Chapter I: Leaves From Old London Life: 1664-1705

The Scottish newspaper recorded, not long ago, some instances of mirages in the Firth of Forth exactly like the freaks of the Fata Morgana in the Straits of Messina, and on three distinct occasions the Bass Rock has assumed, to the eyes of the crowds upon the sands of Dunbar, the form of a giant sugar-loaf crowned by battlements, while the island of May seemed broken into several portions, which appeared to be perforated by caverns where none in fact exist.

Such optical delusions have been common at all times in certain states of the atmosphere, and science finds a ready solution for them; but in the days of our forefathers, they were deemed the sure precursors of dire calamities, invasion, or pestilence.

The years shortly before and after the beginning of the last century seem to have been singularly fruitful in the marvellous; and the most superstitious Celtic peasant in the Scottish glens or the wilds of Connemara would not have believed in more startling events than those which are chronicled in the occasional broadsides, and were hawked about the streets of London by the flying stationers of those days.

To take a few of these at random: we find that all London was excited by strange news from Goeree, in Holland, where, on the evening of the 14th of August, 1664, there was seen by many spectators an apparition of two fleets upon the ocean; these, after seeming to engage in close battle for one hour and a half (the smoke of the noiseless cannon rolling from their sides), vanished, as if shown from a magic-lantern. Then appeared in the air two lions, or the figures thereof, which fought three times with great fury, till there came a third of greater size, which destroyed them both. Immediately after this, there came slowly athwart the sky, as represented in the woodcut which surmounted this veracious broadsheet, the giant figure of a crowned king. This form was seen so plainly, that the buttons on his dress could be distinguished by the awe-stricken crowd assembled on the sands. Next morning the same apparition was seen again; and all the ocean was as red as blood. "And this happening at this juncture of time," concludes the narrator, "begets some strange apprehensions; for that, about six months before Van Tromp was slain in war with England, there was seen near the same place an apparition of ships in the air fighting with each other."*

* London: printed by Thomas Leach, Shoe Lane, 1664.

Sixteen years later, another broadsheet announced to the metropolis, that the forms of ships and men also had been seen on the road near Abington, on the 26th of August, 1680, "of the truth whereof you may be fully satisfied at the Sarazen's Head Inn, Carter Lane." It would seem that John Nibb, "a very sober fellow," the carrier of Cirencester, with five passengers in his waggon, all proceeding to London about a quarter of an hour after sunrise, were horrified to perceive at the far horizon, the giant figure of a man in a black habit, and armed with a broadsword, towering into the sky. Like the spectre of the Brocken, this faded away; but to add to the bewilderment of Nibb and his companions, it was replaced by "about a hundred ships of several bigness and various shapes." Then rose a great hill covered with little villages, and before it spread a plain, on which rode thirty horsemen, armed with carbine and pistol.

The same document records that, on the 12th of the subsequent September, a naval engagement was seen in the air, near Porsnet, in Monmouthshire, between two fleets, one of which came from the northern quarter of the sky, the other from the south. A great ship fired first, "and after her, the rest discharged their vollies in order, so that great flashings of fire, and even smoak was visible, and noises in the ayr as of great guns." Then an army of phantoms engaged in "a square medow" near Porsnet, closing in with sword and pistol, and the cries of the wounded and dying were heard. On the 27th of December, Ottery, near Exeter, had a visitation of the same kind, when at five in the evening two armies fought in the air till six o'clock. "This was seen by a reverend minister and several others to their great amazement." On the 2nd of the same month, the people in Shropshire were, according to another sheet, sorely perplexed by the sudden appearance of two suns in the firmament, and it was duly remembered, that "such a sign was seen before the death of that tempestuous firebrand of Rome here in England, Thomas Beckett, Archbishop of Canterbury, and when Queen Mary began her bloody reign."

Then follow the death of the three lions in the Tower, and a vast enumeration of fiery darts, bullets, storms of hail, and floods, making up that which the writer hopes will prove "a word in season to a sinking kingdom."*

* London: Printed for J. B., Anno Domini 1680; and P. Brooksly, Golden Ball, near the Hospital Gate, 1681.

Nor were ghosts wanting at this time, of a political nature, too; for, in the same year, there was hawked in London an account of an apparition which appeared three several times to Elizabeth Freeman, thirty-one years of age, on each occasion delivering a message to his sacred majesty King Charles the Second. As certified before Sir Joseph Jorden, knight, and Richard Lee, D.D., rector of Hatfield, her story was as follows, and was, no doubt, a political trick:

On the night of the 24th of January, 1680, she was sitting at her mother's fire-side, with a child on her knee, when a solemn voice behind her said, "Sweetheart!" and, on turning, she was startled to perceive a veiled woman all in white, whose face was concealed, and whose hand--a pale and ghastly one--rested on the back of her chair.

"The 15th day of May is appointed for the royal blood to be poisoned," said the figure. "Be not afraid, for I am only sent to tell thee," it added, and straightway vanished.

On Tuesday, the 25th of January, the same figure met her at the house door, and asked Elizabeth if she "remembered the message," but the woman, instead of replying, exclaimed: "In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, what art thou?" Upon this the figure assumed "a very glorious shape," and saying, "Tell King Charles, from me, not to remove his parliament, but stand to his council," vanished as before. Next evening the veiled figure appeared again, when Elizabeth was with her mother, who, on beholding her daughter's manifest terror, said: "Dost thou see anything?" She was then warned to retire, after which the spectre said, sternly: "Do your message." "I shall, if God enable me," replied Elizabeth. After this the spectre appeared but once again, and remained silent. "This was taken from the maid's own mouth by me, Richard Wilkinson, schoolmaster in the said town of Hatfield."*

* London: Printed for J. B., Anno Domini 1680; and P. Brooksly, Golden Ball, near the Hospital Gate, 1681.

In 1683, as a variety, London was treated to an account of a dreadful earthquake in Oxfordshire, where the houses were rocked like ships or cradles, while tables, stools, and chests "rowled to and fro with the violence of the Shog."*

* Printed for R. Baldwin, at the Old Bailey.

The year 1687 brought "strange and wonderful news from Cornwall, being an account of a miraculous accident which happened near the town of Bodmyn, at a place called Park. Printed by J. Wallis, White Fryars Gate--next Fleet St.--near the Joyners Shop."

From this it would appear that on Sunday, the 8th of May, Jacob Mutton, whose relations were of good repute, and who was servant to William Hicks, rector of Cordingham (at a house he had near the old parish church of Eglashayle, called Park), heard, on going into his chamber about eight o'clock in the evening, a hollow voice cry, "So hoe! so hoe! so hoe!" This drew him to the window of the next room, from whence, to the terror of a lad who shared his bed, he disappeared, and could nowhere be found.

According to his own narrative, he had no sooner laid a hand upon an iron bar of the window, which was seventeen feet from the ground, than the whole grating fell into the yard below, all save the bar which he had grasped. This bar was discovered in his hand next morning, as he lay asleep in a narrow lane beyond the little town of Stratton, among the hills, thirty miles distant from Park. There he was wakened by the earliest goers to Stratton fair, who sent him home, sorely bewildered, by the way of Camelford. "On Tuesday he returned to his master's estate, without any hurt, but very melancholy, saying 'that a tall man bore him company all the journey, over hedges and brakes, yet without weariness.'" What became of this mysterious man he knew not, neither had he any memory of how the iron bar came to be in his hand. "To conclude, the young man who is the occasion of this wonderful relation, was never before this accident accounted any ways inclinable to sadness, but, on the contrary, was esteemed an airy, brisk, and honest young fellow."

But Mutton's adventure was a joke when compared with that of Mr. Jacob Seeley, of Exeter, as he related it to the judges on the western circuit, when, on the 22nd of September, 1690, he was beset by a veritable crowd of dreadful spectres. He took horse for Taunton, in Somersetshire, by the Hinton Cliff road, on which he had to pass a solitary place, known as the Black Down. Prior to this, he halted at a town called Cleston, where the coach and waggons usually tarried, and there he had some roast beef, with a tankard of beer and a noggin of brandy, in company with a stranger, who looked like a farmer, and who rode by his side for three miles, till they reached the Black Down, when he suddenly vanished into the earth or air, to the great perplexity of Mr. Jacob Seeley. This emotion was rather increased when he found himself surrounded by from one to two hundred spectres, attired as judges, magistrates, and peasantry, the latter armed with pikes; but, gathering courage, he hewed at them with his sword, though they threw over his head something like a fishing-net, in which they retained him from nine at night till four next morning. He thrust at the shadows with his rapier, but he felt nothing, till he saw one "was cut and had four of his fingers hanging by the skin," and then he found blood upon his sword. After this, ten spectre funerals passed; then two dead bodies were dragged near him by the hair of the head; and other horrors succeeded, till the spell broke at cock-crow.

It was now remembered that the house wherein Mr. Seeley had his beef, beer, and brandy had been kept by one of Monmouth's men (the spectre farmer, probably), who had been hung on his own sign-post, and the piece of ground where the net confined the traveller, was a place where maay of the hapless duke's adherents had been executed and interred. Hence it was named the Black Down, according to the sheet before us, which was "Printed for T. M., London, 2nd Oct., 1690."

A sheet circulated at the close of the preceding year warns "all hypocrites and atheists to beware in time," as there had been a dreadful tempest of thunder and lightning in Hants, at Alton, where the atmosphere became so obscure that the electric flashes alone lighted the church during the service, in which two balls of fire passed through its eastern wall, another tore the steeple to pieces, broke the clock to shreds, and bore away the weathercock. The narrator adds, that all Friesland was under water, and that a flood in the Tiber had swept away a portion of the Castle of St. Angelo.

As another warning, London was visited, in 1689, by a tempest, which uprooted sixty-five trees in St. James's Park and Moorfields, blew down the vane of St. Michael's Church in Cornhill, and innumerable chimneys, and injured many well-built houses, and part of the Armourers' Hall in Coleman Street. Several persons were killed in Gravel Lane and Shoreditch; sixty empty boats were dashed to pieces against the bridge; three Gravesend barges full of people were cast away, and the Crown man-of-war was stranded at Woolwich.*

* Printed for W. F., Bishopgate Without.

But the warning seems to have been in vain, for London, in 1692, was treated to an earthquake, which--as another sheet records--spread terror and astonishment about the Royal Exchange, all along Cornhill, in Lothbury, and elsewhere, on the 8th of September. All things on shelves were cast down, and furniture was tossed from wall to wall; the Spitalfields weavers had to seek shelter in flight, and all their looms were destroyed; these and other calamities were, it was alleged, "occasioned by the sins of the nation," and to avert such prodigies, the prayers of all good men were invoked.*

* J. Gerard, Cornhill, 1692.

Two years later saw another marvel, when "the dumb maid of Wapping," Sarah Bowers, recovered her power of speech through the prayers of Messrs. Russell and Veil, "two pious divines," who exorcised and expelled the evil spirit which possessed her; and in 1696 the metropolis was treated to the "detection of a popish cheat" concerning two boys who conversed with the devil, though none seemed to doubt the Protestant miracle.

The close of the century 1700 saw "the dark and hellish powers of witchcraft exercised upon the Reverend Mr. Wood, minister of Bodmyn," on whom a spell was cast by a mysterious paper, or written document, which was given to him by a man and woman on horseback (the latter probably seated on a pillion), after which he became strangely disordered, and wandered about in fields, meadows, woods, and lonely places, drenched the while with copious perspirations; however, "the spell was ultimately found in his doublet, and on the burning thereof, Mr. Wood was perfectly restored," and wrote to his uncle an account of the affair, which appeared in a broadsheet published at Exeter, by Darker and Farley, 1700.

Rosemary Lane was the scene of another wonder, when a notorious witch was found in a garret there, and carried before Justice Bateman, in Well Close, on the 23rd July, 1704, and committed to Clerkenwell Prison. Her neighbour's children, through her alleged diabolical power, vomited pins, and were terrified by apparitions of enormous cats; by uttering one word she turned the entire contents of a large shop topsy-turvy. She was judicially tossed into the river from a ducking-stool, "but, like a bladder when put under water, she popped up again, for this witch swam like a cork." This was an indisputable sign of guilt; and in her rage or terror she smote a young man on the arm, where the mark of her hand remained "as black as coal;" he died soon after in agony, and was buried in St. Sepulchre's churchyard.* Of the woman's ultimate fate we know nothing.

* H. Hills, in the Blackfriars, near the waterside.

In 1705, London was excited by a new affair: "The female ghost and wonderful discovery of an iron chest of money;" a rare example of the gullibility of people in the days of the good Queen Anne.

A certain Madam Maybel, who had several houses in Rosemary Lane, lost them by unlucky suits and unjust decrees of the law: for a time they were tenantless and fell to decay and ruin. For several weeks, nay months past (continues the broadsheet), a strange apparition appeared nightly to a Mrs. Harvey and her sister, near relations of the late Madam Maybel, announcing that an iron chest filled with treasure lay in a certain part of one of the old houses in the lane. On their neglecting to heed the vision, the ghost became more importunate, and proceeded to threaten Mrs. Harvey, "that if she did not cause it to be digged up in a certain time (naming it) she should be torn to pieces." On this the terrified gentlewoman sought the counsel of a minister, who advised her to "demand in the name of the Holy Trinity how the said treasure should be disposed of."

Next night she questioned the spectre, and it replied:

"Fear nothing; but take the whole four thousand pounds into your own possession, and when you have paid twenty pounds of it to one Sarah Goodwin, of Tower Hill, the rest is your own; and be sure you dig it up on the night of Thursday, the 7th December!"

Accordingly men were set to work, and certainly a great iron chest "was found under an old wall in the very place which the spirit had described."

One of the diggers, John Fishpool, a private of the Guards, "has been under examination about it, and 'tis thought that the gentleman who owns the ground will claim the treasure as his right, and 'tis thought there will be a suit of law commenced on it." Many persons crowded to see the hole from whence the chest had been exhumed in Rosemary Lane, and, by a date upon the lid, it would seem to have been made or concealed in the ninth year of the reign of Henry the Eighth.*

* London: printed for John Green, near the Exchange, 1705.

The dreadful effects of going to conjurers next occupied the mind of the public.

Mr. Rowland Rushway, a gentleman of good reputation, having lost money and plate to a considerable amount, Hester, his wife, took God to witness, "that if all the cunning men in London could tell, she should discover the thief, though it cost her ten pounds!"

With this view she repaired to the house of a judicial astrologer in Moorfields, about noon, when the day was one of great serenity and beauty. After some preliminary mummery or trickery, the wizard placed before her a large mirror, wherein she saw gradually appear certain indistinct things, which ultimately assumed "the full proportion of one man and two women."

"These are the persons who stole your property," said the astrologer; "do you know them?"

"No," she replied.

"Then," quoth he, "you will never have your goods again."

She paid him and retired, but had not gone three roods from the house when the air became darkened, the serene sky was suddenly overcast, and there swept through the streets a dreadful tempest of wind and rain, done, as she alleged, "by this cunning man, Satan's agent, with diabolical black art," forcing her to take shelter in an ale-house to escape its fury. Many chairmen and market folks were all cognizant of this storm, which was confined to the vicinity of the ale-house, and a portion of the adjacent river, where many boats were cast away; and the skirt of it would seem to have visited Gray's Inn Walk, where three stately trees were uprooted.