[We have some NOTES on the subject of throwing Old Shoes after
a person as a means of securing them good fortune, which we
hope to insert in an early Number.]
* * * * *
_Sir Thomas Boleyn's Spectre_.--Sir Thomas Boleyn, the father of the
unfortunate Queen of Henry VIII., resided at Blickling, distant about
fourteen miles from Norwich, and now the residence of the dowager Lady
Suffield. The spectre of this gentleman is believed by the vulgar to
be doomed, annually, on a certain night in the year, to drive, for a
period of 1000 years, a coach drawn by four headless horses, over a
circuit of twelve bridges in that vicinity. These are Aylsham, Burgh,
Oxnead, Buxton, Coltishall, the two Meyton bridges, Wroxham, and four
others whose names I do not recollect. Sir Thomas carries his head
under his arm, and flames issue from his mouth. Few rustics are hardy
enough to be found loitering on or near those bridges on that night;
and my informant averred, that he was himself on one occasion hailed
by this fiendish apparition, and asked to open a gate, but "he warn't
sich a fool as to turn his head; and well a' didn't, for Sir Thomas
passed him full gallop like:" and he heard a voice which told him that
he (Sir Thomas) had no power to hurt such as turned a deaf ear to his
requests, but that had he stopped he would have carried him off.
This tradition I have repeatedly heard in this neighbourhood from aged
persons when I was a child, but I never found but one person who had
ever actually _seen_ the phantom. Perhaps some of your correspondents
can give some clue to this extraordinary sentence. The coach and four
horses is attached to another tradition I have heard in the west
of Norfolk; where the ancestor of a family is reported to drive his
spectral team through the old walled-up gateway of his now demolished
mansion, on the anniversary of his death: and it is said that the
bricks next morning have ever been found loosened and fallen, though
as constantly repaired. The particulars of this I could easily procure
by reference to a friend.