John Middleton and Laird Bocconi: A Ghostly Bromance

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1st Earl of Middleton, charles II, civil war, covenanters, England, Ghosts, Hauntings, John Middleton, Laird Bocconi, pacts, presbyterians, Scotland

Images source unknown.

The image of the vengeful ghost is one which is very common in literature, films and folklore. Usually the spirit returns to wreak revenge on someone who had wronged them when they were alive or to seek help in carrying out their revengeful plan or even just to curse those who unluckily come into contact with them. Famous fictional examples include The King in Hamlet, Samara from The Ring series and Jennet Humfrye from The Woman in Black. There are also people who claim that evil spirits intent on causing them harm share the same house. For instance The Cage in St Osyth which was labelled as one of the UK’s most haunted houses by the TV series, Great British Ghosts is reported to be occupied by the vengeful spirit of Ursula Kemp, one of 13 women accused of witchcraft who were chained up in the house prior to their execution[1].

The flip side of the coin is spirits who return to help the living rather than to harm them. There are many reasons given as to why they return such as to bring comfort to grieving family and friends, to impart a message such as the location of important documents or family heirlooms or to give a warning. One of the most often repeated stories involves a pact made between two close friends, John Middleton and Laird Bocconi to help each other from beyond the grave.[2]

A Career Soldier

John Middleton, 1st Earl of Middleton, pictured in later life. Source Wikimedia.

John Middleton born around 1608 was the eldest son of a Robert Middleton, Laird of Caldhame in Kincardineshire in Scotland. Middleton’s origins are obscure which probably indicates that he was from a humble background. Some sources say that he enlisted as a regimental pikeman when he was just thirteen but all agree that by 1632 he had joined the regiment raised by Sir John Hepburn for service in France. Whatever the truth of his origins, Middleton was a career soldier and a good one. It was due to his skill and ability that he worked his way up the ranks to become captain of the Covenanter army led by Earl James Graham of Montrose during the Bishops’ Wars[3].

Victory at the Battle of the Brig O’Dee

The Bishops’ Wars (1639-1640) were triggered by Charles I desire to remove the Presbyterian system (without bishops) favoured by the Church of Scotland and replace it with an episcopal system (with bishops). Charles I also wanted to force the Scots to follow the Book of Common Prayer.

The determination and success of the Scottish rebellion led to Charles I eventually admitting defeat and accepting the decisions of the General Assembly and the Scottish Parliament. Middleton played a vital role in the Covenanter army. In June 1639, he successfully led an attack on the Royalists at the Brig o’ Dee outside Aberdeen. The battle at the Brig o’ Dee was the only ‘substantial action’ that took place during the First Bishop’s War.

Covenanters petitioning Charles I. Source: Bridgeman Art Library.

The Parliamentary Cause

At the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642, the Covenanter army allied themselves with the Parliamentarian cause against the Royalists. Middleton volunteered and fought at the Battle of Edgehill and in 1644 he was promoted to the rank of the Lieutenant-General in the Regiment of Horse in Sir William Waller’s Southern Associate and served in the Oxford Campaign and at the Battle of Cropredy Bridge. In 1645 Middleton returned to Scotland and joined the Army of the Covenant with the rank of major-general. In February 1646 Middleton was given the rank of commander-in-chief by the Committee of Estates and fought a campaign against the Royalists in the Highlands. Middleton also helped to negotiate the final terms for the surrender of Montrose (who he had formerly fought under) in July 1646[4].

The Battle of Edgehill. Source: Bridgeman Art Library.

A Fraught Partnership

Although between 1642 and 1647 the Covenanters and the Parliamentarians fought on the same side, the alliance was often on shaky grounds. Differences of religious ideology made them uneasy bedfellows. The parliamentarians were unhappy with the Scottish aim to impose a Presbyterian system on the Church of England and the Covenanters were equally uncomfortable with the increased radicalisation of the parliamentarian troops and the popularity of the levellers’ ideas in the New Model Army. The conflict between the two allies came to a head shortly after the Covenanters handed over Charles I to the parliamentarians after the king had surrendered to them at Newark in 1646. This led to an alliance or the Engagement between the Scots and the Royalists with Charles I promising to impose Presbyterianism on the Church of England for a period of three years once he was reinstated on the throne[5].

Charles I insulted by Cromwell’s soldiers. Source: wikipedia

A Change of Heart

As the covenanters changed alliances so did Middleton and as a result he found himself for the first time fighting for Charles I instead of against him. In August 1648 Middleton was amongst those who were taken prisoner by the Roundheads after the Royalist defeat at the Battle of Preston. Middleton broke parole and made his way back to Scotland to join up with Sir Thomas Mackenzie of Pluscardine in an abortive Royalist uprising in the Highlands in the Spring of 1649.

A Ruffian’s Penance

Sack cloth and ashes. Source: unknown.

Middleton’s support for both the Royalists and the Engagement brought him into conflict with the Presbyterians of the godly Kirk. Middleton was probably not someone whom the Presbyterians would have been too fond of anyway because of his reputation as a notorious ‘hard-drinking ruffian’[6]. As a punishment they excommunicated Middleton in October 1650 and then forced him to undergo a public penance. Middleton was made to wear a sackcloth at St Mary’s Kirk in Dundee[7]. This humiliating experience left Middleton with a deep hatred of and grudge against the Presbyterians. As a result of his degrading treatment Middleton became a loyal supporter of the Royalists and in particular Charles II. His grit, experience and ability made him indispensable to Charles II and a dangerous foe to the Presbyterians who he was once willing to put his life on the line for.

A Ghostly Visitation

The Tower of London. Source: hauntedisland.co.uk

In September 1651 whilst fighting on behalf of Charles II, Middleton was captured at the Battle of Worcester. In a bad state and wounded Middleton was sent to the Tower of London to await trial for treason. It is whilst he was a prisoner that one of the strangest stories of a ghostly apparition was reported to have occurred. One night while he was lying in bed feeling depressed, Middleton saw the ghost of his friend, Laird Bocconi appear before him. Many years before Middleton and Bocconi had made a friendship pact that if one of them died before the other and if the survivor was in trouble, the deceased friend would return to help him. Middleton first asked Bocconi if he was alive or dead[8]. Bocconi’s ghost replied that he was dead and that he had died a long time ago. Bocconi then continued that Middleton’s life was in serious danger and that he needed to make his escape sooner rather than later. Middleton did in fact manage to escape three days after receiving this ghostly advice by disguising himself in his wife’s, Lady Grizel’s clothes. His escape was even more remarkable since he manage to get out his cell despite the door being tripled locked! Did he have inside help? Did his wife change places with him? No one knows and no other details about how he got away have ever emerged.

Source: wikipedia

Bocconi’s appearance up to the point of his warning seemed to follow a typical pattern for manifestations of this type but then after delivering his message Bocconi did something very bizarre. Middleton reported that Bocconi started to do a frisk i.e. jigged around the room and recited a short rhyme,

“Givanni, Givanni, ‘tis very strange,

In the world to see so sudden a change”[9]

Then Bocconi vanished. Why did Bocconi’s ghost suddenly decide to prance around the cell and chant and what if anything did the rhyme have to do with Middleton’s situation? Bocconi’s use of the Italian equivalent of the name ‘John’ does show that Bocconi was addressing Middleton directly but the rest of his chant is confusing. Was the ghost referring to Middleton’s personal change in circumstances i.e. from a free man to a prisoner or to the remarkable change in his allegiances or more generally to the tumultuous times Middleton was living in? Could the message have been a prediction about Middleton’s future and his rise in the world? No one has ever managed to explain the ghost’s actions or to be fair I don’t think anyone has ever tried.

Aftermath

Middleton managed to get to France and join the exiled Charles II in Paris. By 1653 he was made commander of the Royalist forces and was at the forefront of the military campaign to restore the Stewarts to the English throne. When Charles II became king he was given the title of the Earl of Middleton. Middleton was appointed in 1660 as the Royal Commissioner to the (Scots) Parliament[10] using his position to help the king root out Presbyterianism from Scotland. His rapid rise from humble beginnings caused resentment amongst the established nobility, in particular the Earl of Lauderdale who contrived to destroy Middleton. Lauderdale succeeded for a while with Middleton being stripped of his position and offices but he was soon back in favour. In 1663 he was made Governor of Rochester and later in 1668 he was appointed as the Governor of Tangiers. Middleton remained in Tangiers as governor until his death in July 1674[11]. It is believed he died from injuries sustained after falling down some stairs whilst extremely drunk[12].

Image Source: Franz Hals[?]

A Final Note

On a historical note, Middleton had the last laugh as despite the Scottish aristocracy contempt for him, his descendant is currently sitting on the throne of England! Queen Elizabeth through her matrilineal line is a direct descendent of John Middleton[13]. The only mention of Bocconi I could find was in relation to his ghost, who he was, what he did and how he met Middleton seems so far to have vanished from the pages of history. Maybe they met when Middleton was fighting on the continent. Bocconi sounds Italian but the title of Lord was given in its Scottish form. Does that mean anything? probably not. As to the ghost story, it is a unique tale revealing very strange behaviour on the part of the spirit, from a dignified and ominous entry to a rather silly exit. I would also be fascinated to know if anyone ever manages to work out the meaning of Bocconi’s last words on earth!

Image source: favim.com[?]

Bibliography

John Middleton, 1^st Earl of Middleton, http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/usbiography/m/johnmiddleton.html

Royal Middleton Roots, http://www.scotclans.com/royal-middleton-roots/

Alisdair McRae, How the Scots won the English Civil War: The triumph of Fraser’s Dragoons

Brave or bonkers? Man chooses to live in ‘Britain’s most haunted house’ where poltergeists BITE guests, http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/brave-bonkers-man-chooses-live-7080762

Magnus Bennett, Royal wedding: Prince William ‘has Middleton ancestry’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-13209043

Owen Davies, The Haunted: A social history of ghosts

Horace Welby (editor), Signs Before Death: Authenticated Apparitions

John Middleton, c.1608-74, http://bcw-project.org/biography/john-middleton

Covenanter, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenanter

Bishops’ Wars, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishops’_Wars

Tristan Hunt, The English Civil War: The Endgame – 1646 – 1649 – Introduction, http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/world-history/the-english-civil-war-the-endgame-1646-1649-introduction

John Middleton, 1st Earl of Middleton, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Middleton,_1st_Earl_of_Middleton

Middleton name already part of Prince William’s family tree, https://www.thecourier.co.uk/news/115525/middleton-name-already-part-of-prince-williams-family-tree/

Notes

[1] Brave or bonkers? Man chooses to live in ‘Britain’s most haunted house’ where poltergeists BITE guests, http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/brave-bonkers-man-chooses-live-7080762

[2] Owen Davies, The Haunted: A social history of ghosts

[3] John Middleton, c.1608-74, http://bcw-project.org/biography/john-middleton

[4] ibid

[5] Covenanter, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenanter

[6]Royal Middleton Roots, http://www.scotclans.com/royal-middleton-roots/

[7] Alisdair McRae, How the Scots won the English Civil War: The triumph of Fraser’s Dragoons

[8] Horace Welby (editor), Signs Before Death: Authenticated Apparitions

[9] ibid

[10] Middleton name already part of Prince William’s family tree, https://www.thecourier.co.uk/news/115525/middleton-name-already-part-of-prince-williams-family-tree/

[11] John Middleton, c.1608-74, http://bcw-project.org/biography/john-middleton

[12] Magnus Bennett, Royal wedding: Prince William ‘has Middleton ancestry’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-13209043

[13] Magnus Bennett, Royal wedding: Prince William ‘has Middleton ancestry’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-13209043

Naughty Nuns and Frisky Friars: Sir Francis Dashwood’s Hell-Fire Club

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Abbey, Caves, Cellar books, club, eigheenth century, England, Fanny Murray, Friars, George Selwyn, Georgian, hell fire, Lord Bute, Lord Sandwich, Medmenham, Monks, Paul Whitehead, Satanic Rituals, Sir Francis Dashwood, West Wycombe, Wharton

Sir Francis Dashwood worshiping Venus, with the Earl of Sandwich reflected in his halo.By Hogarth.

Philip, Duke of Wharton was the trailblazer of all things Hell-fire, with his notorious  Hell-Fire Club of the 1720’s.  But his was by no means the only Hell Fire club, nor the most famous spawned in the enthusiastically libertine eighteenth Century.  In the 1740’s a club was formed that became infamous as THE Hell-Fire club.  A secret cabal made up of the landed elite and political opposition – a shadow government in waiting; rumored to hold secret Satanic rituals in a secluded abbey and nearby caves, engaging in blasphemous orgies where members, dressed as friars and nuns, met in all manner of fornication and adulteries. Eventually they took power in the ministry of Lord Bute, but soon over-reached themselves, and were ultimately betrayed by one of their own.  Oh, and there was also a baboon involved along the way, as if all that wasn’t enough.

Sounds like the perfect template for a Hell-fire Club- except that this particular Hell-Fire Club, wasn’t quite as devilish as it’s reputation suggested…and it’s founder was no latter-day Wharton, brilliant, bitter and blasphemous – nor yet some Georgian Crowley figure – he comes across as rather more, well, jolly.  A traveler to foreign parts, a fan of dressing up, a bit of a practical joker,  with a mixed up view of religion.

The King of clubs: Sir Francis Dashwood (1708-1781)

Sir Francis dressed to impress, at the Divan Club.

The mark of a gentleman in the eighteenth century, was to be clubbable.  Societies and clubs sprang up like mushrooms in this very sociable century – if you had a particular interest, you could bet your life there was a group of like-minded fellows meeting in a tavern near you, on the second Tuesday of every month.   If you couldn’t find a club to suit you, you could start your own – no matter what your tastes ran too.

Sir Francis Dashwood, 15^th Baron le Despencer, was no stranger to this eighteenth century trend.  In 1732/3 after traveling in Italy and meeting the formidable Lady Mary Wortley Montague, he founded the famous Dilettante Society.  Later, following a sojourn in the Ottoman Empire, where he again crossed paths with Lady Mary, he founded the Divan Club, which ran until about 1746.  Later still, he founded the little known Lincoln Club which ran from the 1750’s to the 1770’s.  These clubs focused on an aesthetic appreciation of the ancient and the exotic, ladies could be members.  Fine dining and fancy dress were the order of the day (although there are no records of whether Lincoln green was required dress for the Lincoln Club) and there was much imbibing of alcohol, one would imagine.

During his Grand Tour to Italy, Sir Francis got about a bit, he flirted with Jacobitism and meet with the Bonny Prince himself;  he is also said to have developed an antipathy towards the more excitable aspects of Catholicism at that time, due in part to an over-zealous tutor.

Penitents scourging themselves.  Detail of Madonna della Misericordia, 1418-1422 by Pietro di Domenico da Montepulciano, Musée du Petit Palais, Avignon.

A penchant for irreligious practical jokes may also have emerged during this trip. That doyenne of eighteenth century gossip, Horace Walpole, recounted one such (likely apocryphal) incident in which the young Sir Francis attended a solemn candlelit ceremony in the Sistine Chapel, in which penitents were offered token whips to scourge themselves of sin. Showing a thoroughly wicked sense of humor and a flair for the theatrical, Sir Francis disguised himself in a night watchman’s cloak, then leaped out on the unsuspecting faithful. Striding up and down the dimly lit aisle of the chapel cracking a horse whip he managed to scare the bejezus out of the penitents, who thought the very devil himself had put in an appearance…

The Order of the Knights of St Francis of Wycombe

Back in England,  having established himself as a man who was well-traveled, with a passing interest in the occult (his library contained a number of occult texts), irreligious by nature, fond of dressing up and keen on forming clubs, Sir Francis went on to form what would become one of the most notorious clubs in the eighteenth century.  It was founded in 1746, and began life as Order of the Knights of St Francis of Wycombe, also known as the Monks or Friars of Medmenham.  However posterity erroneously remembers it as The Hell-Fire Club.

West Wycombe Park, glimpsed through the trees. (Image: Lenora).

Like many private clubs at the time, it began life in a pub, the ominously named George and Vulture tavern at Cornhill in London.  The private meeting room is said to have boasted a ‘Rosicrucian lamp, a large crystal globe encircled by a gold serpent, tail in its mouth, crowned with silver wings’ [1].  The club proved popular, and Sir Francis soon sought to acquire more private accommodation for his illustrious members.  Taking the club out to Buckinghamshire and his newly leased property of West Wycombe.  The first meeting of the brotherhood was said to have taken place on Walpurgis night, 1752, much to the annoyance of Sir Francis’s prudish wife [2].  Eventually, due to spousal pressure (?)  the club began looking for more exclusive and more atmospheric premises.

Medmenham Abbey and the Gothic Revival

Print of Medmenham Abbey

In the mid-eighteenth century all things Gothic were making a comeback, scholars and antiquaries were bringing ancient England into the public consciousness.  Initially, as an architectural style, it was mocked as being in rather vulgar taste, something popular with ‘new money’ and rather going against the Classical tide of the century.   It was not until Horace Walpole created his Mock Medieval Masterpiece at Strawberry Hill, that it became truly acceptable to the Bon Ton.  To Sir, aka, Saint, Francis and his merry band of fornicating friars, a picturesque Gothic pile was just what the Order ordered.

The Octagonal Mausoleum, featured in many Hammer Horror films. Image Lenora.

Medmenham had been a Cistercian Abbey, originally founded in the twelfth century.  Like many such religious houses, it fell foul of that jolly old wife-killer, Henry VIII, and was sold to the Duffield family who remodeled and rebuilt it over the centuries.  Sir Francis leased the Abbey from the Duffield’s in 1755 and began renovating the property to suit his peculiar tastes. He repaired the ruined cloister, tower and chapter house, a refectory, dining room and common room and catered for the ‘private devotions’ of the monks by providing them with their own ‘cells’.  The ethos of the club was proudly inscribed above the main door ‘Fais ce que tu voudras’ – that ever popular Rabelaisian dictum ‘do as you will’ – thereby leaving no doubt as to the philosophy of its founder.

Harpocrates. Image via wikimedia.

Secrecy and voyeurism were also part of the ethos – the refectory was presided over by Harpocrates, the Greek god of silence and Angerona, the Roman goddess of secrecy.  Apertures in the anteroom adjacent the dining room allowed secret observations.

The costumes of the monks were described by Horace Walpole, who visited the abbey in the 1760’s.  He described the chapter house as being decorated by prints of monks and nuns, pegs on the walls held their costumes: white hats, jackets and trousers, a red hat for the Prior.  Looking, he thought, rather like the costumes of boatmen.  Hardly the robes of Satanic devil-worshipers.

Fais ce que tu voudras: Do what thou wilt

The Secrets of the Convent c1763.  Trustees of the British Museum.

But what did the monks actually get up to?  Was there any evidence of actual Satanic practices, or was it all just posh boys putting it about?  There is little evidence of any really Diabolical practices, most of this comes from later rumors.  Many of the documents relating to the club have been lost, the cellar book survives, and is a great source for identifying meetings, and prospective members, but has little on the actual ‘doings’ of the club.

Horace Walpole, following his visit to Medmenham Abbey, reported on the practices of the Monks:

“practice was rigorously pagan: Bacchus and Venus were the deities to whom they almost publicly sacrificed; and the nymphs and the hogsheads that were laid in against the festivals of this new church, sufficiently informed the neighborhood of the complexion of those hermits.”

Sex and wine certainly seem to have been a major part of the rituals – even the landscape was sexualized.  The gardens included a Temple of Venus and Parlour of Venus as well as statues of Pan and Priapus – perfect for a club dedicated to divine procreation.  One dramatic feature, described by Burgo Partridge in his ‘History of Orgies’ was:

‘[Dashwood] had laid out one part of the gardens i the shape of a woman, with much suggestive grouping of pillars and bushes, an expensive smutty joke which could not be appreciated fully until the invention of the aeroplane.’

Dan Cruikshank, in his book on Georgian London, considers the possibility that Sir Francis may have been aware of antiquarian and later-day Druid, Rev William Stukeley and his theories about fertility rights and the Mother Goddess at Stonehenge.  Stukeley re vivified the Druid movement, and interest in a pre- Roman Britain, naming himself Chief Druid in 1722.

Cruikshank considers it is possible that Sir Francis, in the design of his gardens at West Wycombe and Medmenham, might in fact have been aiming less for a smutty joke, and more at a nod towards the Goddess.  Another alternative he considers, could be that the Order in fact represented a humanist tradition, questioning traditional morality and the confines of the established religion of the time… either way, he is impressed with the result, stating:

‘They [the gardens] remain an outstanding example of the libertine vision of antiquity, a perfect fusion of nature, the classical world, ancient British traditions and virtually ungoverned sexual encounter.’ [3]

The Rakes Progress by Hogarth.

Who were the Monks and Nuns of Medmenham?

Paul Whitehead, Secretary of the Club.

Sir Francis was the founder, but did not always act as the Abbot, this role seems to have been rotated amongst members of the inner circle.  The loyal Paul Whitehead, known as The Aged Paul, was club steward, George Bubb Doddington was also a key member (and a bequest from him funded the completion of the octagonal Mausoleum).  Later members include the notorious John Wilkes, whose political spat with fellow monk, and founding member, the Earl of Sandwich, would expose the activities of the club to censure and cement its notoriety in the public imagination.

Chevalier d’Eon by Thomas Stewart. NPG.

There have been many suggestions of other possible members, some more likely than others and encompassing both the famous and infamous of eighteenth century ‘celebrities’.  From Benjamin Franklin, founding father of the USA and fan of the madness inducing glass harmonica, Chevalier D’Eon the sexually ambiguous cross-dressing French Spy, and George Selwyn the eighteenth centuries own necrophiliac ‘gentleman sadist’, to name but a few.

Lady Mary Wortley Montague, in Turkish Dress.

Ladies were also reported to be members, with the Lady Mary Wortley Montague being perhaps the most illustrious.  She was certainly a member of Sir Francis’s other clubs, however it has been suggested her membership may have been honorary due to her advanced age, and the fact that she spent much of her time abroad.  It was rumored that many noble ladies attended the club in disguise, in order to conduct affairs, and it would seem likely that many of the members would have brought their mistresses to partake of the delights of Medmenham.  It also seems likely that Sir Francis was shipping in the creme of societies courtesans to act as naughty nuns.  The beautiful Fanny Murray, famed courtesan and former mistress of the Earl of Sandwich, was almost certainly a member.

Fanny Murray by Thomas Johnson. Via Wikimedia.

That Devil Wilkes – the beginning of the end

John Wilkes by Hogarth.

The Medmenham Set have sometimes been seen as a sinister political cabal, pulling strings and being implicated in all manner of conspiracies.  In fact, many of them did eventually take a role in government, in the ill-fated ministry of Lord Bute.   The Friars certainly attracted many of disaffected ‘opposition’ during the period of Robert Walpole’s ‘Robinocracy’.  The eventual undoing of the club occurred during a political cat-fight between the Earl of Sandwich and John Wilkes (a hell-raiser and famously known as the ugliest man in Britain).

Now for the baboon story. Some say, Earl Sandwich had a bee in his bonnet about John Wilkes following an incident involving a baboon dressed as the devil.  John Wilkes is alleged to have hidden the baboon in a chest, releasing it mid ceremony in a pant-wetting moment for the Earl of Sandwich.  (Alas, this story seems to originate in a pornographic tale called ‘Chrysal: the adventure of a golden Guinea’ in 1766 and is unlikely to be true…although oddly enough the club may have actually owned a baboon).  In any event, the antipathy between the two spilled over into the a very public political antagonism which got dirty very quickly. Sandwich tried to get Wilkes expelled from parliament because of his connection with a pornographic poem, ‘Essay on Woman’, even going so far as to read out selected saucy passages to suitably horrified/titillated MPs. Wilkes struck back in 1763 by writing of the antics of the Friars and exposing them to the full glare of public opprobrium:

‘The favourite doctrine was not penitence, for in the centre of the orchard was a grotesque figure, and in his hand he had a reed stood with flaming tips of fire.  To use Milton’s expression, Pente Tente (penitence) or Peni Tenti (erection).’ [4]

Wilkes also hinted that Pagan practices, by way of some form of English Eleusinian Mysteries dedicated to the Bona Dea (good Goddess), were performed.

It was now open season for speculation, an updated version of Chrysal came out in 1766 elaborating and embroidering upon Wilkes’s revelations, and so the Hell-fire reputation began to form…and fiction became accepted as fact.

‘Every sacred right of religion was profaned, hymns and prayers were dedicated to the Devil ‘ the monks, it was alleged carried out  ‘gross lewdness and impiety’

The club limped on for a while, but political scandal and public censure took its toll.  Curious tourists visited the Abbey post-Wilkes.  But the memory of the Friars of Medmenham lived on, in fiction and the popular imagination.  What was probably posh boys having naughty boozy weekends with perhaps a little light paganism thrown in, became the stuff of Hell-fire legend and infamy.

It seems fitting to end on a poignant little tale, in 1781 the ghost of ‘Aged Paul’ (Whitehead), whose heart was interred at the famous octagonal Mausoleum, appeared at West Wycombe and was seen beckoning and signalling.  Dashwood’s own sister was a witness to this manifestation.  It is said that upon hearing of the apparition, Sir Francis knew it was his loyal old friend come for him, and he died soon after. One can only hope that they continue their carousing in spirit. [5]

The Mausoleum, where the heart of Paul Whitehead was interred. Image by Lenora.

Sources and notes

Arnold, Catharine, ‘City of Sin, London and its Vices’, 2010, Simon & Schuster. [1] [2]

Ashe, Geoffrey,  ‘Sex, Rakes and Libertines, The Hell-fire Clubs’, 2005, Sutton. [5]

Cruikshank, Dan, ‘The Secret History of Georgian London’, 2010, Windmill Books. [3]

Dashwood, Sir Francis, ‘The Dashwoods of West Wycombe’, 1987, Aurum Press.

Lord, Evelyn, ‘The Hell-Fire Clubs, Sex, Satanism and Secret Societies’, 2008, Yale University Press. [4]

Image sources

Garden: Citation: Jason M. Kelly, “A Nymphaeum and a Temple to Venus in an Eighteenth-Century English Garden,” Secrets of the Hellfire Club Blog (8 March 2012), …

 

 

A Whiff of Brimstone: the Original Hell-fire Club

Tags

Bishop Wake, blasphemy, Duke of Wharton, eighteenth century history, England, George I, Georgian clubs, hell fire, Hell-fire Club, hellfire, jacobites, Lucy Loftus, Philip, satanism, secret societies

London 1721:  The King uncovers Satanism in High Society

On the 28 April 1721 the London Gazette reported on the Governments attempts to quash the nefarious activities of a group of young persons, both men and women, drawn from the cream of society, whose outrageously irreligious behaviour was thought to be causing moral anarchy and endangering the very fabric of society.  Although not named directly, the main target of the King and the government’s legislation was the notorious Hell-Fire Club.

His Majesty have received Information, which gives great Reason to suspect that there have lately been and still are, in and about the Cities of London and Westminster, certain scandalous Clubs or Societies of young Persons who meet together, and in the most impious and blasphemous Manner insult the most sacred Principles of Holy Religion, affront Almighty God himself, and corrupt the Minds and Morals of one another;

London Gazette, 28th April 1721

A Tabloid Drama unfolds

As soon as the activities of the Clubs became public knowledge, moral panic and prurient interest walked hand in hand and the flames of public interest were fanned enthusiastically by the press.  The early eighteenth century was a time of coffee houses and clubs where newspapers were widely circulated, read and re-read, often read out loud to those who could not themselves read.  The news that there was a blasphemous secret society or club, right in the heart of London’s high society was a sensation.  People clammered for details of the clubs membership and activities.  It was even rumoured that one of the Queen’s Ladies in Waiting was a member – leading King George I to order an investigation of his own household.

The Club was alleged to have met in Westminster, Conduit Street and Somerset House and the illustration below published in 1721 in a pamphlet entitled ‘The Hellfire Club: kept by a society of Blasphemers’ shows an imagined meeting of the Somerset House Hellfire club.

‘The diabolical maskquerade, or the dragons-feast as acted by the Hell-Fire-Club, at Somerset House in the Strand’. 1721 © Trustees of the British Museum

According to Appleby’s Journal, reporting after the club had come to public attention, the Hellfire club comprised about 40 persons of whom, scandalously, 15 were ladies of quality.  Appleby’s also reported that members routinely dressed up as Biblical characters, took the names of patriarchs and sought to mock Christianity.  They imbibed ‘Hellfire punch’ and dined on Holy Ghost Pie (an imitation host made with angelic root), Devils Loins and Breast of Venus. It was also claimed that if a member died they became the club’s ‘Ambassador in Hell’.  One can almost imagine Appleby’s Journal as the ‘Daily Mail’ of its day – with stolidly respectable readers being at once shocked, outraged and titillated by these antics.

A Touch of Brimstone, Avengers, 1966, produced by Brian Clemens and Julian Wintle

From Blasphemy to Satanism

The most damning accusation levelled at the Hellfire club was of mocking the Trinity: nibbling on Holy Ghost Pie while dressed as a patriarch and fornicating with the Lady Hellfire was pretty much guaranteed to get the Establishment frothing at the mouth…. Mists Weekly Journal from 20th February 1720 referred to the Hellfire club as having:

“transcendent Malignity: deriding the forms of Religion as a Trifle.  By a natural Progression they turn to Substance; with Lucifer they fly at Divinity”  concluding that “Ladies shield their faces because of the whiff of brimstone when they pass” (Lord p52)

Baphomet, Public Domain image via Wikimedia

Actual reliable evidence about the activities of the club is extremely scarce, as Evelyn Lord points out in her book ‘The Hell-Fire Clubs: Sex, Satanism and Secret Societies’. Most of the alleged activities reported above appeared in Journals well after the club’s existence was exposed.  And, even in their lurid and oh so very tabloid accounts, evidence of actual Devil Worship seems limited to toasting the devil and generally misbehaving.  So why then, did the Hell-fire club(s) gain a reputation for Satanic practices?

The answer seems to lie in the mind of Bishop Wake the Bishop helped to draft the Bill against the Hell-fire club(s).  His main aim was to uphold Anglican Orthodoxy and the settlement of 1688 against the rise of Jacobitism and the perceived Catholic threat following the failed Jacobite uprising in 1715.  He considered that anyone denying the Trinity must ipso-facto be in league with the Devil.  Hence the Hell-fire Club’s activities fell by default into the category of not only blasphemy, but effectively Satanism as well.

But was there more to the suppression of the Hell-fire club than upholding the state religion and protecting the morals of the nation?  It would seem so…

The man behind the Diabolical Maskquerade

Philip, The 1st Duke of Wharton, public domain image via Wikipedia

Enter Philip, Duke of Wharton.  Brilliant, charming, charismatic, rebellious, debauched, rake-hell and libertine extraordinaire.  The dyspeptic Alexander Pope described him as: “The scorn and wonder of our days” (Cruikshank p390)

Philip was born in 1698 the grandson of a Puritan (!), son of the author of the Lillibularo and Lucy Loftus (a lady whose beauty had been the toast of the famous Kit Cat Club).

Philip was given a vigorous education, ranging from maths to metaphysics, the classics to Shakespeare.  He also excelled at languages and was a talented mimic.  Destined for a fast-track career as a statesman, his family were horrified when at 17 he eloped with the daughter of a penniless Major-General.  It was rumoured that his father was so distraught that the marriage could not be annulled that he died only weeks later.  No doubt a sad event, but one that left the wild-child heir free of paternal control.

In order to reign in the wayward heir, he was packed off by his trustees on a Grand Tour of the continent.  Not the usual fun places like France and Italy where a good time could definitely be had; but to the austerely protestant Holland, Hanover and Geneva.  However this dull itinerary did not suit the wayward Duke, he ditched his tutors in Geneva in 1716 and headed directly for the epi-centre of sophistication and the heart of the Jacobite court in exile – Paris.  Here an anecdote relating to his meeting with a Jacobite exile named Gwynne, living in a Parisian garret, which reveals his already outrageous personality:

“Philip said he hoped the stairs didn’t lead up to heaven, because if they did he would go down again, and invite Gwynne to join him in Hell, where he was to be the Devil’s lord of the bed-chamber”  (Ashe p52)

After various other brushes with the Jacobite court in exile, including a meeting with the Old Pretender himself, Philip returned via Ireland to England.

Perhaps concerned by this prominent figure’s Jacobite exploits, George I gave Philip a Dukedom in 1718. If he hoped it would cement his loyalty, George was wrong.  Taking up his role as statesman Wharton soon became a vociferous critic of Robert Walpole, the de-facto Prime Minister of England and representative of Whig party interests.  In his opposition to Walpole and the Whig parties hold over politics Geoffrey Ashe, in his book ‘The Hell-Fire Clubs’, credits Philip with political importance as being the first to see opposition to the Whig ‘stranglehold’ on eighteenth century politics and patronage as crucial.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu by Jonathan Richardson the Younger public domain , via Wikimedia

Given his unconventional and rebellious nature it is unsurprising that Philip was the founding member and creator of the original Hell-fire club.  As noted above Clubs were all the rage in the very sociable eighteenth century – and not all of them were as respectable as the Kit Cat Club. In 1712 the Mohocks, a gang of gentlemen, terrorised London with their violent antics; and Daniel Defoe wrote of “a pagan circle, near Old Charing, where God was owned, sworn by, imprecated, blasphemed, and denied all in one breath”. (Lord p47). 

Wharton appears to have started the Hell-fire Club at sometime in 1720.  Evelyn Lord notes that his son died at about the same time, Wharton had left his wife and began associating with the unpleasantly nick-named ‘Rape Master General’: Colonel Charteris.  Perhaps the two of them dreamt up the Hellfire Club as the ultimate rebellion against the solidly mercantile respectability promoted by Georgian Society. 

Members were said to include Viscount Hillsborough and Sir Edmund O’Brien.  It was rumoured the famous Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was also a member. Evelyn Lord comments that Lady Mary first met and became friends with Wharton when he was living in Twickenham in 1722 – a year after the club folded.  Lady Mary appears to have written about a later club called the Schemers ( an orgiastic club set up by Lord Hillsborough) and this reference has become conflated with that of the Hellfire club. Her evident friendship with the scandalous duke added fuel to the fire and her name became linked to the Hellfire club.  (Lord p58).

Sedition and Secret Societies

The reasons that the Government feared clubs such as the Hell-fire club was that they could be hot-beds of sedition.  England in the first quarter of the eighteenth century wasn’t the bucolic fantasy of Fielding’s Tom Jones. Ever since the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when the protestant William of Orange had supplanted the Catholic James II, the Anglican’s had been edgy.

The Old Pretender Lands in Scotland, 1715. Public Domain via Wikimedia

The Government needed a tame clergy but not one with pretensions to Catholic style priestly interventions with the divine.  Hence the Convocation of the Church of England (who favoured this  view) was suspended in 1717.  The remaining clergy became pluralistic ‘yes-men’.  Nevertheless maintaining the illusion of their moral authority was still important to the Establishment – especially after the failed Jacobite rebellion of 1715.  Add to this the disastrous South Sea Bubble Speculation that bankrupted everyone from Dukes to housemaids and the stability of early Georgian Society comes seriously into question.  Many people genuinely believed that the nation was being punished by God – so in the popular mind having a society of blaspheming Devil Worshipper’s at large in the capital might have been seen as a symptom of the declining morals of the nation and further anger God.

Neither could the government risk having possibly seditious secret societies such as the Hell-fire Club, run by a suspected Jacobite sympathiser, remain unchecked as they felt it could risk political instability and moral anarchy.  Add to this the personal enmity between Wharton and Walpole (who was the prime mover behind the Act) and it becomes clear that the Hell-fire Club’s days were numbered.

Spawn of Hell-fire

The Club, which had run for less than a year, was finished by 1721.  Banned by an Act of Parliament – although nobody was ever prosecuted.  The Duke of Wharton eventually left England and died in debt at the age of only 33 after a characteristically eventful exile.  He was eventually immortalised in fiction as the anti-hero Lovelace in Samuel Richardson’s novel ‘Clarissa Harlowe’.

The Hellfire club however, did not disappear from memory.  As well as the Grub Street Hacks who did much to create its infamy, many respectable persons wrote of it in their memoirs:  Mrs Delaney, William Whiston and others.  And it spawned many other Hellfire groups – particularly in Ireland (Wharton had spent some time in Ireland – even charming the notoriously misanthropic Dean Swift, of Gulliver’s Travels fame).  Many of those Irish clubs had much more claim to a Satanic reputation than Wharton’s club of blasphemers.

One final legacy left by the original Hellfire Club was that Wharton, in his will bequeathed what was left of his estate to the Lord Treasurer, one George Doddington.  ‘Bubb’ Doddington would later become infamous due to his association with perhaps the most famous Hell-fire club of all: The Monks of Medmenham.  But that is a tale for another day!

Sources

Ashe, Geoffrey, 2005, The Hell-Fire Clubs, Sutton
Cruikshank, Dan, 2010, The Secret History of Georgian London, Windmill
Lord, Evelyn, The Hell-Fire Clubs: Sex, Satanism and Secret Societies, 2008, Yale

St Mary’s Island…

Tags

coast, England, English history, granny irene's guide to the afterlife, North East, smugglers, St Mary's Island, St Mary's Lighthouse

St Mary’s Island: A chequered past

St Mary’s Island at low tide. Image by Jim Blakeley.

Originally named Bates Island after Thomas Bates who owned it during the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1, St Mary’s Island is a quaint and peaceful little island situated off the North East Coast of England, between Whitley Bay and Seaton Sluice. Neatly sitting opposite Curry’s point on the mainland, the island is accessible at low tide by causeway. Whilst a light has shone in some capacity on the island for centuries, the most prominent feature and tourist attraction is it’s lighthouse which was built in 1898, and decommissioned and turned into a visitor centre in 1984.

Back in the medieval days there was a chapel on the island, and right next to the chapel was a burial ground where the monks were buried. Unfortunately all traces of the chapel were destroyed when the lighthouse was built.

It’s difficult to imagine when you visit it now that such a small and tranquil little island could have such a dark and chequered history, however in it’s time the island has suffered from a plague of locusts, and is also the setting of a horrific and brutal murder; namely that of Anthony Mitchell, a local customs officer who was slain brutally by smugglers who in the year 1722 had been illegally hovering off the North East coast line, his body dumped in what became known as smugglers creek on the north of the island; the creek still being visible to visitors to the island today.

Smugglers by John Atkinson. Public domain via Wikimedia.

Then just a few years later in the year 1739, Michael Curry, a local glassworker, was found guilty of the murder of the landlord of the inn at Old Hartley. He was duly hanged for his crime in Newcastle, and as was customary in those days his body was hung on a gibbet in sight of his crime, at the spot which is now known as Curry’s point.

In 1799 a boat load of Russian Soldiers on their way to fight in the Napoleonic wars, were struck down with cholera and the island was used to quarantine them.

Then later, in the nineteenth century, a local couple obtained permission from the landlord Lord Hastings to open a public house on the island. The pub was known locally as the Square and Compass, and the family lived there peacefully doing a roaring trade for decades, until a dispute over their drunken customers brawling on neighbouring land, resulted in the somewhat ungainly eviction of the family and their pigs from the island that they loved.

St Mary’s island and it’s dark history features heavily in my novel Granny Irene’s Guide to the Afterlife, Revenge. You can find out further information at http://www.ingridhall.com

St Mary’s Island with tide coming in. Image by Jim Blakeley.

Sources

En.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mary’s_Island,_Tyne_and_Wear
http://www.visitnorthtyneside.com/things-to-do/st-marys-island-P689091
northeasthistorytour.blogspot.com/…/stmarys-island-lighthouse-nz35375

Dick Turpin, Boudica, Hangman’s Hill and the Suicide Pool: Tales from Epping Forest

Tags

Boudica, Dick Turpin, England, Epping Forest, Folklore of Epping Forest, highwaymen, history, London, Suicide Pool

Image by John Leeming/Wickimedia Commons

Epping Forest together with Hainault and Hatfield forests are all that is left of the ancient woodland known as the Forest of Essex.  Originally covering 60,000 acres, the remaining 6,000 acres of woodland with its ancient oak and beech trees, open heath, bogs, ponds and grasslands stretches for 12 miles from Manor Park in the East of London to just north of Epping in Essex, on a ridge between the valleys of Lea and Roding.

The forest has been a refuge for people escaping the plague and the bombing of London during the Second World War.   Although much of its history and folklore has been lost over time, the stories that do survive often reveal a darker more unpleasant side (such as the rumoured satanic rites at the Church of the Innocents at High Beech and the failed case of alleged satanic human sacrifices in 1991) which contrasts sharply with the mysterious beauty of the place.

A forest fit for royalty

Queen Elizabeth’s Hunting lodge by Claire Ward via Wikimedia Coommons

The forest is first mentioned in connection with royalty in the 12^th century, when an edict by Henry III allowed commoners to gather wood and foodstuffs, graze livestock and turn pigs out for mast.  Only the king was allowed to hunt.  It is believed that in 1543 Henry VIII commissioned the building of structure in Chingford known as the Great Standing which enabled the king and courtiers to watch the chase.  The timber-framed building was renovated in 1589 and its name changed to the Queen Elizabeth Hunting Lodge, although it is debatable if she ever actually visited the lodge.  In the 19^th century local landowners requests to enclosure about 550 hectares of land ignited mass protests.  Led by Thomas Willingale, the fight to protect commoners’ rights including lopping for firewood and grazing of cattle was successful and resulted in the passing of the Epping Forest Act of 1878.  In 1882, after seven centuries of royal patronage, Queen Victoria declared the forest to be “the People’s Forest” and control passed into the hands of the City of London Corporation where it remains to this day.

Dick Turpin: Butcher, thief, highwayman and forest dweller

Dick Turpin, by The Complete Newgate Calendar Volume III [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

One of the most famous names associated with the forest is Dick Turpin.  Time has merged fact and fiction creating a legend of a gentlemen highwayman, gallant and noble who died a courageous death.  The reality was very different.  Stories on his early life vary but one accepted version is that Richard Turpin moved to Buckhurst Hill (Bucket Hill) in 1725 with his wife Elizabeth to open a butcher shop.  Somehow Turpin became involved with deer thieves known as the Essex Gang led by Samuel Gregory.  Possibly Turpin disposed of the deer meat as the butcher’s shop would have been a perfect cover.  After a number of the gang were caught, the remaining members along with Turpin took to robbing isolated farmhouses, torturing the female occupants if they refused to cooperate.  The notoriety of the gang became such that a notice for their capture was placed in the London Gazette. The Gazette described Turpin as “a tall fresh coloured man, very much marked with the small pox, about 26 years of age, about five feet nine inches high”*.  In February 1735 the youngest of the Essex Gang, John Wheeler was arrested.  Under interrogation, Wheeler revealed the names of other members of the gang, who in turn were seized.  Somehow Turpin escaped and turned to the highway robbery which he became famously associated with.

Along with Matthew (Tom) King and Stephen Potter, Turpin was responsible for a number of robberies along the roads around and in the forest, instilling fear and panic amongst the locals.  In April 1737 King and Turpin stole one horse too many, the owner reported the theft to Richard Bayes, the landlord of the Green Man at Leytonstone.  Bayes tracked the animal to the Red Lion at Whitechapel and laid an ambush for Turpin and King.  In the shoot-out that followed King was killed and Turpin again evaded capture and went to ground in the forest.  Despite the man hunt that followed Turpin managed to survive undiscovered in his dugout for a couple of weeks but on the 4 May his luck finally ran out.  Thomas Morris a servant of one of the keepers stumbled across the hideaway. Turpin surprised, shot and killed Morris with his carbine.  Under the assumed name of John Palmer and with a £200 reward on his head, Turpin fled north and his association with the forest ended, at least whilst he was alive.

The location of Turpin’s cave is not exactly known and several sites have been put forward including Wellington Hill at High Road.  In the 19^th century the location of the hideaway was believed to have been found and became a popular tourist attraction.  After his death some people believed that the spirit of Turpin returned to his old hunting ground and numerous sightings of a ghost wearing a tricorn hat riding a horse have been reported in the forest.

Boudica’s last stand

Boudica by John Cassell (Internet Archive) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The revolt of Boudica, leader of the Iceni tribe is well documented by historians.  No-one really knows why she and her daughters have become associated with the forest as the tribe inhabited an area mostly falling within the county of Norfolk and there is no historical or archaeological evidence to support the theory.  The only tenuous link is through the Trinovantes and Catuvellauni tribes (who joined the Iceni in the war against the Romans) whose adjoining territory border falls within the area. The myth goes that Boudica and her followers’ last stand against the Romans took place in the forest.  Realising that there was no hope of victory, Boudica and her daughters took poison rather than risk falling into Roman hands.  Two Iron Age hill forts have been identified as possible contenders for the Iceni camp: Ambresbury Banks and Loughton Camp.  Rumour has it that at night three phantom women can be seen walking along the road near the camps.

Ambresbury Banks, image by Stephen Craven via Wikimedia Commons

Hangman’s Hill

On a slip road at High Beech, a very strange phenomenon occurs.  If you park your car at the bottom of the hill at night, turn the engine and the power off, the car can be seen to roll slowly uphill.  Local legend has it that the car is being pulled towards an ancient tree by a hangman’s noose.  The tree itself is believed to be the site of a hanging either of an innocent man who was mistakenly convicted or of three witches. Scientists call these places either magnetic or gravity hills, an optical illusion due to the layout of the surrounding area, which tricks the brain into thinking that it is going uphill rather than downhill.  Only two such places exist in England.  Although this seems a logical answer, many who have tried it found the atmosphere unnerving and sinister and are convinced that they were walking uphill. Supernatural or geological? The only way to find out is to have a go yourself.

The Suicide Pool

Blackweir Pond, Epping Forest, by Stephen Craven via Wikimedia Commons

The Irish author, Elliott O’Donnell wrote in his book “Haunted Britain” about a pool in Epping Forest which is home to unearthly presences, some very miserable and others evil.  O’Donnell never revealed the location of the pool but the belief in its existence remained ingrained in local folklore.  One story goes that about 300 years ago a young couple embarked on a dangerous and forbidden relationship, meeting secretly at a beautiful pool. The girl’s father found out and in a fit of anger he killed her at the pool, on hearing of his lover’s murder, the boy committed suicide at the same spot. After that, no birds were heard, no animals ever seen there and the water became dank.  People with no inclination committed suicide at the pool including a woman in 1887 and a young servant, Emma Morgan who killed both herself and her child. In 1959 a competition was held in the magazine “Essex Countryside” to find the exact whereabouts of the pool.  One writer claimed to know its location of the pool but refused to reveal the details.  She wrote that the place was evil beyond measure,

“The suicide pool is deep in the heart of the forest, far from any road…It is dank, evil and malignant, with an atmosphere unpleasant beyond description.  It doubt if the sunshine ever penetrates through the surrounding trees; if it did it would never lighten the black waters”**

In 2012 as a tribute to the Olympics, the folk singer Ruairidh Anderson composed a series of songs (Songs from the Howling Sea) based on specific legends from the London boroughs hosting the games.  His ballad “The Call of her Song” was inspired by the legend of the Epping Forest Suicide Pool and can be heard on YouTube.

“A Walk in the Forest”

John Clare, by William Hilton

Despite its dark history, the forest itself can rival anywhere for beauty.  This is best summed up by the poet John Clare who was treated at Dr Matthew Allen’s private asylum in High Beech for severe depression in the late 1830s.  In a letter to his wife, he remarked that he considered the countryside the finest he had ever seen. Whilst a patient he wrote a number of poems including a “A Walk in the Forest”,

“I love the Forest and its airy bounds

Where friendly Campbell takes his daily rounds

I love the breakneck hills – that headlong go

And leave me high and half the world below

I love to see the Beech Hill mounting high

The brook without a bridge and nearly dry

There’s Bucket Hill – a place of furze and clouds

Which evening in a golden blaze enshrouds”

 

 

 

 

Notes

* London Gazette no. 7379, February 1734

** Loughton and District Historical Society, newsletter 185, March-April 2010

 

Sources and Further Reading

Epping Forest, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epping_Forest

Epping Forest Then and Now, Winston G. Ramsey (Editor)

Dick Turpin, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Turpin

Dick Turpin: The Myth of the English Highwayman, James Sharpe

The Queen Boudica Gallery, http://www.sheshen-eceni.co.uk/boudica_info.html

Boudica, Vanessa Collingridge

Haunted Britain, Elliott O’Donnell

Songs from the Howling Sea by Ruairidh Anderson, http://songsfromthehowlingsea.com/tag/london-songs/ or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4jSrC-8iMk

Clare: Everyman’s Poetry, John Clare

John Clare Society, http://johnclaresociety.blogspot.co.uk/

Eyam: Village of Death

Tags

black death, bubonic plague, Derbyshire history, England, Eyam, history, mompesson, plague village, seventeenth century

A Lovers Tryst

Detail of tombstone at Eyam

Two lovers meet in secret. Gazing across the grassy Delph, they dare not speak for fear of discovery, they dare not touch for fear of the terrible consequences.  This silent meeting takes place every day for many weeks until one day, at the end of April, the young man stands there alone.  Although he returns often she does not come again.  He is fraught with worry but he cannot go seek her at her home.  His name was Rowland Torre of Stoney Middleton, her name was Emmott Sydall and she lived in the village of Eyam.

I visited the sleepy village of Eyam (rhymes with stream) on a dank and misty day in February.   The village nestled beneath damp green hills and was encircled by the shiny black branches of winter trees – the whole landscape seemed drenched in silence and mystery.  I would almost say there was a mournful air to the place, but that would be to over simplify the incredible story of this village and the terrible sacrifice its inhabitants chose to make.

Signs and Portents

They said that Plague was a punishment from God visited on the sinful, and that it should be borne with fortitude and prayer.  The seventeenth century had seen a world turned upside down with regicide, the commonwealth and the restoration bringing religious, political and economic turmoil in their wake.  But by the 1660’s things had calmed, Charles II was on the throne, the village of Eyam was thriving with a rich lead mining industry, busy yeomen farmers and tradesmen plying their trades.  But the signs were there all the same…

They said that village lads had allowed the cows to stray into the churchyard, the nave had been fouled; soon after unnatural white crickets were spied on hearths; the Gabriel hounds were heard calling on the moors:  God was displeased with Eyam.  Or so the faithful reasoned when plague arrived as an unwanted guest a year later.

The Plague

Plague Doctor/undertaker

The Plague has been known in Europe since the mid fourteenth century.  Its first terrible outbreak in the late 1340’s wiped out up to one-third of England’s population.  In the intervening years there were many sporadic outbreaks across Europe.  It was not until the early twentieth century that the cause of the plague was discovered to be bacillus carried by fleas and transmitted to Black Rats and thence (when there were not enough rats to support the fleas) to humans.

The Bubonic Plague was spread by black rats who lived in very close proximity to humans (in the wainscot, in the thatch, under your floor).  You could expect vomiting, high fever, extreme pain, gangrene in the extremities, swellings of the lymph glands, particularly in the groin.  These swellings were excruciatingly painful, large and often burst.

“The pain of the swelling was in particular very violent and to some intolerable; physicians and surgeons may be said to have tortured many poor creatures, even into death.”  So wrote Daniel Defoe in his ‘Journal of the Plague Year’.

The Pneumonic Plague  was even more virulent as a flea bite was not required in its transmission – it was spread by the coughs and sneezes from its victims.  Pneumonic plague affected the blood and lead to extreme fluctuations in temperature which usually lead to coma and death.

During the three hundred or so years when the Plague visited and revisited Europe, people had few defences against it.  Nostrums and charms both Christian and more pagan varieties were employed.   Sweet smelling nosegays were used to ward of noxious plague filled air; fires were burned in the streets to disperse the infected miasma.  Some of the cures on offer were unorthodox to say the least – tying a chicken or a toad to the buboe to draw off the poison; poultices made up of varying degrees of foul ingredients.  Preventative measures were taken such as killing cats and dogs who were mistakenly seen as responsible for spreading the plague; and most disturbing of all the immuring of whole families where plague had visited a household, effectively condemning sick and healthy alike to a slow and painful death.  Some advice was sound:  leave the infected area, however this also facilitated the spread of the disease.

Plague comes to Eyam

1665 saw the plague raging in London but the remote village of Eyam would seem far away from the problems of the capital. But plague, like bad news, travels fast.  Legend has it that sometime in August or September 1665 a bundle of cloth was sent from London (some say Canterbury) to a travelling tailor lodging with Mrs Cooper of Eyam.

The Plague Cottages

Records suggest that Mrs Cooper was a relatively affluent widow, and possibly a merry one as she married a second time in March of 1665.  Her new husband Alexander Hadfield may have been the travelling tailor referred too in local legend but he was away from home at the time of the plague (not returning until much later).  It is likely that he had an apprentice or a servant by the name of George Viccar’s whose fate was to be the first victim of the plague.  Dr Richard Mead, writing in the eighteenth century and using the recollections of Mompesson’s son described the scene thus:

“a box of materials relating to his trade [was delivered] a servant [George Viccars] who opened the aforesaid box, finding they were damp was ordered to dry them by the fire.”

Perhaps he loosed fleas from the cloth or perhaps flea eggs hatched in the warmth of the fire, what ever he let loose George Viccars paid the price and died within the week.  The second victim was young Edward Cooper Mrs Cooper’s son.  Over the next few days close neighbours began to fall ill and die: Peter Hawksworth, Thomas Thorpe and his 12-year-old daughter.  It couldn’t have taken long for the villagers to realise that something was terribly wrong.

The deaths continued through the late summer and autumn, those who had means, such as the wealthy Sheldon family, fled.  Those who were tied to their trade or land, or simply too poor or too late to flee remained.  Some camped in the hills and caves in the surrounding area but many stayed in the village.  Those who camped nearby might have made the best decision – in fleeing the outbreak they had left behind the insanitary conditions that helped spread the plague.

Plague comes in the summer, preferring the warmer months of the year so there was a falling off of deaths during the winter.  Numbers began to creep up again in spring 1666, and by April there had been 73 deaths (well above the average for a village of Eyam’s size).  May saw a lull and the villagers hoped for the best.  Medical knowledge of the day said there should be a clear gap of 21 days with no new infections before an area could be deemed clear of plague.  Eyam was not so lucky.

William Mompesson

By June many more had fled – the Rector William Mompesson had sent his children to safety in Yorkshire although his consumptive wife Catherine had insisted on remaining by his side to help tend the sick, although it would cost her life (she died in August and was buried in the churchyard by special dispensation).  It was clear that action needed to be taken in order to prevent plague spreading beyond the village.  In the absence of the usual village hierarchy who had mostly fled, the Rector became the focus of authority in the village.  However, village life was never simple and the rector was a young man and a newcomer to the village.  He needed an ally in order to successfully carry out any action, and he found it in Thomas Stanley the former incumbent.

Thomas Stanley was a puritan who replaced the traditionalist and unpopular rector during the civil war.  The old rector was re-established in 1660, but Stanley remained a part of religious life in the village and was very popular.  Mompesson took the rectorship in 1664 but Stanley’s influence must still have been very strong in the village.  Nevertheless  despite their widely differing views both were able to put aside these differences in order to present a united front to the village.  This unity undoubtedly helped in gaining their parishioners consent to the radical plan the men proposed.

A Simple Plan

1. No more burials in the churchyard – people would bury their own dead on their own land or gardens.
2. The Church would be closed and services would be held out-of-doors at Cuckold Delph with family groups remaining at least 12 feet apart from their neighbours (sound advice).
3. The village would be quarantined.  No one would leave or enter the village until it was clear of plague in order to prevent it spreading to neighbouring villages and towns such as Bakewell, Fulwood and Sheffield.

The villagers entered into a pact with their Rector and consented to the quarantine, knowing full well that for many of them it was a death sentence.  Nevertheless their religious faith fortified their resolve – many felt it was their religious duty to seek divine forgiveness, some went to the extreme of refusing the cures on offer for fear of offending God.

It is hard to understand how terribly these simple rules would have affected the villagers. It is harder still to imagine the suffering that was to come:  whole families were wiped out, people were forced to bury their own dead, inscribe their own headstones when even the mason died.  The infected, whilst still living, would have heard their own graves being dug in preparation.  But death would bring no respite because at that time it was held that if a person was not buried in consecrated ground they would not rise on Judgement Day and be reunited with loved ones in paradise.  That was the extent of the sacrifice the villagers were prepared to make to prevent plague spreading.

Staying alive

Mompesson’s well

Despite the bleak outlook, in the midst of death, life still goes on.  Practical measures were implemented to alleviate suffering.  The Earl of Devonshire paid for food and medical supplies and local villages supported Eyam by supplying goods which were dropped off and paid for at set points around the boundaries of the Cordon Sanitaire.  Many of these drop off points remain today as poignant reminders of this time.  In order to disinfect coins left by the villagers they were usually left in water – Monday Brook earned its name at this time when goods from Bakewell’s Monday market were exchanged there.  The Boundary Stone has niches drilled in it that were filled with vinegar to disinfect the coins and Mompesson’s Well sits on a lonely stretch of the Grindleford Road.

Of death and life

The death toll was huge, Mompesson stated 76 families were affected. Some of the monthly figures show the devastation of the plague:  July 56 deaths, August 78, September 24, October 14.

However, statistics can never truly convey the human cost of plague, individual families suffered huge losses:  Jane Hawksworth lost 25 members of her immediate and extended family; The Talbot’s and the Hancock’s were all but wiped out:  Mrs Hancock burying her husband and 6 children in the space of a week before eventually fleeing Eyam.  The graves she dug can still be seen, and have become known as the Riley Graves, they stand as a silent testament to one woman’s almost unimaginable loss.

The Riley Graves dug by Mrs Hancock, Image by Stephen G Taylor

Not everyone who contracted plague died, some survived and their stories have entered local folk-lore. Margaret Blackwell was in the final stages of plague when suffering from a raging thirst she swigged back a jug of bacon fat mistaking it for milk.  She vomited up the fat and made a remarkably swift recovery, convinced that the bacon fat had saved her.  Another case has a certain macabre humor about it – Marshall Howe himself a plague survivor thought he may have built up some immunity so offered his services (for a fee) to help bury the dead.  One such client was a man called Unwin, and as Marshall dragged the corpse towards its grave, he was horrified to hear the dead man call for a drink.  Marshall fled in terror thinking the dead had risen.

Finally by Christmas 1666 Plague was officially over and the villagers began to return to their homes.  One final action was required to ensure plague was gone for good and, lead by the Rector himself, villagers burned all but the clothes on their backs.

Emmott and Rowland meeting at Cuckold Delph, a window at St Lawrence Church

And what of Emmott and Rowland?  Rowland was one of the first outsiders to enter the village once the quarantine was lifted.  When he found the Sydall house empty his hopes must have begun to fade.  He soon discovered that the Sydall’s were all dead and that his precious Emmott had fallen ill and died shortly after their last meeting.  All his months of waiting and hoping had been in vain.

In all close to 260 villagers of Eyam died in the outbreak which lasted for 14 months.  But they had succeeded in their plan – the plague did not spread beyond Eyam.

Today Eyam is a working village, but it has never forgotten its extraordinary history.  The Parish Church commemorates events in a stained glass window, and Eyam Museum provides historical detail.

Every year, at the end of August a commemorative service is held at Cuckold Delph to remember those who made this sacrifice.

List of plague victims on display at St Lawrence Parish Church, Eyam

Sources

BBC – Legacies, http://www.bbc.co.uk/legacies/myths_legends/england/derby/article_1.shtml
Clifford, John, ‘Eyam Plague 1665 – 1666’, 2003 edition
Eyam Museum, http://www.eyammuseum.demon.co.uk/museumguide.htm
St Lawrence Eyam Parish Church, http://www.spanglefish.com/EyamChurch/index.asp?pageid=14206