Chapter IX: Part 9

Although Lundy is not specified in this as the rendezvous of the pirates, we know that at this time it was so.

In the year 1587 the authorities of Barnstaple appear to have undertaken on their own account a raid upon the pirates who were accustomed to shelter themselves under Lundy Island.

Connected with the “setting forth of divers men from this town to apprehend divers rovers and pirates at Londey,” the following items of expenditure in the municipal records show that the expedition was not unsuccessful: “Paid to six watchmen for watching the prisoners that were taken, 12^s 1^d. Paid for a watch put, and for candlelyght for the same prisoners, 11^d. Paid for meat and drink for the same prisoners, 2^{sh}.”[8]

Stow tells us that a batch of ten sea-rovers were hanged at once at Wapping. They distributed among their friends their murrey velvet doublets with great gold buttons and crimson taffeta, and great Venetians laid with broad gold lace, “too sumptuous apparel,” Stow remarks, “which they had worn at the seas.”

In 1608, a commission was issued to the Earl of Bath, who took the depositions of three persons at Barnstaple, to the effect that the merchants were daily robbed at sea by pirates who took refuge in Lundy. In 1610, another commission was issued to the Earl of Nottingham to authorize the town of Barnstaple to send out ships for the capture of pirates, and the deposition was taken of one William Young, who had been made prisoner by Captain Salkeld, who entitled himself “King of Lundy,” and was a notorious pirate.

On 31 August, 1612, the town of Barnstaple sent out a ship and a bark--the _John of Braunton_ and the _Mayflower_--to capture pirates who had robbed a London vessel and also a pinnace of the Isle of Wight, in the roads of Lundy. It is satisfactory to learn that the offenders--“as notorious Rogues as any in England”--were caught at Milford Haven, brought to Barnstaple, and lodged in Exeter Gaol. What their ultimate fate was is not known.

In 1625, the Mayor of Bristol reported to the Council that three Turkish pirate vessels had surprised and taken the island of Lundy, and had carried off the inhabitants, to sell them as slaves, and that they were threatening Ilfracombe.

In 1628, it was the headquarters of some French pirates. In June, 1630, Captain Plumleigh reported that “Egypt was never more infested with catterpillars than the Channel with Biscayers. On the 23rd instant there came out of St. Sebastian twenty sail of sloops; some attempted to land on Lundy, but were repulsed by the inhabitants.”

In 1632, a notorious buccaneer, Captain Robert Nutt, made Lundy one of his stations, and defied the efforts of several ships of war and smaller vessels called “whelps” to capture him.

In 1633, Sir Bernard Grenville reported to the Secretary of State that a great outrage had been committed by a Spanish man-of-war of Biscay, which had landed eighty men on the island of Lundy, where, after some small resistance, they had killed one man, called Mark Pollard, and bound the rest, and surprised and took the island, which they rifled and cleared of all the best provisions they could find, and then departed to sea again.

From the depositions of William Skynner, of Kilkhampton, dyer, and others, it appears that the _Biscayner_ was a vessel of 150 tons with about 120, under a Captain Meggor, and that these pirates had previously robbed a French bark, and also a pinnace of George Rendall, which happened to be at Lundy, taking from him his money and all the provisions of his pinnace.

Capt. John Pennington, of the _Vanguard_, was commissioned to put down the pirates, and he appears to have proclaimed martial law on the island. In the year 1663, a Frenchman, Captain Pressoville, established himself on Lundy. In consequence of these events one Thomas Bushell was appointed governor of the island to hold it for the King.

Grose, in his _Antiquities_, gives a curious story of an occurrence during the reign of William and Mary. “A ship of force pretending to be a Dutchman, and driven into the roads by mistaking the channel, sent a boat ashore desiring some milk for their captain who was sick, which the unsuspecting inhabitants granted for several days. At length the crew informed them of their captain’s death, and begged leave, if there were any church or consecrated ground on the island, to deposit his corpse in it, and also requested the favour of all the islanders to be present, which was accordingly complied with. After the corpse was brought in, the islanders were required to quit the chapel for a few minutes when they should be readmitted to see the corpse interred. They had not waited long without the walls before the doors were suddenly thrown open, and a body of armed men furnished from the feigned receptacle of the dead marched out and made them prisoners. The poor islanders then discovered the pretended Dutchmen to be their natural enemies the French. They then seized 50 horses, 300 goats, 500 sheep, and some bullocks, and reserving what they required, hamstringed the rest of the horses and bullocks, threw the goats and sheep into the sea, and stripped the inhabitants of every valuable, even to their clothes, and spoiled and destroyed everything, and then, satiated with plunder and mischief, they threw the guns over the cliffs, and left the island in a most desolate and disconsolate condition.”

There is no other evidence that this really occurred, and the same story is told of the island of Sark, so that it is very doubtful whether the story be true.

It is, however, certain that for a considerable portion of the reigns of William and Mary and of Queen Anne, Lundy was a continual resort of the outcasts of the various parties who betook themselves to piracy as a means of subsistence, as also that it was for a time in the hands of the French in the reign of Queen Anne, and that they used it as a privateering station, and preyed upon the merchant-men who sailed from Barnstaple and Bideford, and that they made so many prizes that they termed Barnstaple Bay as “the Golden Bay.”

In 1748, Thomas Benson obtained a lease of the island from Lord Gower. He was a man of substance, a native of Bideford, and had inherited a fortune of £40,000. His predecessors had been successful merchants, carrying on trade with France, Portugal, and the colonies.

In 1749 he aspired to get into Parliament, and was elected for Barnstaple. He had in 1745 presented to the mayor and corporation a large silver punch-bowl, which still forms one of their cherished possessions, and has recently been copied in Barum ware for presentation to the association of “Barumites in London.”

When, however, the borough authorities received the bowl, they discovered that they had no ladle, and this they humbly and respectfully intimated to the donor. So Benson added to his gift a silver ladle, with the inscription, “He that gave the Bowl gave the Ladle.”[9]

Soon after he entered into a contract with the Government for the exportation of convicts to Virginia and Maryland, and gave the usual bond to the sheriff for so doing. But instead of doing this he shipped them to Lundy, where he employed them in building walls and other work in the island. Every night they were locked up in the old keep of the Mariscoes. He regarded himself as king of Lundy, and ruled with a high hand.

Presently he got into difficulties through smuggling and piracy. In a cave he stored his smuggled goods, and a raid was made upon these. He was exchequered, and fined £5000.

A _fieri facias_ was directed to the Sheriff of Devon to levy the penalties, under which the officers seized a large quantity of tobacco and other goods secreted in the caves of Lundy. He excused himself for not fulfilling his compact to transport the convicts to Virginia and Maryland by saying that he considered Lundy to be quite as much out of the world as these colonies. As the _fieri facias_ did not realize the sum of his fine, an extent was issued in 1753 for £7872 duties, under which his patrimonial estate of Napp was seized, and retained during his life by the Government.

“The most villainous transaction, however, in which he was implicated was the conspiracy to defraud the insurance offices, by lading a vessel with a valuable cargo of pewter, linen, and salt, which he heavily insured. The vessel sailed for Maryland, but by a secret arrangement between the Master and Benson, put back in the night and landed the greater part of the cargo at Lundy, where Benson had repaired, concealing it in the caves there; and then the Master, Lancey, put to sea, and burnt and scuttled his vessel, some leagues to the westward, the crew being taken off by a homeward-bound vessel. The roguery was, however, discovered by the confession of one of the crew. Lancey was apprehended with some of his shipmates, seized and condemned, hung at Execution Dock and afterwards in chains. Benson escaped to Portugal; he is said, however, to have returned to Napp incognito for a time, some years afterwards, when the affair was nearly forgotten, but ultimately returned to Portugal, and died there.” I quote from a manuscript journal of a visit to Lundy by a friend of Benson’s some particulars of the island and of Benson himself at this time.

“In the month of July, 1752, I sailed from Appledore on a Monday morning with Sir Thomas Gunstone in a little vessel bound to Wales which dropped us at Lundy road. We came from Benson’s house, of Napp, who rented the island of the Lords Carteret and Gower for £60. We landed about two o’clock. Mr. Benson did not accompany us, expecting letters from the insurance office for the vessel and cargo which was to have taken us there. The vessel then lay off his quay with convicts bound for Virginia, but he came to us on Wednesday. The island was at this time in no state of improvement, the houses miserably bad, one on each side of the platform, that on the right inhabited by Mr. Benson and his friends, the other by the servants. The old fort was occupied by the convicts whom he had sent there some time before, and occupied in making a wall across the island. They were locked up every night when they returned from their labour. About a week before we landed seven or eight of them took the long-boat and made their escape to Hartland, and were never heard of afterwards. Wild fowl were exceeding plenty and a vast number of rabbits. The island was overgrown with ferns and heath, which made it almost impossible to go to the extreme of the island. Had it not been for the supply of rabbits and young sea-gulls our tables would have been but poorly furnished, rats being so plenty that they destroyed every night what was left of our repast by day. Lobsters were tolerably plenty, and some other fish we caught. The deer and goats were very wild and difficult to get at. The path to the house was so narrow and steep that it was scarcely possible for a horse to ascend it. The inhabitants by the assistance of a rope climbed up a rock in which were steps cut to place their feet, to a cave or magazine where Mr. Benson lodged his goods. There happened to come into the roads one evening near 70 sail of vessels. The colours were hoisted on the fort, and they all as they passed that island returned the compliment except one vessel, which provoked Mr. Benson to fire at her with ball, though we used every argument in our power to prevent him. He replied that the island was his, and every vessel that passed it and did not pay him the same compliment as was paid to the King’s forts he would fire on her. He talked to us about his contract for exportation of convicts to Virginia, and often said that the sending of convicts to Lundy was the same as sending them to America; they were transported from England, it mattered not where it was, so long as they were out of the kingdom.”[10]

TOM D’URFEY

Tom D’Urfey was born in Exeter in the year 1653. The date usually given, 1649, is incorrect. He came of a very ancient and well-connected family. Under Charles VII of France, Pierre d’Ulphé was Grand Master of the crossbow-men of France. His son, Peter II, changed the spelling of his name from Ulphé to Urfé. He died in 1508, after having served with distinction under Charles VIII and Louis XII. Francis, the nephew of Peter II, Baron d’Oroze, fought along with Bayard in a combat of thirteen Frenchmen against thirteen Spaniards. The son of Peter II, Claude, was ambassador of France at the Council of Trent, and governor of the royal children. He loved letters, had a fine library at his Château de la Bâtie, near Montbrison. Jacques, his son, was chamberlain to Henry II; he died in 1574, leaving several sons, of whom two were Anne and Honoré, both staunch Leaguers, and in their day considered to be poets. Honoré, however, made his fame by his interminable and tedious romance of _Astrée_. The _Dictionary of National Biography_ says that Tom’s uncle was this same Honoré; but this is impossible. Honoré, the fifth son of Jacques I, was born 1572. He had four elder brothers--Anne, who died without issue; Claude, who died young; Jacques II, who had one son; Claude Emmanuel, who died in 1685. Christopher died without issue, and Antoine became a bishop. Consequently it is not possible to fit Tom D’Urfey into the pedigree. It is possible enough that the grandfather who quitted La Rochelle before the end of the siege in 1628 and brought his son with him to England, and who settled at Exeter, may have been a connexion by blood, possibly enough illegitimate, as no trace of him can be found in the D’Urfé pedigree. The grandfather broke away from the traditions of the family entirely by becoming a Huguenot, for not only were Anne and Honoré Leaguers, but Anne entered Orders and Antoine became Bishop of Saint Flores.

_Whilst D’urfey’s voice his verse do’s raise._}
_When Durfey sings his Tunefull Layes._ }
_Give D’urfeys Lyrick-Muse the Bayes._ }

_E. G._

_E. Gouge pinx._

_G. Vertue sculp._
]

Charles Emmanuel called himself De Lascaris, and was created Marquis D’Urfé and De Baugé, Count of Sommerive and St. Just, Marshal, and died in 1685 at the age of eighty-one. His son Louis became Bishop of Limoges; another, Francis, became Abbé of St. Just, and devoted himself to missionary work in Canada; he died in 1701. The third son, Claude Yves, became a priest of the Oratoire; the fourth, Emmanuel, Dean of Le Puy, died in 1689; the fifth, Charles Maurice, was the only one who did not enter the ministry, and he died unmarried; thus the family came to an end, and it is characteristic of it that it was intensely Catholic. Thus if the grandfather of Tom D’Urfey did belong to the stock, he was a sport of a different colour. The father of Tom D’Urfey married Frances of the family of the Marmions, of Huntingdonshire. Tom certainly claimed kinship with the D’Urfés, of Forez, and was proud of the fame that attached to his relative Honoré.

The elder of the sons of Jacques I, viz. Anne, had married a splendid beauty, Diana de Château Morand, who was also an heiress. But the union was not happy, and it was annulled by the Ecclesiastical Court at Lyons (1598) at the joint petition of husband and wife. Then Anne, after trifling with the Muses, took Holy Orders. Thereupon Honoré, having money to pay for it, bought a dispensation at Rome, and married his brother’s late wife, not out of love, but for the purpose of retaining in the family her great estates. He was then aged thirty-two, and she was in her fortieth year. She was haughty, vain of her beauty, which had made her famous at one time, and spent her time in trying to disguise the ravages of time on her face. She lived mainly in her room surrounded by dogs, “qui répandaient partout, jusque dans son lit, une saleté insupportable.”

Very different was the life of Tom D’Urfey’s father, and one of the touching incidents in his character was his devotion and tenderness towards his wife to her dying day.

Tom had been intended for the law, but, as he said, “My good or ill stars ordained me to be a knight errant in the fairy fields of poetry.”

He wrote plays that were well received for the most part, but all were tainted with intolerable grossness. But at this period of revulsion from Puritanism, licentiousness of intrigue, indelicacy of wit, most strongly appealed to the popular taste, at least in London, and among the hangers-on of a profligate court. In 1676, he produced _The Siege of Memphis_ and _The Fond Husband; or, The Plotting Sisters_. In 1677, _Madame Pickle_. In all, down to his death, thirty-two dramatic pieces. But that which obtained for D’Urfey his greatest reputation was a peculiarly happy knack that he possessed in writing satires and songs. In the latter style of composition he knew how to start with a telling line. There was in his composition a vein of genuine poetry, but the trail of the serpent was over it all: he could not leave his best pieces without something foul to spoil it. Many of his songs were set to music by his friends Henry Purcell, Thomas Farmer, and Dr. John Blow; but a good many were adapted to folk airs. In 1683, he brought out his _New Collection of Songs and Poems_, in which was “The Night her Blackest Sables Wore,” which was afterwards claimed for Francis Semple, of Beltrees. D’Urfey wrote a good many songs in fancy Scottish dialect, as a taste for North-country songs came in after James, Duke of York, afterwards James II, was sent to govern Scotland in 1679 and 1680. Although there can be no doubt whatever as to the authorship of “The Night her Blackest Sables Wore,” about fifty years after its first publication the song and tune in a corrupt form appear in Thomson’s _Orpheus Caledonicus_ (1733), with some change in the words so as to make it appear to be Scottish, as “She rose and let me in,” altered to “She raise and loot me in.” Mr. Chappell says: “It is a common error to suppose that England was inundated with Scotch tunes at the union of the two Crowns. The first effect was directly the reverse.” In fact, a stream of English popular melodies flowed into Scotland, and this in a flood in the reign of Charles II, carrying with them the English words, which Scottish compilers adapted and appropriated, and these have come back to us as “made in Scotland,” whereas they are genuine English songs, words and music and all.

Tom Brown, venomous and scurrilous as Tom D’Urfey was not, lampooned the latter, and called him “Thou cur, half French, half English breed,” and mocked him regarding a duel at Epsom, in 1689, with one Bell, a musician.

I sing of a Duel, in Epsom befell
’Twixt Fa-so-la D’Urfey and Sol-la-mi Bell.

Tom took it in good part. It was only by Jeremy Collier that he could be prevailed to reply, and even then it was chiefly in a song.

Jeremy Collier had published in 1697 his famous _Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage_, which dealt a terrible blow at what little prosperity the theatres enjoyed, and aroused a wholesome spirit of resentment against the outrages committed on the stage against Christian virtue and common decency. The castigation was well deserved, for the licentiousness of the stage both before and behind the curtain had become a monstrous evil.

The sensation created by the book was enormous, scores of pamphlets refuting or defending its views were written, and the falling off in the audiences plainly showed that its remonstrances had struck home. D’Urfey was one of those hardest hit; he winced, cried out, but did not mend. D’Urfey was a good, witty, and genial companion, and this obtained him favour with a great many persons of all ranks and conditions. The Duke of Albemarle, son of General Monk, had him frequently at his table to divert the company; of which he was not a little vain, as we may gather from part of a song made upon him at that time:--

He prates like a parrot;
He sups with the Duke,
And he lies in a garret.

Crowned heads condescended to admit him to their presence, and were not a little diverted by him. It is not surprising to hear this of so merry a monarch as Charles II; but even King William, so glum and reserved in temper, and so little appreciative of music, or of any amusements of that kind, must needs have D’Urfey one night to him; and D’Urfey extorted a hearty laugh even from him, and departed with a present. D’Urfey had inherited his grandfather’s Huguenot prejudices; he was a staunch Protestant in his feelings if not a Christian in his morals, and he wrote satirical songs against the Roman Catholics, so that William III felt it well to show him favour.

One of his anti-papal songs, and one that was very popular among the Whigs, was “Dear Catholic Brother,” and this he set to a very fine ancient tune, to which to this day “The Hunting of Arscott of Tetcott” is sung in Devon. But D’Urfey did not take the complete tune, as he did not need it for his piece of verse, and his incomplete version of the tune travelled into Wales and Scotland as well as throughout England. It is an early, genuine English melody in the Dorian mode.

Charles II had leaned familiarly on D’Urfey’s shoulder, holding a corner of the same sheet of music from which the poet was singing his burlesque song, “Remember, ye Whigs, what was formerly done.”

James II continued the friendship previously shown him when he was Duke of York. He had no wish to offend one who could turn a song against him and his religion. Queen Anne delighted in his wit and gave him fifty guineas when she admitted him to her at supper, because he lampooned the Princess Sophia, then next in succession to herself, by his ditty, “The Crown’s too weighty for shoulders of eighty.” She herself entertained great dislike towards the Electress Dowager of Hanover. D’Urfey was attached to the Tory interest; and in the latter part of the Queen’s reign frequently had the honour of diverting her with witty catches and humorous songs, suited to the spirit of the times, written by himself and sung in a droll and entertaining manner.

The Earl of Dorset welcomed him at Knole Park, and had his portrait painted there. At Wincherdon, Buckingham’s house, Philip, Duke of Wharton, enjoyed in company D’Urfey singing his songs, which he did with vivacity, although in speech he stammered. D’Urfey said: “The town may da-da-da-mn me as a poet, but they sing my songs for all that.”

He collected his songs into six volumes, published under the title of _Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy_, which went through several editions. In that for 1719 all the songs in the first two volumes are his own; other songs, many of them folk ballads, he tampered with, and added coarsenesses of his own not in the original. The book was published by Playford, and the melodies are not always correctly printed. Most of his airs were folk melodies; many of them, doubtless, heard by him when he was young in Devonshire, for there they are still employed to ballads he recast.

Writing to Henry Cromwell, 10th April, 1710, Alexander Pope says: “I have not quoted one Latin author since I came down, but have learned without book a song of Mr. Thomas Durfey’s, who is your only poet of tolerable reputation in this country. He makes all the merriment in our entertainments, and but for him, there would be so miserable a dearth of catches, that, I fear, they would put either the Parson or me upon making some of ’em. Any man, of any quality, is heartily welcome to the best topeing-table of our gentry, who can roar out some rhapsodies of his works; so that in the same manner as it was said of Homer to his detractors, What! dares any man speak against him who has given so many men to _eat_? (meaning the rhapsodists who lived by repeating his verses). Thus may it be said of Mr. Durfey to his detractors, Dares any one despise him, who has made so many men _drink_? Alas, Sir! this is a glory which neither you nor I must ever pretend to. Neither you with your Ovid, nor I with my Statius, can amuse a board of Justices and extraordinary Squires, or gain one hum of approbation, or laugh of admiration. These things (they would say) are too studious, they may do well enough with such as love reading, but give us your ancient Poet, Mr. Durfey! ’Tis mortifying enough, it must be confess’d.”

There is a slight allusion to D’Urfey in the _Dunciad_, iii. 146.

Gay mentions that Tom ran his Muse with what was long a favourite racing song, “To horse, brave boys, to Newmarket, to horse!”

Tom was very irregular in his metres. He had the art of jumbling long and short quantities so dexterously together that order resulted from confusion. Of this happy talent he gave various specimens, in adapting songs to tunes, composing his songs in such measures as scarcely any instrument but a drum could accompany; as to the tune, it had to take care of itself. To be even with the musicians who complained of the irregularity of his metres, and their unusual character, he went further, composing songs in metres so broken and intricate, that few could be found who could adapt tunes to them that were of any value. It is said that he once challenged Purcell to set to music such a song as he would write, and gave him the ballad that speedily became popular, “One Long Whitsun Holiday,” which cost the latter more pains to fit with a tune than the composition of his _Te Deum_.

Tom, at least in the early part of his life, was a Tory by principle, and never let slip an opportunity of representing his adversaries, the Whigs, in a ridiculous light. Addison says that the song of “Joy to Great Cæsar” gave them such a blow that they were not able to recover during the reign of Charles II.

This song was set to a tune called “Farinelli’s Ground.” Divisions were made on it by some English master, and it soon became a favourite air. D’Urfey set words to it in which his old Huguenot execration of the Papists breaks forth. Farinelli was a Papist, a circumstance that gave occasion to Addison to remark that his friend Tom had made use of Italian tunes for promoting the Protestant interest; and turned a considerable part of the Pope’s music as a battery against the chair of St. Peter.

D’Urfey’s _Pills to Purge Melancholy_ is a book nowadays to be kept under lock and key, or else to be bound and lettered “Practical Sermons,” to avoid its being taken down from its shelf and being looked into by young people. And yet--“Tempora mutantur et nos mutantur in illis.” Addison speaks of his songs in No. 67 of _The Guardian_ thus: “I must heartily recommend to all young ladies, my disciples, the case of my old friend, who has often made their grandmothers merry, and whose sonnets have perhaps lulled to sleep many a pleasant toast, when she lay in her cradle.” In No. 29, 1713, Addison wrote: “A _judicious_ author, some years since, published a collection of sonnets, which he very successfully called ‘Laugh and be Fat; or, Pills to Purge Melancholy.’ I cannot sufficiently admire the facetious title of these volumes, and must censure the world of ingratitude, while they are so negligent in rewarding the jocose labours of my friend, Mr. D’Urfey, who was so large a contributor to this treatise, and to whose numerous productions so many rural squires in the remotest parts of the island are obliged for the dignity and state which corpulency gives them.”

D’Urfey was the last English poet that appeared in the streets attended by a page. Many an honest gentleman, it is said, got a reputation in his county by pretending to have been a boon companion of D’Urfey; yet, so universal a favourite as he was, towards the latter part of his life he stood in need of assistance to prevent his passing the remainder of it in a cage like a singing-bird; for, to use his own words, “after having written more odes than Horace, and about four times as many comedies as Terence, he found himself reduced to great difficulties by the importunities of a set of men who of late years had furnished him with the accommodations of life, and would not, as we say, be paid with a song.”

Addison, to relieve the old man, whose sight was then failing, but whose spirits had not been extinguished, applied to the directors of the play-house, and they agreed to act _The Plotting Sisters_, one of his earliest productions, for the benefit of the author. What the result of this benefit was does not appear, but it was probably sufficient to make him easy, as we find him living and continuing to write with the same humour and liveliness to the time of his death, which happened on 26 February, 1723. He was buried in the churchyard of St. James’s, Westminster, against the wall on the south-west angle of which church, on the outside, was erected a stone to his memory, with this inscription: “Tom Durfey died Feb. 26, 1723.”

THE BIRD OF THE OXENHAMS

The Lysons brothers, in their _Magna Britannia_, Devon, tell the following story, under the head of South Tawton: “Oxenham gave its name to an ancient family, who possessed it at least from the time of Henry III till the death of the late William Long Oxenham, Esq., in 1814. Captain John Oxenham, who had been the friend and companion of Sir Francis Drake, and who, having fitted out a ship on a voyage of discovery and enterprise on his own account, lost his life in an engagement with the Spaniards in South America, in 1575, is supposed to have been of this family. The family has been remarkable also for the tradition of a bird having appeared to several of its members previously to their death. Howell, who had seen mention of this circumstance on a monument at a stonemason’s in Fleet Street, which was about to be sent to Devonshire, gives a copy of the inscription in one of his letters. It is somewhat curious that this letter proves the fact alleged by Wood, that Howell’s work does not consist of entirely genuine letters, but that many of them were first written when he was in the Fleet prison to gain money for the relief of his necessities. This letter, dated July 3, 1632, relates that, as he passed by the stonecutter’s shop ‘last Saturday,’ he saw the monument with the inscription relating the circumstance of the apparition. It appears, however, by a very scarce pamphlet ... that the persons whose names are mentioned in the epitaph, given in Howell’s letter, all died in the year 1635, three years after the date of his letter. The persons to whom the apparition is stated in the pamphlet to have appeared were John Oxenham, son of James Oxenham, gentleman, of Zeal Monachorum, aged twenty-one,[11] and said to have been six feet and a half in height, who died Sept. 5, 1635, a bird with a white breast having appeared hovering over him two days before; Thomazine, wife of James Oxenham, the younger, who died Sept. 7, 1635, aged twenty-two; Rebecca Oxenham, who died Sept. 9, aged eight years; and Thomazine, a child in the cradle, who died Sept. 15. It is added that the same bird had appeared to Grace, the grandmother of John Oxenham, who died 1618. It is stated also that the clergyman of the parish had been appointed by the Bishop (Hall) to enquire into the truth of these particulars, and that a monument, made by Edward Marshall, of Fleet Street, had been put up with his approbation, with the names of the witnesses of each apparition.

“Another proof that Howell’s letter must have been written from memory is, that most of the Christian names are erroneous. The pamphlet adds, that those of the family who had been sick and recovered never saw the apparition.” The pamphlet to which the brothers Lysons refer is entitled: “A True Relation of an Apparition in the likeness of a Bird with a white brest that appeared hovering over the Death-Beds of some of the children of Mr. James Oxenham, of Sale Monachorum, Devon, Gent. Confirmed by sundry witnesses as followeth in the ensuing Treatise. London, printed by I. O. for Richard Clutterbuck, and are to be sold at the signe of the Gun, in Little Britain, neere St. Botolph’s Church, 1641.”

Now in the first place it is well to observe that the name of the place is wrong. The Oxenhams did not live at Zeal Monachorum, but at South Zeal in South Tawton. No Oxenham entries are to be found in the registers of Zeal Monachorum, no monuments of the family are in the church. The brothers Lysons examined the registers there, and certified to this. The Devon volume of the _Magna Britannia_ was published in 1822. Since that date a portion of the page in the Burial Register, containing the entries of burials in 1635, has been cut out by some person who has by this means destroyed the evidence that no such Oxenhams were buried at Zeal Monachorum. Now the pamphlet states that John, son of James Oxenham, aged twenty-two, died on 5 September, 1635. The register of South Tawton informs us that John Oxenham was buried on 20 May, 1635, i.e. four months, two weeks, and two days before he died, according to the tract. He was born in 1613 and baptized 17 October in that year. His father, James Oxenham, was married to Elizabeth Hellier in 1608. In 1614, a John Oxenham and his wife Mary had a son John as well. Others reported to have had the white-breasted bird appear on their deaths in the same year, were Thomasine, wife of James Oxenham the younger, Thomasine, their babe, and Rebecca Oxenham, aged eight years.

There is no entry in the register of the baptism of either Thomasine or Rebecca, nor of the burial of Thomasine the elder, Thomasine the babe, or of Rebecca.

The second John Oxenham, son of John and Mary, was buried 31 July, 1636, at least we presume it was he; the registers do not state in either case whose son each of the Johns was.

There is no trace of the younger James to be found in the register, nor of any of the Oxenhams in North Tawton registers at or about the time of the supposed apparition.

The witnesses to the vision were, in the case of John Oxenham, Robert Woodley and Humphry King. Robert Woodley does occur in the register under date 1664. Mary Stephens was witness to the visions when Rebecca and Thomasine the babe died, and Mary Stephens does occur in the register under the date 1667, but none of the other witnesses, Humphry King, Elizabeth Frost, Joan Tooker, and Elizabeth Averie, widow. Consequently there is negative evidence that Thomasine, elder and younger, and Rebecca never existed save in the imagination of the author of the catch-penny tract.

We come now to James Howell’s account, in his _Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ; or Familiar Letters_. The first edition of the first series of these letters was published in the year 1645, four years after the tract had appeared. About the year 1642 he had been committed to the Fleet, and there confined for eight years. He states in his Letter IX, in Sect. 6, in a letter to Mr. E. D.:--

“/Sir/,--I thank you a thousand times for the Noble
entertainment you gave me at _Berry_, and the pains you took in
shewing me the Antiquities of that place. In requitall, I can tell
you of a strange thing I saw lately here, and I beleeve ’tis true:
As I pass’d by Saint Dunstans in Fleet street the last Saturday, I
stepp’d into a Lapidary or Stone-cutters Shop, to treat with the
Master for a Stone to be put upon my Father’s Tomb; And casting
my eies up and down, I might spie a huge Marble with a large
inscription upon ’t, which was thus to my best remembrance:--

“_Here lies_ John Oxenham, _a goodly young man, in whose
Chamber, as he was strugling with the pangs of death, a Bird with
White-brest was seen fluttering about his Bed, and so vanish’d._

“_Here lies also_ Mary Oxenham, _the sister of the said John,
who died the next day, and the same Apparition was seen in the
Room._

“Then another sister is spoke of. Then, _Here lies hard by_ James
Oxenham,_ the son of the said_ John, _who died a child in his
cradle a little after, and such a Bird was seen fluttering about
his head a little before he expir’d, which vanish’d afterwards_.

“At the bottom of the Stone ther is--

“_Here lies_ Elizabeth Oxenham, _the Mother of the said_
John, _who died 16 yeers since, when such a Bird, with a
White-Brest, was seen about her Bed before her death._

“To all these ther be divers Witnesses, both Squires and Ladies,
whose names are engraven upon the Stone: This Stone is to be sent
to a Town hard by _Excester_, wher this happend.”

It will be noticed that Howell has got all the Christian names wrong, but then, as he states, he gave the inscription from memory. If the date of the letter be correct, 1632, that, as Lysons pointed out, was before the deaths that took place in 1635. But in the first edition of the letters this particular one is undated, and little or no reliance can be placed on the dates that are given; indeed, the bulk of the letters, if not all, were written by Howell when in prison and never had been sent to the persons to whom addressed, any more than at the dates when supposed to be written. Probably in his second edition he dated this letter to E. D. sufficiently early to account for his walking abroad in Fleet Street “last Saturday,” caring only that it should not appear as a composition written in prison.

That he ever saw the marble monument is improbable, as it is almost certain that no such monument existed. He had read the tract, and pretended to have seen the stone so as to furnish a theme for an interesting letter. It is extremely unlikely that the names of witnesses to the apparition should be inscribed on the stone. Howell saw these names in the tract; he did not know who they were, but supposed them to be squires and ladies. There were no such gentry about South Tawton at the period. As to the statement made in the tract that the Bishop had commissioned the vicar of the parish to examine into the case, and that he and the parson bore testimony to its genuine character, that is as worthless as the witnessing to the ballad concerning the “Fish that appeared upon the Coast, on Wednesday the four score of April, forty thousand fathom above water.... It was thought she was a woman turned into a cold fish. The ballad is very pitiful, and as true.... Five justices’ hands at it; and witnesses more than my pack will hold.”

It was a common trick of ballad-mongers and pamphleteers to add a string of names of witnesses--all fictitious, every one.

The monument is probably as fictitious as the names of the witnesses. There is not, and there never was, such in South Tawton Church any more than in that of Zeal Monachorum. Lysons gives the Oxenham monuments as he found them there: William Oxenham, gent., 1699; William Oxenham, Esq., 1743; George Oxenham, Esq., 1779. “It is proper to add,” says Lysons, “that there is no trace of the Oxenham family, nor of the monument before mentioned, either in the register, church, or churchyard of Zeal Monachorum, nor have I been able to learn that it exists at Tawton, or elsewhere in the county.”

I was at South Tawton in 1854, staying with Mr. T. Burkett, the then vicar, and I drew some of the monuments in the church, and am certain this particular stone was neither in the church nor outside.

So also Polwhele, in his _History of Devonshire_, 1793, says: “The prodigy of the white bird ... seems to be little known at present to the common people at South Tawton; nor can I find anywhere a trace of the marble stone which Mr. Howell saw in the lapidary’s shop in London.”

In Sir William Pole’s _Collections_, published in 1791, there stood originally: “Oxenham, the land of Wm. Oxenham [the father of John, the grandfather of Will, father of another John, grandfather of James; whose tombstone respects a strange wonder of this famyly, that at theire deaths were still seen a bird with a white brest, which fluttering for a while about theire beds suddenly vanisht away, which divers of ye same place belive being eyewitnesses of]”.

Sir William Pole died in 1635, and he said not one word about the bird of the Oxenhams; that which has been placed within brackets was an addition made by his son, Sir John, who had probably read the pamphlet or Howell’s Letters. Risdon, who lived not far from South Tawton, knew nothing about the bird. In fact, the whole legend grew out of the story in the tract.

That this story is not wholly baseless may be allowed in the one case of John Oxenham. As he was dying the window very probably was opened, and a ring ouzel, attracted by the light, may have entered, fluttered about, and then flown out again. That the window was open I said was probable, for it is an idea widely spread in England that when a person is near death the casement should be thrown open so as to allow the soul to escape. I said once to a nurse who had attended a dying man: “Why did you open the window?” “You wouldn’t have had his soul go up the chimney, sir?” was the answer.

The appearance--accidental--of a bird in the death chamber would, in a superstitious age, be regarded as supernatural. I was attending the wife of an old coachman who had been with my father and myself. She was bed-ridden. One day she said to me: “I know I shall go soon, for a great bird came fluttering at the window.” She did not, however, die till two months later.

The story of John Oxenham and the bird got about, and then some one remarked that a similar sort of thing had happened, so it was said, when the young man’s grandmother died. That sufficed to set the ball rolling. For the purpose of the pamphleteer, three additional cases were invented, cases of Oxenhams who never existed, and the account of the stone was added, so as to give the tale greater appearance of verisimilitude.

Kingsley introduces the white bird as an omen of the navigator Oxenham. He was justified as a novelist in predating the tradition which did not exist in his time, and was hatched out of the tract of 1641.

I have said white bird--for as the story went on the white-breasted bird became white, hoary with attendance on generations of Oxenhams. It may be interesting, at all events it is amusing, to note, how out of this pious hoax serious convictions have grown that the bird really has been seen, and that repeatedly.

Messrs. Lysons say: “This tradition of the bird had so worked upon the minds of some of the members of the family, that it is supposed to have been seen by William Oxenham, who died in 1743.” Then they go on to relate this particular instance, which is given on the authority of a note in the manuscript collections of William Chapple. Mr. Chapple “had the relation from Dr. Bent, who was brother-in-law to Mr. Oxenham, and had attended him as a physician. The story told is, that when the bird came into his chambers he observed upon the tradition as connected with his family, but added, he was not sick enough to die, and that he should cheat the bird; and that this was a day or two before his death, which took place after a short illness.”

The story is told more fully in a letter printed in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ of April, 1862, from J. Short, Middle Temple, to George Nares, jun., of Albury.

“I have received an answer from the country in relation to the strange bird which appeared to Mr. Oxenham just before his death, and the account which Dr. Bertie gave to Lord Abingdon of it is certainly true. It first was seen outside the window, and soon afterwards by Mrs. Oxenham in the room, which she mentioned to Mr. Oxenham, and asked him if he knew what the bird was. ‘Yes,’ says he, ‘it has been upon my face and head, and is recorded in history as always appearing to our family before their deaths; but I shall cheat the bird.’ Nothing more was said about it, nor was the bird taken notice of from that time; but he died soon afterwards. However odd this affair may seem, it is certainly true, for the account was given of it by Mrs. Oxenham herself, but she never mentions it to any one, unless particularly asked about it, and as it was seen by several persons at the same time, I can’t attribute it to imagination, but must leave it as a phenomenon unaccounted for.”

In both these accounts we have the story at second hand. The Hon. Charles Barker, /LL.D./, was rector of Kenn at the time, and during his tenure of the rectory, Mrs. Oxenham erected a monument in the church to her father and mother. But who was the J. Short, Middle Temple, who wrote the above letter to George Nares, jun., Albury? And what is more to the point, how came it to be dated December 24th, 1741, when Mr. William Oxenham, whose death it records, died on 10 December, 1743? Discrepancies and anachronisms meet us at every point in the story of the Oxenham omen.

In the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ of the year 1794, the following paragraph occurs recording the death of one of the Oxenhams: “13th (January) at Exeter, aged 80, Mrs. Elizabeth Weston ... the youngest daughter of William Oxenham, Esq., of Oxenham. The last appearance of the bird, mentioned by Howell and Prince, is said to have been to Mrs. E. Weston’s eldest brother on his death-bed.” Who said it? What was the authority?

In Mogridge’s _Descriptive Sketch of Sidmouth_, is given a letter relative to the death of a Mr. Oxenham at Sidmouth:--

“/My dear Sir/,

“I give you, as well as I can recollect, the story related to
me by a much respected baronet of this county. He told me that,
having read in Howell’s _Anecdotes_ of the singular appearance of
a white bird flying across, or hovering about the lifeless body of
divers members of the Devonshire Oxenham family, immediately after
dissolution, and also having heard the tradition in other quarters,
wishing rather for an opportunity of refuting the superstitious
assertion than from an idea of meeting with anything like a
confirmation; having occasion to come to Sidmouth shortly after
the death of his friend Mr. Oxenham, who resided in an old mansion,
not now standing, he questioned the old gardener, who had the care
of the house, as to who attended his master when he died, as Mr.
O. had gone there alone, meaning only to remain for a day or two.
‘I and my wife, sir,’ was the reply. ‘Were you in the room when
he expired?’ ‘Yes, both of us.’ ‘Did anything in particular take
place at that time?’ ‘No, sir, nothing.’ But then, after a moment’s
pause, ‘There was indeed something which I and my wife could almost
swear we saw, which was a white bird fly in at the door, dart
across the bed, and go into one of the drawers; and as it appeared
in the same way to both of us, we opened all the drawers to find
it, but where it went to we could never discover.’ If I recollect
rightly, the man on being questioned had not heard of the tradition
respecting such appearances.”

Unfortunately Mr. Mogridge does not name the writer of this letter. But it matters little--the story comes third hand. The “much-respected baronet” had a bad memory. He thought Howell called the apparition a “white bird,” and that he related that it crossed the bed after the body was dead. Accordingly the gardener sees things after the erroneous fashion of the story remembered so badly by the “much-respected baronet.” Who this Mr. Oxenham was, when he died, and where he is buried is unknown.

In _Glimpses of the Supernatural_, published in 1875, is a communication of the Rev. Henry Nutcombe Oxenham, and a still more detailed account from his pen is in Mr. Cotton’s article on “The Oxenham Omen” in the _Transactions_ of the Devonshire Association for 1882.

“Shortly before the death of my late uncle, G. N. Oxenham, Esq., of 17 Earl’s Terrace, Kensington, who was then head of the family, this occurred: His only surviving daughter, now Mrs. Thomas Peter, but then unmarried, and living at home, and a friend of my aunt’s, Miss Roberts, who happened to be staying in the house, but was no relation, and had never heard of the family tradition, were sitting in the dining-room, immediately under his bedroom, about a week before his death, which took place on the 15th December, 1873, when their attention was roused by a shouting outside the window. On looking out they discerned a white bird--which might have been a pigeon, but if so was an unusually large one--perched on the thorn-tree outside the windows, and it remained there for several minutes, in spite of some workmen on the opposite side of the road throwing their hats at it in a vain attempt to drive it away. Miss Roberts mentioned this to my aunt at the time, though not of course attaching any special significance to it, and my aunt, since deceased, repeated it to me soon after my uncle’s death. Neither did my cousin, though aware of the family tradition, think of it at the time. Miss Roberts we have lost sight of for some years, and do not even know if she is still living; but Mrs. Thomas Peter confirms in every particular the accuracy of the statement. Of the fact, therefore, there can be no reasonable doubt, whatever interpretation may be put upon it. My cousin also mentioned another circumstance which either I did not hear of or had forgotten: viz. that my late aunt spoke, at the time, of frequently hearing a sound like a fluttering of a bird’s wings in my uncle’s bedroom, and said that the nurse testified to hearing it also.”

Here we have a development of the story. The bird is _white_, not white-breasted, and it appears before the death of the head of the family, whereas in the original story it appeared before the decease of any member of the Oxenham family. This looks like a shrinkage of the story. So many had died without the apparition, that it was reduced in significance to the appearance before the death of the head of the family.