uprightness, Captain Clarke replied: “As truthful and straightforward a
man as ever I met in my life. We were as intimate as brothers; and two
men can’t be together, shut up for nearly two years in the same ship,
without getting to know whether they can trust one another’s word or
not. He always spoke of the circumstance in terms of reverence, as of
an incident that seemed to bring him nearer to God and to another world
than anything that had ever happened to him in his life before. I’d
stake my life upon it that he was speaking the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth, in the very extraordinary account which I
have related to you just as he delivered it to me.”
Such is the story, and it is much to be regretted that there is no
confirmation or other testimony from the two captains, or from any
others who were in the vessel.
It is given by the Rev. Bourchier Wrey Savile, in his _Apparitions: a
Narrative of Facts_. London, 1874.
GEORGE PEELE
Peele, a poet and dramatist, was a Devonshire man by birth, but of no
family of consequence in the county, as the name does not once occur in
the _Heralds’ Visitations_, either as a family entitled to bear arms
or in the alliances of such. He became a student of Christ Church,
Oxford, about the year 1573, where he studied to good effect and took
his Master’s degree in 1579. Although he unquestionably studied, yet
he also spent his spare time in revelry. He was always hard up for
money, and was quite unscrupulous how he procured it. On one occasion,
but later, when in middle life, he was riding to Oxford on a borrowed
horse, and stayed the night at Wycombe, where the landlady of the inn
was a great woman for herbs and nostrums of all sorts for the cure of
every kind of disease. George Peele fell in with her humour, admired
her prescriptions, and said:
“I am a doctor and surgeon myself, and am on my way to visit a
gentleman of large estate in Warwickshire, who is fallen into a
consumption.”
“Why--bless my heart,” exclaimed the hostess, “our squire here is very
bad, and supposed to be in a consumption. The surgeons have given him
up.”
Next morning at daybreak away runs the good-natured woman to the Hall,
rouses the squire’s wife, and tells her that a notable London doctor
is staying at her inn. The lady at once penned a note, entreating the
learned leech to visit her husband; and the hostess carried this to
Peele and urged him to visit the patient.
George was taken aback, he had not meant his words to be taken _au
grand sérieux_, and he tried to get out of the visit, but a servant
from the great house arrived to conduct him to it, and Peele went with
him. On his arrival he was gratefully received by the squire’s wife,
who conducted him to her husband’s room. George felt his pulse and
temples, and shook his head: “He is far spent,” said he, “but under
Heaven, I will do him some good, if nature be not quite extinct.” He
then asked to be shown into the garden, where he cut a handful of every
flower and herb and shrub the garden contained, brought them into the
house in the lappet of his cloak, boiled them in ale, strained them,
boiled them again; and when he had all the juice out of them, made a
hot draught and bade the patient drink a cupful, and ordered the wife
to administer the same to the squire morning, noon, and night, and to
keep the sick man warm. Then when he took his leave the lady pressed
into his hand a couple of brace of angels, or about forty shillings.
Away went _Le Médecin malgré lui_ to Oxford, where he roystered so long
as the money lasted. Then he had to return to London and by the same
way, and was not a little shy of showing in Wycombe, for he did not
know but that some of the herbs he had boiled and administered might
be poisonous, and have killed the gentleman. So, as he approached the
place, he inquired of a country bumpkin how the gentleman was. The
fellow told him, that his good landlord, Heaven be praised, had been
cured by a wonderful doctor who had come that way by chance.
“Art thou sure of this?” quoth George, “Yes, believe me,” answered the
man; “I saw him in fields this morning.”
George Peele now set spurs to his horse, and rode to the inn, where
he was cordially received: the hostess clapped her hands; the ostler
laughed; the tapster leaped; the chamberlain ran to the gentleman’s
house, and told him of the arrival of the doctor. The squire sent for
Peele at once, and forced him to accept twenty pounds for having cured
him of his consumption. But whether the cure was the result of some
herbs that chanced to go into the pot, or was due to the confidence the
sick man had in the science of George Peele, none can say.
George Peele took up his residence in London, on the Bank side, over
against Black Friars, and picked up a livelihood by writing interludes,
and the ordering of pageants. Anthony à Wood says that his plays were
not only often acted with great applause in his lifetime, but also
did endure reading, with due commendation, after his death. He was a
voluminous writer, and would turn his hand to any kind of literary
work. On one occasion a gentleman from the West Country engaged him to
translate some Greek author into English for him. During the process
of the work, Peele applied repeatedly to his patron for advances; but
the more Peele was supplied with coin, the slacker he became in his
work, and at last the gentleman lost all patience with him. Next time
Peele called with the usual request for an advance, he was invited to
stay for dinner. During the meal, George incautiously let out that he
had not done a line of translation for two months. The gentleman, very
incensed, ordered his servants to bind the author hand and foot into a
chair. This done a barber was sent for, and by order of the gentleman
shaved Peele’s chin, lip, cheeks, and head, and left him as bare of
hair as he was of money.
“George,” said the gentleman, “I have always used you as a friend; my
purse hath been open to you; you know that I highly value the book I
committed to you to translate, and I want it done. I have used you in
this fashion so as to force you to stay at home till the translation
is completed; for I know you will be ashamed to show in the streets
the ridiculous figure you now are. By the time the book is done, your
beard will have grown again.” Then he put in his hand forty shillings,
detained him till nightfall, and sent him home.
Next morning there was a hubbub in the street, crying and shouting,
and a mob collected. The gentleman looked out of his window, and saw a
girl with dishevelled hair, wringing her hands and screaming, “Oh! my
father! my good--my dear father!” and the people around were clamouring
to know what was the matter. Then the girl burst forth into “Woe to
this place, that my dear father ever saw it! I am now an orphan, a
castaway, and my mother a widow.” The servants of the gentleman came
upstairs to him in concern, saying that George Peele’s daughter was on
the doorstep calling down imprecations on the house and all within. The
gentleman in a mighty quaking sent for the girl, who came in sobbing
and crying. When she saw him she screamed, “Out on thee! thou cruel
man! Thou hast made my father--my good father--drown himself.” Then she
fainted. The gentleman was in serious alarm. He sent his servants at
once to buy a new and smart suit of clothes for the girl, as the best
way to console her, and gave her five pounds; then, as she recovered,
he bade her return home, and tell her mother that he would visit her in
the evening.
The gentleman was so crossed in mind, and disturbed in thought at
having involuntarily caused a man to commit suicide, that his soul
could not be quiet till he had seen the woeful widow. So towards
evening he hired a boat and was rowed from the Old Bailey, where he
lived, to Black Friars, and went directly to Peele’s house, where he
found the wife plucking larks, the orphaned daughter turning the spit,
and George, pinned up in a blanket, hard at work at the translation.
The gentleman, more relieved at the sight of Peele alive and well
than grieved at being cheated out of his money, accepted George’s
invitation, and gull and gulled had a merry supper together off roast
larks and canary.
One day Peele invited half a score of his friends to a great supper,
where all was passing merry; no cheer was lacking; there was wine
flowing and music playing. As the night was passing a reckoning was
called for. The guests, being well-to-do citizens, insisted that Peele
should not treat them all. He, as they were well aware, was not well
off, so they threw down their contributions to the feast--some two
shillings, some five, some more. “Well,” said George, “as you seem so
determined I will submit,” and he gathered the money into his cloak.
“But,” said he, “before we part, let us drink a couple of bottles
of hippocras and have a caper.” Whilst all were taking the final
draught and dancing about the room, George Peele decamped with the
contributions, and left his guests to pay the reckoning.
Peele and four of his companions supping together found that they had
spent all their cash, save five pounds between them. Holiday time was
come, Whitsuntide, and it must be enjoyed, but how was enjoyment to be
had for five mates, for four or five days, on five pounds? “I have
it,” said Peele. “Trust your money to me, and I will go to the Jew
clothes dealer, get a handsome black satin suit and good boots, and you
must all be put in livery and pass as my servants.”
Thus costumed, and taking a pair of oars with them, the party ascended
the Thames to Brentford, where they entered the inn of the “Three
Pigeons.” George called for the host, said he was a big squire in Kent,
and that he had come up the river to make merry at Brentford. And he
thereupon ordered supper and wine, and paid down out of the money he
had in hand.
At dinner, Peele asked the host about the tide. When he heard that the
tide did not set out till evening, “Confound it,” said he, “I intended
to stay here a few days, but I have not money enough with me to pay. I
want to send a lackey to London for a bag of ten pounds that have not
seen the sun and begun to melt. Have you a horse?” “Certainly I have,”
answered the taverner, “and I can lend it your man.”
Accordingly, one of the good comrades was mounted and sent off to
London. Presently in came the hostess with a petition. One of Mr.
Peele’s lackeys had been at her to beg his master to allow him to go as
far as Kingston to visit a sweetheart he had there. If Mr. Peele would
allow him to go he would promise to be back by nightfall.
“How can he?” asked George: “the distance is too great--if he runs, he
cannot do it.”
“For the matter of that,” replied the landlady, “I have a mare, and
will lend it him.”
“Very well, let the rogue go.”
So away went the fellow with the mare, but not to Kingston--he rode to
London, where he met his fellow on the landlord’s other horse. George
Peele now sent for the barber to do his hair, and he was to mind and
bring his lute with him. In Queen Elizabeth’s time a lute was one of
the necessary bits of furniture of a barber’s shop.
The man arrived, and Peele entreated him of his courtesy to leave the
lute with him, that he might amuse himself with it in the evening. The
barber consented, and departed. George was now left alone with two of
his comrades, and he bade them clear out of the house speedily. Then
going down into the court he looked at the clouds, and complained
of the weather. He was inclined for a stroll. Thereupon the hostess
fetched her husband’s best holiday cloak. George thanked her for
the loan, called for a cup of sack, tossed it off to success to the
“Three Pigeons,” and walked away--to the river where his comrades were
awaiting him, and they rowed down to London, where they all met, and
sold the horse and the mare, the gown and the lute.
Anthony Nit, the barber, was not satisfied to lose his lute, made
inquiries, and found out who had cheated him of it; and pursued
George Peele to Town and lighted on him in an alehouse in Seacoal
Lane. Peele was shabbily dressed in a worn green jerkin, and had on
his head a Spanish platter-fashioned hat, and was then engaged on a
peck of oysters. George was not a little abashed at the sight of the
barber, but showed no signs of being disconcerted. On the contrary he
at once said, “My honest barber, welcome to London. I partly know your
business; you come for your lute, do you not?” “Indeed, sir,” quoth
Anthony Nit, “that is the purpose of my coming.”
“And believe me,” said Peele, “you shall not lose your labour; I pray
you fall to and eat an oyster, and I will go with you presently; for a
gentleman in the city, a man of great worship, borrowed it of me for
the use of his daughter. But, sir, if you will go along with me to the
gentleman’s house you shall have your lute. Had you not come to reclaim
it I assure you I would have sent it to you; for you must understand
that all that was done at Brentford among us mad gentlemen was but a
jest.”
Then Peele said to Barber Anthony, “I really am not in a fit costume
to appear in a gentleman’s house. I pray you let me have your cloak
and hat, and you put on my green jerkin and the Spanish hat. I doubt,
accoutred as I am, that I would be allowed admittance.” The barber
agreed, and changed garments with Peele, who led him to an alderman’s
house, and knocked at the door, and asked to see the master. Peele was
well known there as master of the revels and overseer of the pageants,
and was readily admitted.
“Porter,” said he, “let my friend remain with you till I have done my
business with the master.”
“Certainly,” said the porter, “and he shall take a small dinner with
me.”
Peele was shown into the alderman’s room, and he said to him, “I want
you to do me a favour. There is a bum-bailiff in your hall, who has me
under arrest for a little sum. Allow me to slip out at your garden door
unperceived.” The alderman laughed and consented. So Peele evaded in
the cloak and hat of the barber, who failed to get them as well as his
lute.
Here is a specimen of manners in the reign of Elizabeth. Peele was
invited to supper at the White House in Friday Street, London, by some
of his friends. On his way he met an old comrade who was “down on his
luck” and had not a shilling wherewith to get his supper.
“I wish that I could take you with me, but I cannot,” said George. “I
am an invited guest, and besides, you are in rags. However, I will get
you a supper if you will do what I bid.”
Whilst seated at the entertainment, his needy friend pushed into the
room and made up to Peele.
“You scoundrel,” shouted the latter, “what are you doing here?”
“I pray you, sir, hear my errand,” pleaded the man.
“Not I, you slave; get you gone!” and snatching a roasted rabbit from
the dish, he threw it at him.
“You use me very rudely,” said the man.
“You dunghole--will you outface me!” roared Peele, and snatching up a
second rabbit threw it at his head, and then a loaf. After that he drew
his dagger and made as though he would stab the man, but his friends
interposed. The fellow picked up the rabbits and the bread and ran away
with them. So, by this shift, Peele helped his friend to a supper, and
was not suspected by the company.
Peele’s _Merry Conceited Jests_ was first published in 1607. Other
editions appeared in 1626, 1627, 1657, and 1671. There is also an
undated edition. The latest reprint is in Bullen’s _Works of George
Peele_, London, J. C. Nimmo, 1878.
His _Merry Conceited Jests_ shows him to have been a great rogue. That
he was a clever man and well educated is undoubted. He wrote several
plays, but only some have been preserved, such as _The Arraignment
of Paris_, 1584; _The Old Wives’ Tale_, 1595; _Edward I_, 1593;
_David and Bathsheba_, 1599; _The Turkish Mahomet and Hiren the Fair
Greek_, not published at the time. _The Battle of Alcazar_ has been
already mentioned. He also composed pageants that were performed at
the inauguration of the chief magistrates of the city of London. One
composed for Sir Wolstone Dixie, Lord Mayor of London, 29 October,
1595, is curious, as it describes the flourishing condition of the
metropolis in the days of Queen Elizabeth. About 1593 Peele seems to
have been taken into the patronage of the Earl of Northumberland, to
whom he dedicated in that year _The Honour of the Garter_. In _The
Puritan_, a play attributed but erroneously to Shakespeare, and acted
by the children of S. Paul’s, printed in 1607, is a character, George
Pieboard, that was meant to be George Peele. Peele died before the year
1598, and left behind him a widow and a daughter.
In 1591 Queen Elizabeth visited Theobalds. Lord Burleigh had lost
his mother in 1587, and his wife, to whom he was deeply attached, in
1589; and his daughter, Lady Oxford, had also expired, and depressed
by his misfortunes, he retired in 1591 to Theobalds. Queen Elizabeth,
to revive his spirits, visited him there; and Peele was commissioned
to write the speeches delivered by Robert Cecil, dressed as a hermit,
and others, to be addressed to the Queen. Besides the hermit, another
performer was the gardener, and a third the molecatcher. The latter
begins, “Good Lady, and the best that ever I saw, or any shall, give
me leave to tell a plain tale in which there is no device, but desert
enough,” and it ends, “Now, for that the Gardiner twitteth me with my
vocation, I could prove it a mystery not mechanical, and tell a tale
of the Giant’s daughter which was turned to a mole because she would
eat fairer bread than is made of wheat, wear finer clothes than is made
of wool, drink sweeter wine than is made of grapes; why she was blind,
and yet light of hearing; how good clerks told me that moles in fields
are like ill subjects in commonwealths, which are always turning up the
place in which they are bred. But I will not trouble your Majesty, but
every day pray on my knees that those that be heavers at your state may
come to a mole’s blessing--a knock on the pate and a swing on a tree.”
PETER PINDAR
John Wolcot, who published his poems under the sobriquet of Peter
Pindar, was perhaps the most scurrilous poet in a scurrilous age. If
this were a book of Minor Worthies of Devon, I should hesitate about
admitting one who was in nothing worthy, but possessed wit caustic and
cutting. He was as witty and not so coarse as Swift; witty but not so
terse as Pope, and also without Pope’s fine touch.
John Wolcot was the fourth child of Alexander Wolcot by Mary Ryder
his wife, and was born at Dodbrooke by Kingsbridge, baptized 9 May,
1738. His father was a country surgeon and the son of a surgeon. The
Wolcot family was ancient; it had its origin at Wolcot in Thrushelton,
where a moor still bears the name of Wollacot from a farm near by; the
heiress of the eldest branch carried Wollacot to the family of Bidlake
of Bidlake. A junior branch settled at Chagford, where “John Wolcot for
his good service in ye Warres had an addition given him to his Armes,
on Chief or, a lis betw. 2 Annulets.” One branch had a residence at
Butterstone in Hemyock, where it remained for several generations. The
lineal descent of John Wolcot, son of Alexander, from the heraldic
family of that name has not been made out, but there can be little
doubt that he was so descended.
Alexander Wolcot died 14 June, 1751, and John was left to the care of
his uncle, John Wolcot, of Fowey. He was educated at the Kingsbridge
Grammar School, and afterwards at Liskeard and Bodmin. In or about 1760
he was sent to France for a twelvemonth to acquire French. He does not
seem to have been comfortable there, and he retained through life a
distaste for the Gallic people:--
I hate the shrugging dogs,
I’ve lived among them, ate their frogs.
It was decided that he should be a surgeon, as had been his father and
grandfather before him, and he went in 1762, to London, and lodged
with his maternal uncle, Mr. Giddy, of Penzance. In 1764 he returned
to his uncle at Fowey, with whom he lived as assistant till 1767. On 8
September of this year he graduated M.D. at Aberdeen.
Wolcot was connected, it is not clear how, with Sir William Trelawny of
Trelawny, Bart., and on Sir William’s appointment in 1767 as Governor
of Jamaica, Wolcot was, by his influence, appointed to accompany him
as physician. Sir William had succeeded to the baronetcy in 1762, on
the death of his cousin Sir Harry Trelawny. Sir Harry had married his
cousin Letitia, daughter of Sir Jonathan Trelawny, and Sir William
married Letitia, daughter of Sir Harry and Letitia. There was a saying--
Trelawne, her course ’mid cousins run,
Shall weep for many a first-born son,
and when Captain William fell in love with his cousin Letitia he and
she knew that their union would be strongly opposed, indeed certainly
forbidden, by her parents. Accordingly he prevailed on her to marry him
in private, and this was done by her disguising herself in male attire,
and being married to him privately one evening in the church, she
dressed as a boy.
[Illustration: DR. WOLCOT]
In Jamaica Wolcot found that there was but little opportunity for him
to earn much by his profession, and Sir William proposed to him to
take Holy Orders, so that he might appoint him to the rich benefice
of S. Anne in the island. Wolcot, without the smallest vocation for
Orders, looking only to the monetary value of the living, practically
a sinecure, returned home in 1769 and was ordained deacon 24 June in
that year, and priest on the following day, by the Bishop of London.
Thus equipped he returned to Jamaica in March, 1770, hoping to find the
incumbent of S. Anne’s dead--he had left when the man was ailing. But
to his vast disgust the rector of S. Anne’s had taken on a new spell
of life, and did not at all see his way to vacate the fat benefice to
oblige Wolcot. John Wolcot was now given the incumbency of Vere, but
lived most of his time in the Governor’s house, leaving a hired deputy
to perform the duties of his cure.
Finding that there was little prospect of getting S. Anne’s he threw
aside his Orders, reverted to his profession, and was appointed
Physician-General to the troops on the island 21 May, 1770. He lived
on terms of close friendship with the Trelawny family, where his
broad humour, his sarcastic sallies, and his witty stories made him a
delightful companion at the table over the wine.
“I was invited,” said he, “to sup with a rich planter and his wife.
During the repast, my friend desired a female slave in waiting to mix
some toddy, on which the black girl, in her peculiar way, asked him if
it was ‘to be drinkey for dry, or drinkey for drunkey.’ When our supper
was ended, and our water being exhausted, the planter sent his wife
a short distance from the house for a fresh supply. The thunder and
lightning being excessive during her absence, I said to him, ‘Why did
you not send that girl (the slave) for water on such a night as this,
instead of exposing your wife to the storm?’ ‘Oh, no,’ replied he,
‘that would never do. That slave cost me forty pounds.’”
Miss Anne Trelawny was not a little simple and credulous, and Wolcot
delighted in hoaxing her. On one occasion, he informed her that a
cherub had been caught in the Blue Mountains, and had been put in a
cage with a parrot. Before morning, unhappily, the parrot had pecked
out the eyes of the poor cherub, all which the lady believed as an
indisputable fact. “The Nymph of Tauris,” which was printed in the
_Annual Register_ for 1773, was written by Wolcot on the death of this
young lady, which occurred in Jamaica.
Sir William Trelawny also died in Jamaica on 11 December, 1772,
whereupon Wolcot obtained leave from the new Governor, Dalling, 20
February, 1773, to return to England, accompanying Lady Trelawny, and
it was thought not improbable by some that the lady would dry her tears
and take Wolcot as her second husband, but death put an end to this
scheme, if ever entertained, as she died in the month of August ensuing.