vessels were unseaworthy, and the military the offscouring of Italy.
Stucley put into Lisbon for repairs, and found King Sebastian of
Portugal preparing for his attempt on North Africa, having with him two
Moorish kings. The King persuaded Stucley to accompany him. Landing in
Africa, Stucley gave wise counsel to Sebastian not to engage the enemy
till the soldiers had recovered from the voyage, they having suffered
severely in the stormy passage. But the young King would listen to no
advice, and in the battle of Alcazar, on 4 August, 1578, Stucley lost
his life, regretted probably by none.
A fatal fight, where in one day was slain
Three king’s that were, and one that would be fain.
Thus perished a man of whom Cecil had written some years before,
“Thomas Stucley, a defamed person almost through all Christendom, and
a faithless beast rather than a man, fleeing first out of England for
notable piracies, and out of Ireland for treacheries unpardonable.”
Lord Burghley wrote: “Of this man might be written whole volumes to
paint out the life of a man in the highest degree of vain-glory,
prodigality, falsehood, and vile and filthy conversation of life, and
altogether without faith, conscience, or religion.”
Stucley at once became the hero of ballads, chapbooks, and plays.
_The Famous History of the Life and Death of Captain Thomas Stukeley_
was printed in 1605, and Peele’s _Battle of Alcazar_ in 1594, but
both plays had been acted before these dates. In the _Life and Death_
Stucley is glorified, as an idol of the military or Essex party to
which Shakespeare is known to have belonged, and it has been thought
that his hand can be traced in the composition. But if so, he has left
in it but little trace of his genius.
In one of the ballads published about Stucley, he is thus spoken of:--
Taverns and ordinaries--were his chiefest braveries,
Golden angels there flew up and down;
Riots were his best delights--with stately feasting day and night,
In court and city thus he won renown.
THE BIDEFORD WITCHES
At the assizes held at the castle of Exeter 14 August, 1682, three poor
old women from Bideford--Temperance Lloyd, aged eighty years, Mary
Trembles, and Susanna Edwards--were tried for witchcraft, were found
guilty, and were executed on 25 August ensuing.
They had all previously been examined before Thomas Gist, Mayor of
Bideford, and John Davie, Alderman, and also by the Rector. Before
these worthies they had made full confession of their misdeeds, but to
what an extent they had been drawn on by leading questions appears from
the _procès verbal_ of these examinations.
The worst of the three women was Temperance Lloyd, “intemperate
Temperance” as she is called in one account.
According to the information of Dorcas Coleman, she had suffered from
prickings in her body. She had consulted a physician, Dr. Beare, and he
had told her that he could do nothing for her, as she was bewitched.
When Susanna Edwards entered the room of Dorcas, the deponent was
sitting in her chair speechless, but on seeing Susanna she slid out of
her seat and tried to scramble towards her so as with her nails to draw
blood, for by that means alone can a spell be broken that has been cast
by a witch.
Grace Thomas also complained of pricking pains caused by Temperance
Lloyd, “just as though pins and awls had been thrust into her body,
from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet.” Temperance was
brought to confess that she had met the devil, as a little blackamoor,
in a lane, and that she had gone with him invisibly to the bedroom of
Grace Thomas, who lodged in the house of Thomas Eastchurch, and that
she “did then and there pinch with the nails of her fingers the said
Grace, in her shoulders, thighs, and legs.” She further admitted that
the black man had sucked her teats, and that he was about the length
of her arm. She was subjected to examination by some matrons, who
professed that they found suspicious marks upon her body. Before the
rector of Bideford she confessed that, having assumed the form of a
cat, she fetched out of Thomas Eastchurch’s shop a puppet, commonly
called a child’s baby, and left it near Grace’s bed, but she would
in no way admit that she had run pins into this figure. It appears
that Grace Thomas had been pricked in nine places about the knee, as
though pricked by a thorn, and according to the evidence of Elizabeth
Eastchurch, Temperance had confessed that she had taken a piece of
leather and driven a pin into it nine times, purposing thereby to cause
injury to the skin of Grace. She allowed that she had been accused of
assuming the form of a red pig, but would not admit that the accusation
was true. According to the evidence, the devil had appeared to her at
various times, sometimes in the form of a magpie, sometimes in that of
a grey or braget cat.
Susanna Edwards confessed that she first encountered the devil, dressed
very respectably and gravely in a black suit, in the Parsonage Close,
and that afterward, shrinking in size to a small boy, he had sucked
blood from her breast. She had pricked and pinched Grace Barnes; and
she stated that whilst her body lay motionless in bed, she could go to
any place she liked invisibly.
Mary Trembles confessed that the devil came to her “in the shape of a
Lyon” and sucked her so hard, that she was obliged to scream for pain,
and that she also could travel invisibly.
Among these witches, a certain Anne Fellow was said to have been done
to death by their practices. They had also bewitched cows so that
they would not yield their milk; and Temperance admitted that she
had caused several shipwrecks and been instrumental to the death of
several persons and many cattle. They could only say the Lord’s Prayer
backwards. They had squeezed Hannah Thomas to death. At their trial at
the assizes, all their confessions before the Mayor and Alderman at
Bideford were accepted against them. There was no evidence produced to
inculpate them beyond these confessions and the suppositions of women
who had felt pains and pricks in their bodies. Nevertheless, the three
poor creatures were sentenced to death. On the scaffold they were again
questioned, and denied almost everything that they had previously been
induced or frightened into admitting.
The authorities for this account are:--
“A True and Impartial Relation of the Informations against Three
Witches, Temperance Lloyd, Mary Trembles, and Susanna Edwards ...
London, 1682.”
“The Tryal, Condemnation and Execution of three Witches ... who were
arraigned at Exeter, on the 18th of August, 1682 ... London, 1682.” In
this the names are given inaccurately.
There is also a broadside ballad on the subject. At the top are two
rude woodcuts of witches, and a third of the devil dancing in the
middle of a ring of witches. He holds a candle in his right hand and a
broomstick in the other. Black owls are flying about; and a black cat
sits hard by looking on complacently. It has been reprinted by John
Ashton in his _Century of Ballads_, London, 1887.
It is wretched doggerel. Here are some stanzas:--
So these Malicious Women at the last,
Having done mischief, were by Justice cast;
For it appear’d they children had destroy’d,
Lamed Cattel, and the Aged much annoy’d.
Having Familiars always at their Beck,
Their Wicked Rage on Mortals for to wreck;
It being proved they used Wicked Charms,
To Murder Men, and bring about sad harms.
The Country round where they did live came in,
And all at once their sad complaints begin;
One lost a Child, the other lost a Kine,
This his brave Horse, that his hopeful Swine.
One had his Wife bewitch’d, the other his Friend,
Because in some things they the Witch offend:
For which they labour under cruel pain,
In vain seek remedy, but none can gain.
SIR “JUDAS” STUKELEY
Sir Lewis Stukeley, or Stucley, who has been branded as the Judas of
Devonshire, was the eldest son of John Stukeley, of Affeton, by Frances
St. Leger. He had two brothers and several sisters. He was great-nephew
to “Lusty” Stucley, and partook of that vein of meanness and treachery
that characterized Thomas. He was married to Frances daughter of
Anthony Monk, of Potheridge, a family which, if not more ancient, was
free from the taint of baseness that savoured three of the Stukeleys.
By her he had five sons; none were knighted, the shame of the father
rested on them, and it was not till the next generation that knighthood
was again granted to the representative of the Stukeleys, of Affeton.
Lewis himself was knighted, not for any worthiness that he had shown,
but as the representative of a good family, when James I was on his
way to London in 1603. In 1617 he was appointed guardian of Thomas
Rolfe, the infant son of Pocahontas by J. Rolfe. Then he was created
Vice-Admiral of Devon, and in that capacity he left London in June,
1618, with verbal orders from the King to arrest Sir Walter Raleigh,
then arrived at Plymouth on his return from the Orinoco. Sir Walter
had been released from his long captivity in the Tower, because he
gave hopes to James of finding a gold-mine in Guiana. He had been
there before, had brought away auriferous spar, and had heard tidings
of deposits of gold. James was in debt and in need of money, and he
clutched at the chance of getting out of his difficulties through the
gold of Guiana. That there was gold there is certain; Raleigh’s mine
has been identified; but since he had left the Orinoco, the Spaniards
had pushed up the river and annexed land and built stations.
James did not want to break with the Spanish Government and gave
Raleigh instructions not to come to blows with the Spaniards.
Unhappily, Raleigh’s lieutenant, whom he had dispatched up the river,
did come to blows with them, and blood was shed; it was however in
self-defence, for the Spaniards had fallen upon the English party when
unprepared and killed some of them. This unfortunate business, and the
fact that Raleigh could not reach his gold-mine, the way to it being
intercepted by the Spaniards, made him turn back with a heavy heart. On
reaching Plymouth, he hasted towards London to state the case to the
King, when he was met at Ashburton by his cousin, Sir Lewis Stukeley,
with smiles and professions of love--but having war in his heart. His
rancour against his kinsman was due to a quarrel in 1584, when, as
Stukeley asserted, Sir Walter did “extreme injustice” to Stukeley’s
father, then a volunteer in Sir Richard Grenville’s Virginia voyage,
by deceiving him in a matter of a venture he had made. James was in a
great fright lest he should be plunged in war with the King of Spain,
and very angry because the gold-mine had not been found; and Stukeley
was promised £500 to worm out of his cousin some damning admissions, as
that there never had been any gold-mine at all, and to betray these to
James. Stukeley had received only verbal instructions from the King. He
therefore reconducted Raleigh back to Plymouth, where he placed him in
Radford, the house of Sir Christopher Harris, who was charged with his
custody, till Stukeley received orders from James. Raleigh was ill--or
feigned to be ill--the former is the more probable, and he being laxly
guarded formed a plan of escape to France. He commissioned Captain
King, the only one of his officers who remained faithful to the last,
to make arrangements for flight with the master of a French vessel
then lying in the Sound. At nightfall, the two stole from Radford and
got into a boat lying at the little quay below the house. They had not
rowed far, however, before qualms came over Raleigh; it seemed to him
unworthy of his past and of his honour to fly his native land; and he
perhaps counted too securely on the generosity of the despicable James.
He changed his mind, and ordered King to return to Radford. Next day
he sent money to the Frenchman, and begged him to wait for him another
night. Night came, but Raleigh did not stir. This singular irresolution
in a man so energetic, ready, and firm, points surely to the fact
that he was ill at the time, suffering from the ague which so often
prostrated him. Stukeley at length received orders to take his prisoner
to London, and the opportunity to escape was gone for ever. As Raleigh
passed through Sherborne, he pointed out the lands that had once been
his, and related how wrongfully they had been taken from him.
At Salisbury Raleigh complained of illness, and begged to be allowed to
halt there for a while. It was asserted by a French quack, Mannourie,
set as a spy over him, that he got the doctor to anoint him so as to
produce sores wherever the ointment was applied. This was one of the
charges afterwards brought against him, at the special insistence of
King James, who always kept his eye on trifles. Whilst Raleigh was at
Salisbury, Sir Lewis Stukeley robbed him of all his jewels and money,
leaving him only the emerald ring on his finger, engraved with the
Raleigh arms. It has been asserted that Sir Walter endeavoured here
to bribe his cousin to connive at his escape. Had this been the case,
Stukeley would certainly have mentioned it in his “Humble Petition,”
and justification of his conduct after the execution of Raleigh. He was
not the man to fail to flaunt such a feather in his cap as that he had
resisted a bribe, had such a bribe been offered him.
Whilst Raleigh lay ill at Salisbury, Captain King hurried up to London,
by his master’s direction, to hire a vessel to wait at Gravesend till
he should be able to go on board. The master of the vessel at once
betrayed the matter. Sir William St. John, a captain of one of the
King’s ships, immediately took horse and rode to meet Stukeley and his
prisoner on their way to town, and encountered them before he reached
Bagshot. Stukeley then confided to him certain charges against Raleigh
which he was to lay before the King.
Next day Stukeley had fresh matter to dispatch to the Court. It was
this: La Chesnée, the interpreter of the French Embassy, visited Sir
Walter at Brentford. He had brought with him a message from Le Clerc,
agent for the King of France, offering him a passage on board a French
vessel, together with letters of introduction which would secure him an
honourable reception in Paris. Raleigh thanked him for the offer, but
replied that he had already provided for his escape. All this Stukeley
learned by applying his ear to the keyhole or by worming the secret
out of Raleigh by professions of kindness and desire to assist him to
escape.
James at once took alarm. A plot with France was a serious matter at
that time. He accordingly directed Stukeley to continue to counterfeit
friendship with Raleigh, to assist him in his meditated escape, and
only to arrest him at the last moment; and to bring this attempt as one
more charge against Raleigh. So Stukeley continued to insinuate himself
into the confidence of his cousin, and endeavoured by all means in his
power to wheedle out of him such papers as might afford evidence of his
designs and might serve to help to bring him to the scaffold.
On his arrival in town, Raleigh was conducted to his own house in Broad
Street. There he was revisited by Le Clerc, who repeated his former
offers.
The next morning Sir Walter got into a boat attended by Stukeley, all
smiles, and the honest King; and, as prearranged, he was arrested at
Woolwich and at once lodged in the Tower.
On 29 October, 1618, Raleigh’s head fell under the executioner’s
axe. He was a victim to Spanish resentment and to James’s meanness
in offering him as a sacrifice to curry favour with Spain. Gardiner
says Raleigh was executed “nominally in accordance with the sentence
delivered in 1603; in reality because he had failed to secure the gold
of which James was in need. The real crime was the King’s, who had sent
him out without first defining the limits of Spanish sovereignty.”
The writer of the notice of Sir Lewis Stukeley in the _Dictionary
of National Biography_ takes a lenient view of Stukeley’s conduct.
“Stukeley certainly gave hostile, not necessarily false evidence
against Raleigh. He seems to have been a harsh, narrow-minded, and
vulgar man, glad to have his cousin in his power, to revenge himself on
him for the pecuniary loss his own father had entertained.” Gardiner
says: “Stukeley seems to have thought it no shame to act as a spy
upon the man who had called upon him to betray his trust;” but it
is precisely this charge that cannot be established. We have no good
evidence that Raleigh did attempt to bribe him. Popular opinion ran
strongly against Stukeley, and he was nicknamed Sir Judas. He tried
to hold up his head at Court, but no man would condescend to speak to
him. He met on all sides with glances full of contempt and gestures of
disgust. He hurried to James, and offered to take the Sacrament upon
the truth of a story Raleigh had denied on the scaffold--that he had
been offered a commission by the French King (the story came through
Mannourie); but no one would have believed Stukeley a whit the readier
had he done this.
Indeed, Mannourie subsequently admitted that it was false, when he
was arrested for clipping the gold, the blood money, he had received
for spying on Sir Walter. In a letter from the Rev. T. Lorkin to Sir
T. Puckering on 16 February, 1618-19, he says: “Manourie, the French
Apothecary, (who joigned with Stukely in the accusation of Syr Walter
Raleigh) is at Plimouth for clippyng of gold ... his examination was
sent up hether to the King, wherein ... (as I hear from Syr Rob.
Winde, cupbearer I thincke to his Majesty, who saith he read the
examination) that his accusation against Raleigh was false, and that
he was wonne thereto by the practise and importunity of Stukely, and
now acknowledges this his present miserable condition a judgment of God
upon him for that.”
When Stukeley made this offer to King James, a bystander dryly observed
that if the King would order him to be beheaded, and if he would then
confirm the truth of his story with an oath while on the scaffold, then
possibly he might be believed.
One day Sir Judas went to call on the old Earl of Nottingham, who
was Lord High Admiral, and asked to be allowed to speak to him. The
Earl turned on him instantly. “What,” he said, “thou base fellow! Thou
who art reputed the scorn and contempt of men, how darest thou offer
thyself into my presence? Were it not in my own house, I would cudgel
thee with my staff for presuming to be so saucy.” Stukeley ran off to
whine to the King, but even there he met with no redress. “What,” said
James, “wouldst thou have me do? Wouldst thou have me hang him? On my
soul, if I should hang all that speak ill of thee, all the trees in the
country would not suffice.” It was even said, probably without truth,
that James had said to Stukeley, “Sir Walter’s blood be on thy head.”
A few days after the scene with the King, it was discovered that
Stukeley had been for many years engaged in the nefarious occupation
of clipping coin. It was even said that he tampered in this way with
the very gold pieces which had been paid to him as the price of his
services for lodging Raleigh in the Tower and betraying him. When
arrested he endeavoured to excuse himself by inculpating his son. Could
meanness descend to a lower depth?
“1618-19. Jan. 12.... Upon Twelf night Stukely was committed close
prisoner in the Gate house for clipping of gould. He had receyved of
the Exchequer some weeks before £500 in recompense for the service he
had performed in the business of Syr Walter Raleigh, and beganne (as
is said) to exercise the trade upon that ill-gotten money (the price
of blood). Upon examination he endeavoured to avoid it from himself,
by casting the burden either upon his sonne or man. The former playes
least in sight and can not be found. The servant is committed to the
Marshalsay, who, understanding that his Master would shift over the
business to him, is willing to sett the saddle upon the right horse,
and accuses his Master.”[15]
But the accusation was not pressed. King James owed Stukeley too deep a
debt to let him suffer, and he threw him a pardon, so that the evidence
against him was not gone into. It may be remembered that “Lusty”
Stukeley had also been implicated in clipping and coining, and had only
escaped arrest by flying the country.
Stukeley, an outcast from society in London, went down to Affeton. But
even there he was ill-received. The gentry would not speak to him, his
own retainers viewed him with a cold, if not hostile, eye, and rendered
him but bare obedience.
The brand of Cain was on him, and he fled from the society of his
fellow men to the isle of Lundy, and shut himself up in the lonely,
haunted tower of the De Mariscoes. There he went raving mad and
perished (1620), a miserable lunatic on that rock, surrounded by
the roaring of the waves and the shrieks of the wind. His body was
conveyed to South Molton, so that he was denied even a grave beside his
ancestors at Affeton.
For authorities, see Gardiner, _Prince Charles and the Spanish
Marriage_, Vol. I, London, 1869; Dr. Brushfield’s _Raleghana_, Part
VII; the _Dictionary of National Biography, s.n._; and the various
Lives of Raleigh.
THE SAMPFORD GHOST
In 1810, considerable commotion was caused by the rumour that spread
concerning a house in Sampford Peverell reputed to be haunted. The
house belonged to a Mr. Tally, who let it to a Mr. Chave, son of
a well-to-do yeoman of the neighbourhood, for a general shop and
residence. The rumours reached the ears of the Rev. C. Colton,
/M.A./, a clergyman at Tiverton, and he visited Sampford to
investigate the matter, and wrote his experiences to the editor of the
_Taunton Courier_ on 18 August. The tone of the letter is frank and
sincere.
“I am well aware that all who know me would not require the sanction
of an oath, but as I am now addressing the public, I must consider
myself before a tribunal of which my acquaintance constitutes a very
small part. And first, I depose that after six nights at Mr. Chave’s
house, and with a mind perfectly unprejudiced, after the most minute
investigation and closest inspection of the premises, I am utterly
unable to account for any of the phenomena.
“I further depose, that in my visits to Mr. Chave’s house, I never had
any other motive, direct or indirect, but an earnest wish to trace
these phenomena to their true and legitimate cause. Also that I have
in every instance found the people of the house most willing and ready
to contribute everything in their power to co-operate with me in the
detection of the cause of these unaccountable sights and violent blows
and sounds. Also, that I have affixed a seal with a crest to every
door, cavity, etc., in the house, through which any communication could
be carried--that this seal was applied to each end of sundry pieces of
paper in such a manner that the slightest attempt to open such doors,
or pass such cavities, must have broken these papers--that none of
these papers were deranged or broken; and also, that the phenomena that
night were as unaccountable as ever.
“Also, that it appears that this plot, if it be a plot, hath been
carried on for many months, that it must be in the hands of more than
fifty people, that the present owner is losing the value of his house,
the tenant the customers of his shop, whom fear now prevents from
visiting it after sunset.”
To this and more, Mr. Colton took oath before B. Wood, Master in
Chancery, Tiverton.
This letter was animadverted upon by the editor and by writers to the
_Taunton Courier_, as dealing in general, and giving no details.
To this Mr. Colton (14 September) replied, giving particulars of what
he had seen and heard.
The house rented by Chave had for some time been looked upon as
haunted. An apprentice boy lodging in it had been frightened by the
apparition of a woman. Persons passing at night had seen strange lights
in the windows. Mr. Colton goes on to say:--