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Not that the Parsons girl is to be placed on exactly the same footing as the Mompesson children and Hetty Wesley, and held to some extent responsible for the mischievous phenomena she produced. On the contrary, the more one studies the evidence the stronger grows the conviction that in her we have a striking and singular instance of "dissociation."
Rising from the table, and donning his plumed hat, looped with diamonds, with a gesture worthy of a monarch, while all the rest remained uncovered, as if in recognition of his superior dignity, he descended to where Sir Giles Mompesson was standing.
It would be useless now to say how I saved you from the punishment your rashness had incurred how, while aiding you with the King, I kept aloof your enemies, Mompesson and Mitchell, who were prepared to attach your person for contempt of that terrible court, and would have done so, if I had not prevented them.
And he concludes, 'and with tears I entreat that when you are praying for fatherless and motherless infants, you would then remember my two pretty babes'. These two letters were written on the last day of August and first of September, 1666; but on the 20th of November, Mr. Mompesson was writing to his uncle, in the lull after the storm.
Sir Giles Mompesson was a very handsome man, with a striking physiognomy, but dark and sinister in expression. His eyes were black, singularly piercing, and flashed with the fiercest fire when kindled by passion. He wore the handsomely cut beard and moustache subsequently depicted in the portraits of Vandyke, which suited the stern gravity of his countenance.
This crushing usury seemed to them a real calamity; for although in the present extraordinary age of calculations and artificial wealth, we can suffer "a dunghill-breed of men," like Mompesson and his contemptible partner of this reign, to accumulate in a rapid period more than a ducal fortune, without any apparent injury to the public welfare, the result was different then; the legitimate and enlarged principles of commerce were not practised by our citizens in the first era of their prosperity; their absorbing avarice rapidly took in all the exhausting prodigality of the gentry, who were pushed back on the people to prey in their turn on them; those who found their own acres disappearing, became enclosers of commons; this is one of the grievances which Massinger notices, while the writer of the "Five Years of King James" tells us that these discontents between the gentry and the commonalty grew out into a petty rebellion; and it appears by Peyton that "divers of the people were hanged up."
As will have been foreseen, the judgment pronounced by Prince Charles upon Mompesson and his partner, was confirmed by the King and the Lords of the Council, when the two offenders were brought be them in the Star-Chamber.
It was his confidence in the far possibilities opened by investigation in that field, together with the cabalistic notions he had absorbed, which rendered him so willing to become a student of psychical phenomena. Little wonder, then, that he found the Mompesson and Somerset cases material to his hand and that he seized upon them eagerly as irrefutable proof of demoniacal agency.
"You will learn that when the interrogatories are put to you," replied the official. "But I am told you have disparaged the dignity of the High Court, and that is an offence ever severely punished. Your accuser is Sir Giles Mompesson." Having said thus much, the serjeant-at-arms turned to the promoter, and inquired, "Are you not Clement Lanyere?" "Why do you ask?" rejoined the other.
Mary Church, though partly rebuilt, is still of interest and has a Transitional Norman chancel arch and fine Norman font. The Jacobean pulpit and Tudor altar tomb of Sir Richard Mompesson should be noticed. The altar is said to have been made from the woodwork of a derelict pulpit from St. Mary's, Oxford.
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