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Later, at Tedworth, 'it followed and vexed the younger children, beating their bedsteads with that violence, that all present expected when they would fall in pieces'. . . . It would lift the children up in their beds. Objects were moved: lights flitted around, and the Rev. Joseph Glanvill could assure Lady Conway that he had been a witness of some of these occurrences.
It continued in the bed, panting and scratching for an hour and a half, and then went into the next room, where it knocked a little, and seemed to rattle a chain." The rumour of these wonderful occurrences soon spread all over the country, and people from far and near flocked to the haunted house of Tedworth, to believe or doubt, as their natures led them, but all filled with intense curiosity.
Then comes a case like that of the Drummer of Tedworth, or the Cock Lane Ghost, and society is deeply moved, philosophers plunge into controversy, and he who grubs among the dusty tracts of the past finds a world of fugitive literature on forgotten bogies.
For an account by a contemporary who firmly believed the charges brought against Grandier, consult Niau's "La Veritable Histoire des Diables de Loudun." This latter work is accessible in an English translation by Edmund Goldsmid. There have been drummers a plenty in all countries and all ages, but there surely has never been the equal of the drummer of Tedworth.
Indeed, it is quite possible that the drummer, who had been a soldier of Cromwell's, was inspired by a memory of that affair. But there was no one to detect the fraud, as at Woodstock. Tedworth became a Mecca for those interested in the supernatural.
At Tedworth, the owner of the drum was 'wanted' on a charge of sorcery as the cause of the phenomena. The Wesleys suspected that their house was bewitched. But examples in witch trials are not usual. Mr. A clasped knife opened in the pocket of Christina Shaw, and her glove falling, it was lifted by a hand invisible to several persons present.
A Party at Ragley Castle. The Miraculous Conformist. The Restoration and Scepticism. Experimental Proof of Spiritual Existence. Glanvill. Boyle. More. The Gentleman's Butler. 'Levitation. Witchcraft. Movements of Objects. The Drummer of Tedworth. Haunted Houses. Rerrick. Glenluce. Ghosts. 'Spectral Evidence. Continuity and Uniformity of Stories. St. Joseph of Cupertino, his Flights.
Phelps in Stratford, Connecticut, a half century and more ago, unquestionably owed their being to the nimble wit and abnormal fancy of his two step-children, aged sixteen and eleven. It is to be remembered, further, that contemporary conditions were exceptionally favorable to the success of the Tedworth hoax.
The inference is irresistible that a more or less intimate connection exists between the disturbances at Tedworth and the triumphs of latter-day mediumship, and it thus becomes doubly interesting to examine the evidence for and against the supernatural origin of the performances that so perplexed the Englishmen of the Restoration.
The self-constituted noise-maker was called to account by a stranger in the village, a Mr. Mompesson of Tedworth, who on examining the man's license saw that it had been forged and took it away from him. This, at any rate, was Mr. Mompesson's story as to how he had incurred the ill will of the man. The drummer took his revenge in a singular way.
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