham
the younger, Thomasine, their babe, and Rebecca Oxenham, aged eight
years.
There is no entry in the register of the baptism of either Thomasine or
Rebecca, nor of the burial of Thomasine the elder, Thomasine the babe,
or of Rebecca.
The second John Oxenham, son of John and Mary, was buried 31 July,
1636, at least we presume it was he; the registers do not state in
either case whose son each of the Johns was.
There is no trace of the younger James to be found in the register, nor
of any of the Oxenhams in North Tawton registers at or about the time
of the supposed apparition.
The witnesses to the vision were, in the case of John Oxenham, Robert
Woodley and Humphry King. Robert Woodley does occur in the register
under date 1664. Mary Stephens was witness to the visions when
Rebecca and Thomasine the babe died, and Mary Stephens does occur in
the register under the date 1667, but none of the other witnesses,
Humphry King, Elizabeth Frost, Joan Tooker, and Elizabeth Averie,
widow. Consequently there is negative evidence that Thomasine, elder
and younger, and Rebecca never existed save in the imagination of the
author of the catch-penny tract.
We come now to James Howell’s account, in his _Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ;
or Familiar Letters_. The first edition of the first series of these
letters was published in the year 1645, four years after the tract had
appeared. About the year 1642 he had been committed to the Fleet, and
there confined for eight years. He states in his Letter IX, in Sect. 6,
in a letter to Mr. E. D.:--
“/Sir/,--I thank you a thousand times for the Noble
entertainment you gave me at _Berry_, and the pains you took in
shewing me the Antiquities of that place. In requitall, I can tell
you of a strange thing I saw lately here, and I beleeve ’tis true:
As I pass’d by Saint Dunstans in Fleet street the last Saturday, I
stepp’d into a Lapidary or Stone-cutters Shop, to treat with the
Master for a Stone to be put upon my Father’s Tomb; And casting
my eies up and down, I might spie a huge Marble with a large
inscription upon ’t, which was thus to my best remembrance:--
“_Here lies_ John Oxenham, _a goodly young man, in whose
Chamber, as he was strugling with the pangs of death, a Bird with
White-brest was seen fluttering about his Bed, and so vanish’d._
“_Here lies also_ Mary Oxenham, _the sister of the said John,
who died the next day, and the same Apparition was seen in the
Room._
“Then another sister is spoke of. Then, _Here lies hard by_ James
Oxenham,_ the son of the said_ John, _who died a child in his
cradle a little after, and such a Bird was seen fluttering about
his head a little before he expir’d, which vanish’d afterwards_.
“At the bottom of the Stone ther is--
“_Here lies_ Elizabeth Oxenham, _the Mother of the said_
John, _who died 16 yeers since, when such a Bird, with a
White-Brest, was seen about her Bed before her death._
“To all these ther be divers Witnesses, both Squires and Ladies,
whose names are engraven upon the Stone: This Stone is to be sent
to a Town hard by _Excester_, wher this happend.”
It will be noticed that Howell has got all the Christian names wrong,
but then, as he states, he gave the inscription from memory. If the
date of the letter be correct, 1632, that, as Lysons pointed out, was
before the deaths that took place in 1635. But in the first edition of
the letters this particular one is undated, and little or no reliance
can be placed on the dates that are given; indeed, the bulk of the
letters, if not all, were written by Howell when in prison and never
had been sent to the persons to whom addressed, any more than at the
dates when supposed to be written. Probably in his second edition he
dated this letter to E. D. sufficiently early to account for his
walking abroad in Fleet Street “last Saturday,” caring only that it
should not appear as a composition written in prison.
That he ever saw the marble monument is improbable, as it is almost
certain that no such monument existed. He had read the tract, and
pretended to have seen the stone so as to furnish a theme for an
interesting letter. It is extremely unlikely that the names of
witnesses to the apparition should be inscribed on the stone. Howell
saw these names in the tract; he did not know who they were, but
supposed them to be squires and ladies. There were no such gentry
about South Tawton at the period. As to the statement made in the
tract that the Bishop had commissioned the vicar of the parish to
examine into the case, and that he and the parson bore testimony to
its genuine character, that is as worthless as the witnessing to the
ballad concerning the “Fish that appeared upon the Coast, on Wednesday
the four score of April, forty thousand fathom above water.... It was
thought she was a woman turned into a cold fish. The ballad is very
pitiful, and as true.... Five justices’ hands at it; and witnesses more
than my pack will hold.”
It was a common trick of ballad-mongers and pamphleteers to add a
string of names of witnesses--all fictitious, every one.
The monument is probably as fictitious as the names of the witnesses.
There is not, and there never was, such in South Tawton Church any more
than in that of Zeal Monachorum. Lysons gives the Oxenham monuments as
he found them there: William Oxenham, gent., 1699; William Oxenham,
Esq., 1743; George Oxenham, Esq., 1779. “It is proper to add,” says
Lysons, “that there is no trace of the Oxenham family, nor of
the monument before mentioned, either in the register, church, or
churchyard of Zeal Monachorum, nor have I been able to learn that it
exists at Tawton, or elsewhere in the county.”
I was at South Tawton in 1854, staying with Mr. T. Burkett, the then
vicar, and I drew some of the monuments in the church, and am certain
this particular stone was neither in the church nor outside.
So also Polwhele, in his _History of Devonshire_, 1793, says: “The
prodigy of the white bird ... seems to be little known at present to
the common people at South Tawton; nor can I find anywhere a trace of
the marble stone which Mr. Howell saw in the lapidary’s shop in London.”
In Sir William Pole’s _Collections_, published in 1791, there stood
originally: “Oxenham, the land of Wm. Oxenham [the father of John,
the grandfather of Will, father of another John, grandfather of
James; whose tombstone respects a strange wonder of this famyly, that
at theire deaths were still seen a bird with a white brest, which
fluttering for a while about theire beds suddenly vanisht away, which
divers of ye same place belive being eyewitnesses of]”.
Sir William Pole died in 1635, and he said not one word about the bird
of the Oxenhams; that which has been placed within brackets was an
addition made by his son, Sir John, who had probably read the pamphlet
or Howell’s Letters. Risdon, who lived not far from South Tawton, knew
nothing about the bird. In fact, the whole legend grew out of the story
in the tract.
That this story is not wholly baseless may be allowed in the one case
of John Oxenham. As he was dying the window very probably was opened,
and a ring ouzel, attracted by the light, may have entered, fluttered
about, and then flown out again. That the window was open I said was
probable, for it is an idea widely spread in England that when a person
is near death the casement should be thrown open so as to allow the
soul to escape. I said once to a nurse who had attended a dying man:
“Why did you open the window?” “You wouldn’t have had his soul go up
the chimney, sir?” was the answer.
The appearance--accidental--of a bird in the death chamber would, in
a superstitious age, be regarded as supernatural. I was attending the
wife of an old coachman who had been with my father and myself. She
was bed-ridden. One day she said to me: “I know I shall go soon, for a
great bird came fluttering at the window.” She did not, however, die
till two months later.
The story of John Oxenham and the bird got about, and then some one
remarked that a similar sort of thing had happened, so it was said,
when the young man’s grandmother died. That sufficed to set the ball
rolling. For the purpose of the pamphleteer, three additional cases
were invented, cases of Oxenhams who never existed, and the account
of the stone was added, so as to give the tale greater appearance of
verisimilitude.
Kingsley introduces the white bird as an omen of the navigator Oxenham.
He was justified as a novelist in predating the tradition which did not
exist in his time, and was hatched out of the tract of 1641.
I have said white bird--for as the story went on the white-breasted
bird became white, hoary with attendance on generations of Oxenhams. It
may be interesting, at all events it is amusing, to note, how out of
this pious hoax serious convictions have grown that the bird really has
been seen, and that repeatedly.
Messrs. Lysons say: “This tradition of the bird had so worked upon the
minds of some of the members of the family, that it is supposed to
have been seen by William Oxenham, who died in 1743.” Then they go on
to relate this particular instance, which is given on the authority of
a note in the manuscript collections of William Chapple. Mr. Chapple
“had the relation from Dr. Bent, who was brother-in-law to Mr. Oxenham,
and had attended him as a physician. The story told is, that when the
bird came into his chambers he observed upon the tradition as connected
with his family, but added, he was not sick enough to die, and that he
should cheat the bird; and that this was a day or two before his death,
which took place after a short illness.”
The story is told more fully in a letter printed in the _Gentleman’s
Magazine_ of April, 1862, from J. Short, Middle Temple, to George
Nares, jun., of Albury.
“I have received an answer from the country in relation to the strange
bird which appeared to Mr. Oxenham just before his death, and the
account which Dr. Bertie gave to Lord Abingdon of it is certainly true.
It first was seen outside the window, and soon afterwards by Mrs.
Oxenham in the room, which she mentioned to Mr. Oxenham, and asked him
if he knew what the bird was. ‘Yes,’ says he, ‘it has been upon my face
and head, and is recorded in history as always appearing to our family
before their deaths; but I shall cheat the bird.’ Nothing more was said
about it, nor was the bird taken notice of from that time; but he died
soon afterwards. However odd this affair may seem, it is certainly
true, for the account was given of it by Mrs. Oxenham herself, but she
never mentions it to any one, unless particularly asked about it, and
as it was seen by several persons at the same time, I can’t attribute
it to imagination, but must leave it as a phenomenon unaccounted for.”
In both these accounts we have the story at second hand. The Hon.
Charles Barker, /LL.D./, was rector of Kenn at the time, and
during his tenure of the rectory, Mrs. Oxenham erected a monument in
the church to her father and mother. But who was the J. Short, Middle
Temple, who wrote the above letter to George Nares, jun., Albury? And
what is more to the point, how came it to be dated December 24th, 1741,
when Mr. William Oxenham, whose death it records, died on 10 December,
1743? Discrepancies and anachronisms meet us at every point in the
story of the Oxenham omen.
In the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ of the year 1794, the following paragraph
occurs recording the death of one of the Oxenhams: “13th (January)
at Exeter, aged 80, Mrs. Elizabeth Weston ... the youngest daughter
of William Oxenham, Esq., of Oxenham. The last appearance of the
bird, mentioned by Howell and Prince, is said to have been to Mrs. E.
Weston’s eldest brother on his death-bed.” Who said it? What was the
authority?
In Mogridge’s _Descriptive Sketch of Sidmouth_, is given a letter
relative to the death of a Mr. Oxenham at Sidmouth:--
“/My dear Sir/,