king. We were bidden to a banket at the royal palace, and Sir John and
I dared not choose but go. There was such a blaze of lords and ladies
in silks and samite, and jewels and gold, that it was like the city
of New Jerusalem in the Scriptures; and I, thy maid Thomasine, was
arrayed so fine, that they brought up the saying that I was dressed
like an altar. When we were led into the chamber of dais, where his
highness stood, the king did kiss me on the cheek, as the manner is,
and he seemed gentle and kind. But then did he turn to my good lord
and husband, and say, with a look stark and stern enow, ‘Ha, Sir John!
see to it that thy fair dame be liege and true, for she comes of the
burly Cornish kind, and they be ever rebels in blood and bone. Even
now they be one and all for that knave Warbeck,[99] who is among them
in the West.’ You will gesse, dear mother, how my heart did beat.
But withal the king did drink to me at the banket, and did merrily
call, ‘Health to our Lady Mayoress, Dame Thomasine Perceval, which now
feedeth her flock in the rich pastures of our city of London.’ And
thereat they did laugh, and fleer, and shout, and there was flashing of
tankards and jingling of cups all down the hall.”
[Illustration: THE TOWER OF ST. STEPHEN’S CHURCH, DUNHEVED, to which
Dame Thomasine Perceval contributed 40 marks.]
With increase of wealth came also many a renewed token of affectionate
regard and sterling bounty to her old and well-beloved dwelling-place
of Wike St. Marie. As her wedding-gift of remembrance she directed that
“a firm and steadfast road should be laid down with stones,” at her
whole cost, along the midst of Green-a-Moor, and fit for man and beast
to travel on, with their lawful occasions, from Lanstaphadon to the
sea. At another time, and for a New Year’s gift, she gave the sum of
forty marks towards the building of a tower for St. Stephen’s church,
above the causeway of Dunheved; and it was her desire that they should
carry their pinnacles so tall that “they might be seen from Swannacote
Cross, by the moor, to the intent that they who do behold it from the
Burgage Mound may remember the poor maid which is now a wedded dame of
London citie.”
During her three marriages she had no children, and it was her singular
lot to survive her third husband, Sir John: it was in long widowhood
after him that she lived and died. Her will, bearing date the vigil
of the Feast of Christmas, A.D. 1510, is a singular document, for
therein the memory and the impulses of her early life are recalled
and condensed. She bequeaths large sums of money to be laid out and
invested in land for the welfare of the village borough, whereto, amid
all the strange vicissitudes of her existence, her heart had always
clung with fond and lingering regret. She directs that a chantry[100]
with cloisters was to be built near the church of Wike St. Marie, at
the discretion and under the control of her executor and cousin, John
Dineham, the unforgotten priest. She endows it with thirty marks by
the year, and provides that there shall be established therein “a
schole for young children born in the paroche of Wike St. Marie; and
such to be always preferred as are friendless and poor.” They are to
be “taught to read with their fescue from a boke of horn, and also to
write, and both as the manner was in that country when I was young.”
The well-remembered days of her girlhood appear to tinge every line
of her last will. Her very codicil is softened with a touch of her
first and fondest love. In it she gives to the priest of the church,
where she well knew that her cousin John would serve and sing,[101]
“the silver chalice gilt, which good Master Maskelyne the goldsmith had
devised for her behoof, with a leetle blue flower which they do call
a forget-me-not wrought in Turkess at the bottom of the bowl, to the
intent that whensoever it is used the minister may remember her who was
once a simple shepherd-maid by the wayside of Wike St. Marie, and who
was so wonderfully brought by many great changes to be the Mayoress of
London citie before she died.”
[Illustration: DOORWAY OF OLD COLLEGE, WEEK ST. MARY.]
FOOTNOTES:
[95] From _All the Year Round_, vol. xvii. pp. 276-280. 1867. For the
origins of this story, see Appendix G.
[96]
“Straight, but as lissome as a hazel wand;
Her eyes a bashful azure, and her hair
In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the shell
Divides threefold to show the fruit within.”
TENNYSON, _The Brook_.
[97] One of Mr. Hawker’s sisters was the wife of John Dineham, surgeon,
of Stratton.
[98] Hawker has a pretty poem for children with this title--
“Teach me, Father John, to say
Vesper-verse and matin-lay:
So when I to God shall plead,
Christ His Cross shall be my speed.”
[99] The love of the Lady Katherine Gordon for Perkin Warbeck is the
subject of Hawker’s poem, “The Lady of the Mount.”
[100] The remains of this old building have been embodied in some
cottages. The doorway shown in the illustration forms the front door of
one of these. The other is occupied by the Cornwall County Police, and
the unsuspecting pilgrim who rambles round without permission is liable
to be startled by the gruff remark, “You’m trespassing!” Thus are we
recalled from “the baseless fabric” of the past to the stern realities
of the living present.
[101] Hawker gives a romantic turn of his own to this part of the story.
THE BOTATHEN GHOST[102]
There was something very painful and peculiar in the position of the
clergy in the west of England throughout the seventeenth century. The
Church of those days was in a transitory state, and her ministers,
like her formularies, embodied a strange mixture of the old belief
with the new interpretation. Their wide severance also from the great
metropolis of life and manners, the city of London (which in those
times was civilised England, much as the Paris of our own day is
France), divested the Cornish clergy in particular of all personal
access to the masterminds of their age and body. Then, too, the barrier
interposed by the rude rough roads of their country, and by their
abode in wilds that were almost inaccessible, rendered the existence
of a bishop rather a doctrine suggested to their belief than a fact
revealed to the actual vision of each in his generation. Hence it
came to pass that the Cornish clergyman, insulated within his own
limited sphere, often without even the presence of a country squire
(and unchecked by the influence of the Fourth Estate--for until the
beginning of this nineteenth century, _Flindell’s Weekly Miscellany_
distributed from house to house from the pannier of a mule, was the
only light of the West), became developed about middle life into an
original mind and man, sole and absolute within his parish boundary,
eccentric when compared with his brethren in civilised regions, and
yet, in German phrase, “a whole and seldom man” in his dominion of
souls. He was “the parson,” in canonical phrase--that is to say, The
Person, the somebody of consequence among his own people. These men
were not, however, smoothed down into a monotonous aspect of life and
manners by this remote and secluded existence. They imbibed, each in
his own peculiar circle, the hue of surrounding objects, and were
tinged into distinctive colouring and character by many a contrast
of scenery and people.[103] There was the “light of other days,”
the curate by the sea-shore, who professed to check the turbulence
of the “smugglers’ landing” by his presence on the sands, and who
“held the lantern” for the guidance of his flock when the nights were
dark, as the only proper ecclesiastical part he could take in the
proceedings.[104] He was soothed and silenced by the gift of a keg
of hollands or a chest of tea. There was the merry minister of the
mines, whose cure was honeycombed by the underground men. He must needs
have been artist and poet in his way, for he had to enliven his people
three or four times a-year, by mastering the arrangements of a “guary,”
or religious mystery, which was duly performed in the topmost hollow
of a green barrow or hill, of which many survive, scooped out into
vast amphitheatres and surrounded by benches of turf, which held two
thousand spectators. Such were the historic plays, “The Creation” and
“Noe’s Flood,” which still exist in the original Celtic as well as the
English text, and suggest what critics and antiquaries Cornish curates,
masters of such revels, must have been,--for the native language of
Cornwall did not lapse into silence until the end of the seventeenth
century. Then, moreover, here and there would be one parson more
learned than his kind in the mysteries of a deep and thrilling lore
of peculiar fascination. He was a man so highly honoured at college
for natural gifts and knowledge of learned books which nobody else
could read, that when he “took his second orders” the bishop gave him
a mantle of scarlet silk to wear upon his shoulders in church, and
his lordship had put such power into it that, when the parson had it
rightly on, he could “govern any ghost or evil spirit,” and even “stop
an earthquake.”
Such a powerful minister, in combat with supernatural visitations,
was one Parson Rudall,[105] of Launceston, whose existence and exploits
we gather from the local tradition of his time, from surviving letters
and other memoranda, and indeed from his own “diurnal”[106] which fell
by chance into the hands of the present writer. Indeed the legend of
Parson Rudall and the Botathen Ghost will be recognised by many Cornish
people as a local remembrance of their boyhood.
[Illustration: “PARSON RUDALL” (P. 161)]
It appears, then, from the diary of this learned master of the
grammar-school--for such was his office as well as perpetual curate
of the parish--“that a pestilential disease did break forth in our
town in the beginning of the year A.D. 1665; yea, and it likewise
invaded my school, insomuch that therewithal certain of the chief
scholars sickened and died.” “Among others who yielded to the malign
influence was Master John Eliot, the eldest son and the worshipful
heir of Edward Eliot, Esquire of Trebursey, a stripling of sixteen
years of age, but of uncommon parts and hopeful ingenuity.[107] At his
own especial motion and earnest desire I did consent to preach his
funeral sermon.” It should be remembered here that, howsoever strange
and singular it may sound to us that a mere lad should formally solicit
such a performance at the hands of his master, it was in consonance
with the habitual usage of those times. The old services for the dead
had been abolished by law, and in the stead of sacrament and ceremony,
month’s mind and year’s mind, the sole substitute which survived was
the general desire “to partake,” as they called it, of a posthumous
discourse, replete with lofty eulogy and flattering remembrance of the
living and the dead. The diary proceeds:--
“I fulfilled my undertaking, and preached over the coffin in the
presence of a full assemblage of mourners and lachrymose friends. An
ancient gentleman, who was then and there in the church, a Mr. Bligh of
Botathen,[108] was much affected with my discourse, and he was heard to
repeat to himself certain parentheses therefrom, especially a phrase
from Maro Virgilius, which I had applied to the deceased youth, ‘Et
puer ipse fuit cantari dignus.’
“The cause wherefore this old gentleman was thus moved by my
applications was this: He had a first-born and only son--a child who,
but a very few months before, had been not unworthy the character I
drew of young Master Eliot, but who, by some strange accident, had of
late quite fallen away from his parent’s hopes, and become moody, and
sullen, and distraught. When the funeral obsequies were over, I had
no sooner come out of church than I was accosted by this aged parent,
and he besought me incontinently, with a singular energy, that I would
resort with him forthwith to his abode at Botathen that very night; nor
could I have delivered myself from his importunity, had not Mr. Eliot
urged his claim to enjoy my company at his own house. Hereupon I got
loose, but not until I had pledged a fast assurance that I would pay
him, faithfully, an early visit the next day.”
[Illustration: “THE PLACE” OF BOTATHEN.]
“The Place,” as it was called, of Botathen, where old Mr. Bligh
resided, was a low-roofed gabled manor-house of the fifteenth century,
walled and mullioned, and with clustered chimneys of dark-grey stone
from the neighbouring quarries of Ventor-gan. The mansion was flanked
by a pleasaunce or enclosure in one space, of garden and lawn, and
it was surrounded by a solemn grove of stag-horned trees. It had the
sombre aspect of age and of solitude, and looked the very scene of
strange and supernatural events. A legend might well belong to every
gloomy glade around, and there must surely be a haunted room somewhere
within its walls. Hither, according to his appointment, on the morrow,
Parson Rudall betook himself. Another clergyman, as it appeared, had
been invited to meet him, who, very soon after his arrival, proposed
a walk together in the pleasaunce, on the pretext of showing him, as
a stranger, the walks and trees, until the dinner-bell should strike.
There, with much prolixity, and with many a solemn pause, his brother
minister proceeded to “unfold the mystery.”
“A singular infelicity,” he declared, “had befallen young Master
Bligh, once the hopeful heir of his parents and of the lands of
Botathen. Whereas he had been from childhood a blithe and merry
boy, ‘the gladness,’ like Isaac of old, of his father’s age, he had
suddenly, and of late, become morose and silent--nay, even austere and
stern--dwelling apart, always solemn, often in tears. The lad had at
first repulsed all questions as to the origin of this great change, but
of late he had yielded to the importunate researches of his parents,
and had disclosed the secret cause. It appeared that he resorted,
every day, by a pathway across the fields, to this very clergyman’s
house, who had charge of his education, and grounded him in the studies
suitable to his age. In the course of his daily walk he had to pass a
certain heath or down where the road wound along through tall blocks of
granite with open spaces of grassy sward between. There in a certain
spot, and always in one and the same place, the lad declared that he
encountered, every day, a woman with a pale and troubled face, clothed
in a long loose garment of frieze, with one hand always stretched
forth, and the other pressed against her side. Her name, he said, was
Dorothy Dinglet,[109] for he had known her well from his childhood, and
she often used to come to his parents’ house; but that which troubled
him was, that she had now been dead three years, and he himself had
been with the neighbours at her burial; so that, as the youth alleged,
with great simplicity, since he had seen her body laid in the grave,
this that he saw every day must needs be her soul or ghost. ‘Questioned
again and again,’ said the clergyman, ‘he never contradicts himself;
but he relates the same and the simple tale as a thing that cannot be
gainsaid. Indeed, the lad’s observance is keen and calm for a boy of
his age. The hair of the appearance, sayeth he, is not like anything
alive, but it is so soft and light that it seemeth to melt away while
you look; but her eyes are set, and never blink--no, not when the
sun shineth full upon her face. She maketh no steps, but seemeth to
swim along the top of the grass; and her hand, which is stretched out
alway, seemeth to point at something far away, out of sight. It is
her continual coming; for she never faileth to meet him, and to pass
on, that hath quenched his spirits; and although he never seeth her by
night, yet cannot he get his natural rest.’
“Thus far the clergyman; whereupon the dinner clock did sound, and
we went into the house. After dinner, when young Master Bligh had
withdrawn with his tutor, under excuse of their books, the parents did
forthwith beset me as to my thoughts about their son. Said I, warily,
‘The case is strange, but by no means impossible. It is one that I will
study, and fear not to handle, if the lad will be free with me, and
fulfil all that I desire.’ The mother was overjoyed, but I perceived
that old Mr. Bligh turned pale, and was downcast with some thought
which, however, he did not express. Then they bade that Master Bligh
should be called to meet me in the pleasaunce forthwith. The boy came,
and he rehearsed to me his tale with an open countenance, and, withal,
a modesty of speech. Verily he seemed ‘ingenui vultus puer ingenuique
pudoris.’ Then I signified to him my purpose. ‘To-morrow,’ said I, ‘we
will go together to the place; and if, as I doubt not, the woman shall
appear, it will be for me to proceed according to knowledge, and by
rules laid down in my books.’”
The unaltered scenery of the legend still survives, and, like the
field of the forty footsteps in another history, the place is still
visited by those who take interest in the supernatural tales of old.
The pathway leads along a moorland waste, where large masses of rock
stand up here and there from the grassy turf, and clumps of heath and
gorse weave their tapestry of golden and purple garniture on every
side. Amidst all these, and winding along between the rocks, is a
natural footway worn by the scant, rare tread of the village traveller.
Just midway, a somewhat larger stretch than usual of green sod expands,
which is skirted by the path, and which is still identified as the
legendary haunt of the phantom, by the name of Parson Rudall’s Ghost.
But we must draw the record of the first interview between the minister
and Dorothy from his own words. “We met,” thus he writes, “in the
pleasaunce very early, and before any others in the house were awake;
and together the lad and myself proceeded towards the field. The youth
was quite composed, and carried his Bible under his arm, from whence
he read to me verses, which he said he had lately picked out, to have
always in his mind. These were Job vii. 14, ‘Thou scarest me with
dreams, and terrifiest me through visions;’ and Deuteronomy xxviii. 67,
‘In the morning thou shalt say, Would to God it were evening, and in
the evening thou shalt say, Would to God it were morning; for the fear
of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine
eyes which thou shalt see.’
“I was much pleased with the lad’s ingenuity in these pious
applications, but for mine own part I was somewhat anxious and out of
cheer. For aught I knew this might be a _dæmonium meridianum_, the most
stubborn spirit to govern and guide that any man can meet, and the
most perilous withal. We had hardly reached the accustomed spot, when
we both saw her at once gliding towards us; punctually as the ancient
writers describe the motion of their ‘lemures, which swoon along the
ground, neither marking the sand nor bending the herbage.’ The aspect
of the woman was exactly that which had been related by the lad. There
was the pale and stony face, the strange and misty hair, the eyes firm
and fixed, that gazed, yet not on us, but on something that they saw
far, far away; one hand and arm stretched out, and the other grasping
the girdle of her waist. She floated along the field like a sail upon a
stream, and glided past the spot where we stood, pausingly. But so deep
was the awe that overcame me, as I stood there in the light of day,
face to face with a human soul separate from her bones and flesh, that
my heart and purpose both failed me. I had resolved to speak to the
spectre in the appointed form of words, but I did not. I stood like one
amazed and speechless, until she had passed clean out of sight. One
thing remarkable came to pass. A spaniel dog, the favourite of young
Master Bligh, had followed us, and lo! when the woman drew nigh, the
poor creature began to yell and bark piteously, and ran backward and
away, like a thing dismayed and appalled. We returned to the house, and
after I had said all that I could to pacify the lad, and to soothe the
aged people, I took my leave for that time, with a promise that when I
had fulfilled certain business elsewhere, which I then alleged, I would
return and take orders to assuage these disturbances and their cause.
_“January 7, 1665._--At my own house, I find, by my books, what is
expedient to be done; and then, Apage, Sathanas!
_“January 9, 1665._--This day I took leave of my wife and family, under
pretext of engagements elsewhere, and made my secret journey to our
diocesan city, wherein the good and venerable bishop then abode.
_“January 10._--_Deo gratias_, in safe arrival at Exeter; craved and
obtained immediate audience of his lordship; pleading it was for
counsel and admonition on a weighty and pressing cause; called to the
presence; made obeisance; and then by command stated my case--the
Botathen perplexity--which I moved with strong and earnest instances
and solemn asseverations of that which I had myself seen and heard.
Demanded by his lordship, what was the succour that I had come to
entreat at his hands? Replied, licence for my exorcism, that so I
might, ministerially, allay this spiritual visitant, and thus render
to the living and the dead release from this surprise. ‘But,’ said
our bishop, ‘on what authority do you allege that I am intrusted with
faculty so to do? Our Church, as is well known, hath abjured certain
branches of her ancient power, on grounds of perversion and abuse.’
‘Nay, my lord,’ I humbly answered, ‘under favour, the seventy-second
of the canons ratified and enjoined on us, the clergy, anno Domini
1604, doth expressly provide, that “no minister, _unless he hath_ the
licence of his diocesan bishop, shall essay to exorcise a spirit, evil
or good.” Therefore it was,’ I did here mildly allege, ‘that I did not
presume to enter on such a work without lawful privilege under your
lordship’s hand and seal.’ Hereupon did our wise and learned bishop,
sitting in his chair, condescend upon the theme at some length with
many gracious interpretations from ancient writers and from Holy
Scripture, and I did humbly rejoin and reply, till the upshot was that
he did call in his secretary and command him to draw the aforesaid
faculty, forthwith and without further delay, assigning him a form,
insomuch that the matter was incontinently done; and after I had
disbursed into the secretary’s hands certain moneys for signitary
purposes, as the manner of such officers hath always been, the bishop
did himself affix his signature under the _sigillum_ of his see, and
deliver the document into my hands. When I knelt down to receive his
benediction, he softly said, ‘Let it be secret, Mr. R. Weak brethren!
weak brethren!’”
This interview with the bishop, and the success with which he
vanquished his lordship’s scruples, would seem to have confirmed Parson
Rudall very strongly in his own esteem, and to have invested him with
that courage which he evidently lacked at his first encounter with the
ghost.
The entries proceed: _“January 11, 1665._--Therewithal did I hasten
home and prepare my instruments, and cast my figures for the onset of
the next day. Took out my ring of brass, and put it on the index-finger
of my right hand, with the _scutum Davidis_[110] traced thereon.
_“January 12, 1665._--Rode into the gateway at Botathen, armed at
all points, but not with Saul’s armour, and ready. There is danger
from the demons, but so there is in the surrounding air every day. At
early morning then, and alone,--for so the usage ordains,--I betook me
towards the field. It was void, and I had thereby due time to prepare.
First, I paced and measured out my circle on the grass. Then did I
mark my pentacle[111] in the very midst, and at the intersection of
the five angles I did set up and fix my crutch of _raun_[112] [rowan].
Lastly, I took my station south, at the true line of the meridian, and
stood facing due north.[113] I waited and watched for a long time. At
last there was a kind of trouble in the air, a soft and rippling sound,
and all at once the shape appeared, and came on towards me gradually. I
opened my parchment-scroll, and read aloud the command. She paused, and
seemed to waver and doubt; stood still; then I rehearsed the sentence
again, sounding out every syllable like a chant. She drew near my ring,
but halted at first outside, on the brink. I sounded again, and now at
the third time I gave the signal in Syriac--the speech which is used,
they say, where such ones dwell and converse in thoughts that glide.