AN ODD STORY.

R. JOHN AUBREY, F.R.S., was an antiquary, a gentleman

MR of high repute, an ingenious and learned virtuoso, as

inquisitive as Herodotus. Before I pass on to the incident described in one of his miscellaneous papers, I should like to say a word about himself. He was born in 1625-6, a weakly child, at Easton-Piers, in Wiltshire, and educated at Malmesbury School, and at Trinity College, Oxford, where a friendship with Mr. Anthony à Wood caused him to turn his attention to antiquities and curiosities of all kinds. His father died in 1646, and left him estates in no less than five counties, together with the reversion to a number of lawsuits, which eventually ruined him. In 1662 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society; in 1664 he went on a journey to France, as far as Orleans, and returned in October of the same year with a wife; but from a pithy note among his papers, the affair was not altogether to his mind. "I made," he writes, "my first addresses in an ill hour to Joan Somner." He wrote a life of Mr. Hobbes, the philosopher, and a "Perambulation of Surrey." He had intended to perambulate Wiltshire also, but foreseeing that life would not suffice him, he deposited the papers in the Ashmolean Museum, but afterwards published a selection of them in Miscellanies. His worldly affairs, as his biographer says, "ran very cross," and obliged him to sell his whole estate, the sale being completed in 1670, "from which year,” says the old philosopher, "thank God, I have enjoyed a happy delitescency," by which he means obscurity. An old friend, Lady Long of Draycott, received him as an inmate into her house, but he died at Oxford on a journey, though the time of his death and burial are uncertain. He affected the name "Albericus "-" vulgo Aubrey," as he used to add.

Now for his story: it is related in a letter from the Rev. Mr. Andrew Paschal, B.D., Rector of Chedzoy, in Somersetshire. Mr. Paschal begins by saying that there have been "many prodigious things lately performed in a parish called Cheriton-Bishop by some discontented daemon."

"About November last," he goes on, "in the parish of Spreyton, in the county of Devon, there appeared in a field near the dwellinghouse of Philip Furze (given in some editions as Flurge, but it is 'Furze' in my own copy, which bears date 1784, and was formerly, according to the bookplate, in the possession of Dr. Parr) to his servant Francis Fry, being of the age of twenty-one, an aged gentleman (who afterwards turned out to be Mr. Furze's father, or 'what seemed he') with a pole in his hand, like that he was wont to carry about with him when living, to kill moles withal-who told the young man he should not be afraid of him," and thereupon mentioned several legacies that he had bequeathed by will, which had not been duly paid, none of them amounting to more than twenty shillings; these he desired should be at once settled, and then, he said politely, he would trouble him no further.

Mr. Philip Furze accordingly, on hearing Francis's story, paid the legacies, as "the Spectrum " desired-one of which was a sum of £1 due to his sister, Mrs. Furze, of Staverton, near Totnes. This was taken to Mrs. Furze by Francis Fry, when a difficulty occurred: that gentlewoman refused to have anything to do with the money, coming, as she plainly said, "from the Devil."

Fry spent the night at Staverton, and the old gentleman paid him a second visit when he was in bed. Poor Francis reminded him that he had promised not to trouble him, and complained that he had at some inconvenience endeavoured to carry out his wishes. The Spectrum replied that it was true, but that he was to lay out the twenty shillings in a ring, and Mrs. Furze would not refuse that-and it seems she did not-and so Francis Fry went home rejoicing, having transacted the old gentleman's business.

But now a worse thing happened. Old Mr. Furze, the Spectrum, had in one of his conversations with Francis spoken with some warmth of his own second wife, the late Mrs. Furze, "that wicked woman!" Mr. Paschal takes occasion to remark on this: "I knew Mrs. Furze myself, and took her for a very good woman;" but it seems that Mr. Paschal was wrong.

As Francis Fry rode home from Staverton, he found an old gentlewoman sitting on the crupper of his saddle behind him. But before he could recover from the shock, "she often threw him off his horse, and hurried him with such violence as astonished all that saw him, or heard how horribly the ground was beaten." No one appears to have assisted him in any way, though the sight of a stalwart young footman of twenty-one being belaboured by an elderly lady must have been surprising.

On arriving at Spreyton, the horse on which he rode sprang, in a horrible manner and without warning, a distance of twenty-five feet. But this was only the beginning of sorrows. The old lady began to haunt the house, and appeared to numbers of people whose names are given, sometimes in human shape, sometimes as a black dog belching fire, sometimes as a horse, which sprang out of the window and carried away "one pane of glass with a little bit of iron."

Then one morning Francis was found with his head thrust into a narrow space between a bed and a wall, where a man's fist could not enter, and great force had to be used to extricate him; as he came out all bruised and bloody, it was thought best to bleed him a little more. Then they left him with his arm comfortably bandaged, but they had hardly quitted the room when the bandage was whipped off and drawn so tight round Francis's middle as nearly to kill him, and was then cut by some invisible agency asunder, “making an ugly uncouth noise."

Again and again his cravat was pulled tight round his neck and he nearly strangled. Then for some days the old lady took a fancy to spoiling his periwig, in which it seems he used to sleep; for she continued to tear it "to flitters," even though he tried the experiment of keeping it in a little box with much heavy furniture on the lid. Then the old lady broke the buckles on his shoes, and pulled out his shoe-strings and threw them about the room, and when the maid took hold of the end of one of them, it crisped and curled about her hand like a living eel. Then the gentlewoman took to "dexterously tattering" Fry's gloves. Mr. Paschal himself examined the remains, and said that "nothing human could have done it, and that a cutler could not make an engine to do it so." Then barrels of salt were rolled from room to room, and irons leapt into pans of milk, and flitches of bacon descended from the ceiling. Then the merry old lady appeared in her daughter-in-law's, Mrs. Philip Furze's, clothes. And worst of all, says Mr. Paschal, was "the entangling of Fry's face and legs about his neck and about the frame of the chairs, and as they have been with great difficulty disengaged."

But on Easter Eve of the same year (Mr. Paschal notes that he passed the door on the very day and heard all the details) the malevolence of the old lady reached its height.

Francis was returning from his work, "the little," adds Mr. Paschal, "that he could do," when the spectre caught him by the skirt of his doublet and carried him away into the air. He was soon missed by his master and the workmen, and great inquiry was made, but no hearing of him, till at last in about half an hour he was heard

Well, poor

whistling and singing in a kind of quagmire, and at first, being rescued, no one regarded what he said, as he seemed light-headed. But presently he maintained that he had been carried on high into the air, that he saw his master's house beneath him no bigger than a haycock; that he then prayed to Cod that he might not be destroyed, and he was let down into the quagmire, so that he fell soft. His shoes were found, one on one side of the house, one on the other, and next day his periwig, always the object of the old lady's attentions, was found hanging in the top of a high tree. Francis was much benumbed, and on Low Sunday he was carried to Crediton to be let blood: and being there left alone for a time, he was found in a fit, with his forehead ail horribly bruised and swollen. When he recovered, he told them that a bird had flown in at the window with a stone in its mouth, and flew directly against his forehead. Search was made and a curious brass or copper weight was found on the ground, which was taken up and parted among the spectators. A gentleman "of good fashion" being at Crediton, had a part analysed and found it to be an unknown mineral.

Mr. Paschal says he "was not qualified to be welcome there, having given Mr. Furze a great deal of trouble about a conventicle in his house," where a man But he adds that he

that he has not visited the house lately, because

of Mr. Paschal's parish was the preacher.

doubts they can obtain no relief in this demoniacal persecution, because they have called to their assistance none but Nonconforming ministers; and it was hardly likely that the spectre would give much

heed to them.

Poor Mrs. Fry, Francis's mother, he adds, had just come to consult him, Francis having had five pins thrust into his side that day. But Mr. Paschal adds that there must be aliquid latens, something concealed, because others in the house are beginning to be troubled, particularly Anne Langdon, a maid, who, says Mr. Paschal, screeches in a hellish manner; and Thomasin Gidley has obsessions too.

There the story ends; but John Aubrey adds a similar story of the Lord Duffus (in the shire of Murray in Scotland), who was carried away when walking in one of his fields, and next day was found in Paris, in the King's cellar, with a silver cup in his hand. He was brought before the King and questioned, and he said that the previous day, as he walked, he heard the noise of a whirlwind, and voices crying "Horse and Hattock," which, it is well known, is the formula that fairies use when they remove from any place. Whereupon, "very imprudently too," he said "IIcrse and Hattock," and was immediately caught up and transferred to the Parisian cellar, where, he

said, he drank heartily and fell asleep. The King, without further remarks, gave him the cup, and dismissed him, and the cup is still preserved in his family.

He further adds that a gentleman of his acquaintance, Mr. M., was in Portugal in 1655, when a man was carried through the air from Goa in East India, to Lisbon, in an incredibly short time, and instantly, and quite rightly, burnt by the Inquisition.

These latter stories may be dismissed as hearsay; but what are we to make of the tale of Francis Fry? It is evident, I imagine, that he was hysterical and probably epileptic; but here are incidents related in perfect good faith by people of credit, whose word would no doubt have held good in any business transaction in which they were engaged. I, for one, cannot bring myself to say that the things fell out as described, and indeed, some of the most remarkable incidents depend upon the word of Francis Fry, and we know to what trouble people afflicted with certain kinds of delusions will put themselves to persuade others of the truth of their statements. I suppose it is not absolutely impossible that after the incident of Easter Eve Francis may have put his shoes where they were found and afterwards hung his wig in the tree. The most we can say is that to none of the witnesses the thing was antecedently impossible, or even improbable. But to me it casts a lurid light on the history of testimony in all ages, when a story like this can be circulated and attested by persons who had absolutely no motive for so doing except the propagation of the marvellous.

The sequel is not related; but I confess to feeling a sympathetic interest in the adventures of the Furze household, and in the ultimate fate of Francis Fry.

ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON.