CHAPTER XIV.
OF MEN AND WOEMEN.
[THE following instances of remarkable longevity, monstrous births, &c. will suffice to shew the nature of this Chapter. It must be admitted that its contents are unimportant except as matters of curious speculation, and as connected with the several localities referred to.—J. B.]
A PROVERB:—
‘Salisbury Plain
Never without a thief or twain.’
As to the temper and complexion of the men and woemen, I have spoken before in the Prolegomena.
As to longæevity, good aire and water doe conduce to it: but the inhabitants are also to tread on dry earth; not nitrous or vitriolate, that hurts the nerves. South and North Wiltshire are wett and dampish soiles. The stone walles in the vale here doe also cast a great and unwholsome dampe. Eighty-four or eighty-five is the age the inhabitants doe rarely exceed. But I have heard my worthy friend George Johnson of Bowdon, Esq., one of the judges in North Wales, say that he did observe in his circuit, sc. Montgomery, Flint, and Denbigh, that men lived there as commonly to an hundred yeares as with us to eighty. Mr. Meredith Lloyd hath seen at Dolkelly, a great parish in Merionithshire, an hundred or more of poore people at eighty yeares of age at church in a morning, who came thither bare-foot and bare-legged a good way. In the chancell of Winterborn Basset lies interred Mr. Ambrose Brown, who died 166-,aged 103 yeares. Old goodwife Dew of Broad Chalke died about 1649, aged 103. She told me she was, I thinke, sixteen yeares old when King Edward the sixth was in this countrie, and that he lost his courtiers, or his courtiers him, a hunting, and found him again in Falston-lane. In the parish of Stanton St. Quintin are but twenty-three houses, and when Mr. Byron was inducted, 167-, here were eight persons of 80 yeares of age. Mr. Thorn. Lyte of Easton-Piers, my mother’s grand-father, died 1626, aged 96; and about 1674 died there old William Kington, a tenant of mine, about 90 yeares of age. A poore woman of Chippenham died about 1684, aged 108 yeares.
Part of an Epitaph at Colinbourne-Kinston in Wiltshire, communicated to the Philosophicall Conventus at the Musæum at Oxford, by Mr. Arthur Charlett, Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford:—“Pray for the soule of Constantine Darrel, Esq. who died Anno Dni. 1400, and……. his wife, who died A°. Dni. 1495.” See it. I doe believe the dates in the inscription are in numerical letters. [In this case the former date was probably left unfinished, when the husband placed the inscription to his wife, and after his death it was neglected to be filled up, as in many other instances. The numerals would be in black letter.—J. B.]
In the chancel at Milsham is an inscription of Isaac Self, a wealthy cloathiers of that place, who died in the 92nd yeare of his age, leaving behind him a numerous offspring; viz. eighty and three in number.
Ella, Countesse of Salisbury, daughter to [William] Longespe, was foundress of Lacock Abbey; where she ended her days, being above a hundred yeares old; she outlived her understanding. This I found in an old MS. called Chronicon de Lacock in Bibliotheca Cottoniana. [The chronicle referred to was destroyed by the fire which so seriously injured the Cotton MSS. in 1731. The extracts preserved from it do not confirm Aubrey’s statements, but place the Countess Ela’s death on the ix kal. Sept. 1261, in the 74th year of her age. See Bowles’s History of Lacock, Appendix, p. v.—J. B.]
Dame Olave, a daughter and coheire of Sir [Henry] Sharington of Lacock, being in love with [John] Talbot, a younger brother of the Earle of Shrewsbury, and her father not consenting that she should marry him; discoursing with him one night from the battlements of the Abbey Church, said shee, “I will leap downe to you:” her sweet heart replied he would catch her then; but he did not believe she would have done it. She leap’t downe, and the wind, which was then high, came under her coates and did something breake the fall. Mr. Talbot caught her in his armes, but she struck him dead: she cried out for help, and he was with great difficulty brought to life again. Her father told her that since she had made such a leap she should e’en marrie him. She was my honoured friend Col. Sharington Talbot’s grandmother, and died at her house at Lacock about 1651, being about an hundred yeares old. Quaere, Sir Jo. Talbot?
[This romantic story seems to have escaped the attention of the venerable historian of Lacock, the Rev. Canon Bowles. The late John Carter mentions a tradition of which he was informed on visiting Lacock in 1801, to the effect that “one of the nuns jumped from a gallery on the top of a turret there into the arms of her lover.” He observes, as impugning the truth of the story, that the gallery “appears to have been the work of James or Charles the First’s time.” Aubrey’s anecdote has an appearance of authenticity. Its heroine, Olave, or Olivia Sherington, married John Talbot, Esq. of Salwarpe, in the county of Worcester, fourth in descent from John, second Earl of Shrewsbury. She inherited the Lacock estate from her father, and it has ever since^ remained the property of that branch of the Talbot family, now represented by the scientific Henry Fox Talbot, Esq.—J. B.]
The last Lady Prioresse of Priorie St Marie, juxta Kington St. Michael, was the Lady Mary Dennys, a daughter of the Dennys’s of Pocklechurch in Gloucestershire; she lived a great while after the dissolution of the abbeys, and died in Somersetshire about the middle or latter end of the raigne of King James the first
The last Lady Abbese of Amesbury was a Kirton, who after the dissolution married to….. Appleton of Hampshire. She had during her life a pension from King Henry VIII.: she was 140 yeares old when she dyed. She was great-great-aunt to Mr. Child, Rector of Yatton Keynell; from whom I had this information. Mr. Child, the eminent banker in Fleet Street, is Parson Child’s cosen-german. [The name of the last Abbess of Amesbury was Joan Darell, who surrendered to the King, 4 Dec. 1540. Hoare’s Modern Wiltshire, Amesbury Hundred, p. 73. J. B.]
When King Charles II. was at Salisbury, 1665, a piper of Stratford sub Castro playd on his tabor and pipe before him, who was a piper in Queen Elizabeth’s time, and aged then more than 100.
One goodwife Mills of Yatton Keynel, a tenant of my father’s, did dentire in the 88 yeare of her age, which was about the yeare 1645. The Lord Chancellour Bacon speakes of the like of the old Countesse of Desmond, in Ireland.
Mr. William Gauntlett, of Netherhampton, born at Amesbury, told me that since his remembrance there were digged up in the churchyard at Amesbury, which is very spacious, a great number of huge bones, exceeding, as he sayes, the size of those of our dayes. At Highworth, at the signe of the Bull, at one Hartwells, I have been credibly enformed is to be seen a scull of-a vast bignesse, scilicet half as big again as an ordinary one. From Mr. Kich. Brown, Rector of Somerford Magna, (At Wotton in Surrey, where my brother enlarged the vault in which our family are buried, digging away the earth for the foundations, they found a complete skeleton neer nine foot in length, the skull of an extraordinary size.—J. EVELYN.)
George Johnson Esq. bencher of the Middle Temple, digging for marle at Bowdon Parke, Ano. 1666, the diggers found the bones of a man under a quarrie of planke stones: he told me he saw it. He was a serious person, and “fide dignus”.
At Wishford Magna is the inscription, “Hic jacet Thomas Bonham, armiger, quondam Patronus istius Ecclesiæ, qui quidem Thomas obiit vicesimo nono die Maii, Anno Domini MCCCCLXXIII (1473); el Editha uxor ejus, quæ quidem Editha obiit vicesimo sexto die Aprilis, Anno D’ni MCCCCLXIX. (1469). Quorum animabus propitietur Deus.—Amen.” They lye both buried under the great marble stone in the nave of this church, where is the above said inscription, above which are their pourtraictures in brasse, and an escucheon now illegible. Beneath this inscription are the small figures of nine young children in brasse. This Mr. Bonham’s wife had two children at one birth, the first time: and he being troubled at it travelled, and was absent seven yeares. After his returne she was delivered of seven children at one birth. In this parish is a confident tradition that these seven children were all baptized at the font in this church, and that they were brought thither in a kind of chardger, which was dedicated to this church, and hung on two nailes, which are to be seen there yet, neer the bellfree on the south side. Some old men are yet living that doe remember the chardger. This tradition is entred into the register booke there, from whence I have taken this narrative (1659). [See the extract from the register, which is signed by “Roger Powell, Curate there,” in Hoare’s Modern Wilts. (Hundred of Branch and Dole) p. 49.—J. B.]
On Tuesday the 25th day of October, Anno Dni 1664, Mary, the wife of John Waterman, of Fisherton Anger, neer Salisbury, hostler, fell into travell, and on Wednesday, between one and two in the morning, was delivered of a female child, with all its parts duly formed. Aboute halfe an hour after she was delivered of a monstrous birth, having two heades, the one opposite to the other; the two shoulders had also [each] two armes, with the hands bearing respectively each against the other; two feet, &c. About four o’clock in the afternoon it was christened by the name of Martha and Mary, having two pretty faces, and lived till Fryday next. The female child first borne, whose name was Elselet, lived fourteen days, and died the 9th of November following: the mother then alive and in good health.
[This narrative is accompanied by a description of the internal structure of the lusus naturæ, as developed in a post mortem examination; which “accurate account,” says Aubrey, “was made by my worthy and learned friend Thorn. Guidot, Dr. of Physick, who did kindly communicate it to me out of his collection of medicinall observations in Latin.”]
Dr. Wm. Harvey, author of the Circulation of the Blood, told me that one Mr. Palmer’s wife in Kent did beare a child every day for five daies together.
A wench being great with child drowned herself in the river Avon, where, haveing layn twenty-four houres, she was taken up and brought into the church at Sutton Benger, and layd upon the board, where the coroner did his office. Mris. Joane Sumner hath often assured me that the sayd wench did sweat a cold sweat when she lay dead; and that she severall times did wipe off the sweat from her body, and it would quickly returne again: and she would have had her opened, because she did believe that the child was alive within her and might bee saved.
In September 1661 a grave was digged in the church of Hedington for a widow, where her husband was buried in 1610. In this grave was a spring; the coffin was found firme; the bodie not rotten, but black; and in some places white spotts; the lumen was rotten. Mr. Wm. Scott’s wife of this parish, from whom I have this, saw it, with severall of her neighbours.
Mrs. Mary Norborne, of Calne, a gentlewoman worthy of belief, told me that Mr…. White, Lord of Langley’s grave was opened forty years after he was buried. He lay in water, and his body not perished, and some old people there remembred him and knew him. He was related to Mrs. Norborne, and her husband’s brother was minister here, in whose time this happened.
Mrs. May of Calne, upon the generall fright in their church of the falling of the steeple, when the people ran out of the church, occasioned by the throwing of a stone by a boy, dyed of this fright in halfe an hour’s time. Mrs. Dorothy Gardiner was frightened at Our Lady Church at Salisbury, by the false report of the falling of the steeple, and died in… houres space. The Lady Jordan being at Cirencester when it was beseiged (anno atatis 75) was so terrified with the shooting that her understanding was so spoyled that she became a child, that they made babies for her to play withall.
At Broad Chalke is a cottage family that the generation have two thumbes. A poor woman’s daughter in Westminster being born so, the mother gott a carpenter to amputate one of them with his chizel and mallet. The girl was then about seven yeares old, and was a lively child, but immediately after the thumb was struck off, the fright and convulsion was so extreme, that she lost her understanding, even her speech. She lived till seventeen in that sad condition.
The Duke of Southampton, who was a most lovely youth, had two foreteeth that grew out, very unhandsome. His cruel mother caused him to be bound fast in a chaire, and had them drawn out; which has caused the want of his understanding.
[This refers to Charles Fitzroy, one of the natural sons of King Charles II. by his mistress, Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland. He was created Duke of Southampton in 1674; became Duke of Cleveland on the death of his “cruel mother” in 1709; and died in 1730.—J. B.]
Mdm. Dr. W. Harvey told me that the biteing of a man enraged is poysonous. He instanced one that was bitt in the hand in a quarrell, and it swoll up to his shoulder, and killed him in a short time. [That death, from nervous irritation, might follow such a wound is not improbable: but that it was caused by any “poison” infused into the system is an idea too absurd for refutation.—J. B.]