The Daemon of Tidworth.
A house at Tidworth (the same, I believe, that was lived in by the Poore family,) had been, before their time, the property of a previous family, of the name of Mompesson: and during their occupation it was the scene of a very celebrated ghost story, called “The Daemon of Tidworth,” or, “The Invisible Drummer.” A ghost story still continues quite as much as ever to take a fascinating hold of the popular mind: but two hundred years ago the whole country was literally absorbed in the charming mystery which surrounded “The Invisible Drummer.” Addison actually wrote a play called “The Haunted House,” which was acted at the London theatres, in which he introduced some of the circumstance; but it was a Mr. Joseph Glanville, Rector of Bath, who published the history of it at full length in a book called “Sadducismus Triumphatus.”
The outline of the story is this. In the year 1661, the reign of King Charles II., Mr John Mompesson, of Tidworth, was an officer in the militia. Being at Ludgershall one day in the month of March, he heard a drum beating in the street. With the ear of a soldier he naturally asked what was going on. He was told by the gentleman of the town at whose house he was staying, that for some days they had been annoyed by an idle fellow who had gone about beating a drum and asking for money. Mr Mompesson examined the man, and, finding him to be an imposter, took possession of the drum, and put the drummer into the hands of a constable. This official was one of the Dogberry school, whose orders were, when they got hold of a villain who shewed a strong dislike to being taken, “to let him go, and thank God you are rid of a knave.” The Ludgershall policeman of 1661 did accordingly: so the drummer made his escape.
But Mr Mompesson did not let the drum go. He kept that unlucky valuable: and it was the cause to him and his of all the trouble that ensued. Presently strange noises began to be heard in the house at Tidworth, like the thumping of a drum: Mr Mompesson got out his pistols, searched about, could find nothing or nobody. The noise would be repeated for several nights together: then for several be silent.
The beds began to be shaken: and the windows to rattle, even in Mr Mompesson’s own room. The children heard noises under their beds, like scratchings with claws. They were removed to a garret: the noises followed them. Shoes were thrown over their heads. The servants had their hair pulled. Violent knockings, loud enough to alarm the neighbours; sounds like jingling of money.
Then there was a scuffle between John, the steady old family servant, and somebody invisible: sometimes the invisible got the worst of it; sometimes John. There were other varieties of noise: a rattling of chains, a rustling of silk, sometimes a singing in the chimney; now and then a blue light, flitting up and down stairs: the children saw it also in their chamber.
Doors would be opened and shut half-a-dozen times: yet nobody seemed either to come in or go out; and then again half-a-dozen people seemed to be rushing in at once. During one of the times that the knocks were going on, one of the company, when many were presetn, mustered courage enough to venture upon exorcising the ghost by this fearful adjuration,”Satan! if the drummer set thee a-work, give three knocks and no more.” The three knocks were given, and no more: but no further reply. Sir Thomas Chamberlayne, of Oxford, and several others, were present at that performance.
Another time the village blacksmith slept in the house, and he undertook to discover all about it. Presently there came into his room a noise as of a man shoeing a horse; and something or other came as it were with a pair of pincers and snipt at the blacksmith’s nose the greater part of the night.
Another night a young lady was the victim. Her bed was lifted up, and there were noises underneath. They thrust in a sword, but nobody was hurt. Then there came out a noise like that of a dog panting for breath. They began to suspect witchcraft: for the bible belonging to the old gentlewoman of the hosue was found under the grate, open, with the paper side downward. Mr Mompesson took it up, and observed that it lay open at the third chapter of St. Mark, where there is mention of unclean spirits being cast out by Beelzebub. So then they strewed dust over the floor of the room, to see what marks might be made upon it: and in the morning they found the resemblance of a great claw, and some mysterious letters, circles, and scratches.
Mr Glanville, the Rector of Bath, himself visited the house, and, though the knockings had ceased, he said he distinctly heard scratchings of the bed, and the panting of the dog very violent. Two or three nights would pass quietly: and then the noises would begin again. The candle would be put out in the children’s room: and the children themselves trampled on. Something would purr in their bed, like a cat, and the children themselves would be lifted up, so that six men could not keep them down.
All this went on, at intervals, for two years. In the third year a gentleman that lay in the house found all the money in his pocket turned black: and one morning Mr Mompesson going to his stable found his horse with one of his hinder legs in his mouth, so fast, that it was difficult for men with a lever to get it out.
All these circumstances were related by Mr Mompesson. The drummer, whose drum had been taken from him, was suspected to be at the bottom of it all. He was tried at Salisbury assizes, and condemned to be transported. He went, but somehow or other contrived to get back again. Mr Mompesson then prosecuted him at Gloucester, as a felon, for supposed witchcraft, but he was acquitted.
The second Earl of Chesterfield, in one of his letters, says that the whole country was ringing with this story of the drum which Mr Mompesson declared to be true. At last, in 1664, King Charles II. sent down Lord Falmouth, and the Queen sent Lord Chesterfield to the house to examine the truth of it. They could neither hear nor see anything extraordinary. The next year the King told Lord Chesterfield that he had discovered the cheat, for that Mr Mompesson had confessed it all to him. Mr Mompesson, however, in a printed letter, declared that he had never made any such confession.
There is a curious examination in a journal called the “Mercurius Rusticus,” of the 16th April, 1663, by which it appears that one William Drury, of Ufcot, near Broad Hinton, in Wilts, was the Invisible Drummer. Samuel Pepys, the author of the famous journal, read Mr Glanville’s narrative of the mysterious disturbances; and says of it: “The discourse well writ, in good syle, but, methinks, not very convincing.”
Mr James Waylen, formerly of Devizes, the historian of that town and of Marlborough, writing in 1854, mentioned that he was possessed of some private original letters elucidating the history. I have not seen anything more from his pen upon the subject, except what he says in the Appendix to his History of Marlborough (p. 553): – “Every place has its ghost story. Hardly any of such legends are worth recording, except as illustrations of the remarkable hold which they appear to take on the fancy of both the learned and the rude, at certain epochs in the religious life of nations. few persons are aware to what an extent the public mind was engaged at that time in questions of this sort.”
[The very judges on the bench, the great Sir Matthew Hale himself, you will remember, were not altoether free from a belief in the supernatural, in witchcraft.]
“Dr. Francis Hutchenson, in his historical essay on witchcraft, written apparently about the year 1700, mentions no less than twenty-four different works or essays which had all made their appearance since the Restoration of Charles II., the greater part of which had for their object the maintenance of the popular credulity upon such points.”
Mr Waylen adds that the performances at Mr Mompesson’s house are now generally supposed to have been the result of gypsy confederacy, though this was far from being the opinion of the public at the time, or even of Mr Mompesson himself, the owner of the house, for a son of his being asked by John Wesley, many years afterwards, “What was his father’s real opinion of that affair?” said, that whatever his father might have really thought, he was obliged to treat it as a hoax, to keep people away from his house: for so many came to visit it that he was afraid they would eat him out of house and home.
The Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, vol. XXI. (1884)
Notes on the Border of Wilts and Hants: by the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, FSA.
The Devil in Wiltshire.
“To Trinity House; where, among others, I found my Lords Sandwich and Craven, and my cousin, Roger Pepys, and Sir Wm. Wheeler. Both at and after dinner we had great discourses of the nature and power of spirits, and whether they can animate dead bodies; in all which, as of the general appearance of spirits, my Lord Sandwick is very scepticall. He says the greatest warrant that ever he had to believe any, is the present appearing of the Devil in Wiltshire, much of late talked of, who beats a drum up and down. There are books of it, and, they say, very true; but my lord observes, that though he do answer to any tune that you will play to him upon another drum, yet one time he tried to play and could not; which makes him suspect the whole; and I think it is a good argument.”
So wrote Pepys in his diary on June 13th, 1663. The supposed supernatural occurrence to which reference is made is a strange story of a haunted house at Tedworth (North Tidworth), Wiltshire, where in the church may be found monuments to members of the family, whose name was associated with it. The story became known as “The Drummer of Tedworth,” and the circumstances were noised all over the country, so much so, indeed, that a Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into them.
Just about this time Joseph Glanvill and Henry More were interesting themselves in what was virtually psychical research, and to this fact we probably owe the survival of the story, as it is included in the former’s works and told at some length and much detail. Glanvill was a West Country man; born at Plymouth, he entered the church and was presented in 1662 to the vicarage of Frome Selwood, Somerset, by Sir James Thynne, in place of John Humphrey, expelled for nonconformity. Ten years later he exchanged the living for that of Streat and Walton in the same county, and in 1666 was inducted rector of Bath Abbey. It was in that year he published his work “Philosophical Considerations concerning the Existence of Sorcerers and Sorcery,” said to have been prompted by the story of the Tedworth drummer, which he includes in a collection of cases of supernatural phenomena left by him at his death, entitled “Sadducismus Triumphatus.”
The house where these mysterious doings occurred was that of Mr John Mompesson, member of a well-known family of that time, a man of substance and a magistrate. In his magisterial capacity he ordered the arrest and committed to Gloucester gaol a wandering beggar who made himself a nuisance by going about the country disturbing people by beating a drum and causing alarm by the violence of his demands for alms. On his committal to prison the drum was confiscated and given into the charge of the bailiff, who, for some reason not stated, during Mr Mompesson’s absence in London in the following month sent it to his house, whereupon the disturbing events commenced. On Mr Mompesson’s return he learnt that his family had been much frightened by noises which were attributed to attempts to break into the house by thieves, and he had not been home long before they re-commenced, being described as a great knocking at a door of the house. Arming himself with a brace of pistols he opened the door and then heard the imprisoned drummer was responsible for the visitation, and in this connection a strange incident is recorded.
The prisoner was seen in gaol by a person from Wiltshire, of whom he inquired what was the news from th ecounty, and whether people were not talking about a drumming in a gentleman’s house there. The visitor replied that he had heard of nothing upon which the prisoner said, “I have done it; I have thus plagued him, and he shall never be quiet until he hath made me satisfaction for taking away my drum.” On the expiration of his sentence Mr Mompesson had the drummer again arrested and charged with witchcraft about his house, a true bill was found against him at the assize, but he was acquitted on trial, it being found that his connection with the disturbances was not proved.
Most of Glanvill’s story is a summary of what he gathered from people in the neighbourhood, but he gives also his own experiences on the occasion of a visit to the house in January, 1662. The drumming and ruder noises had then ceased, but the children were still disturbed as soon as they were put to bed. Being informed by a maid servant that “it had come,” wrote Glanvill:
“Mr Mompesson and I, and a gentleman that came with me, went up. I heard a strange scratching as we went up the stairs, and when we came into the room, I perceived it was just behind the bolster of the children’s bed and seemed to be against the tick. I thrust my hand behind t he bolster, directing it to the place whence the noise seemed to come. Whereupon the noise ceased there, and was heard in another part of the bed. But when I had taken out my hand it returned, and was heard in the same place as before. I had been told that it would imitate noises, and made [?] by scratching several times upon the [?], as five, and seven, and ten, which it followed, and still stopped at my number. I searched under and behind the bed, turned up the clothes to the bed-cords, graspt the bolster, sounded the wall behind, and made all the search that I possibly could, to find if there were any trick, contrivance, or common cause of it. The like did my friend, but we could discover nothing.
So that I am very persuaded, and am so still, that the noise was made by some demon or spirit. After it had scratched about half-an-hour or more, it went into the midst of the bed, under the children, and then seemed to pant like a dog out of breath, very loudly. I put my hand upon the place, and felt the bed bearing up against it, as if something within had thrust it up. I grasped the feathers to feel if any living thing were in it. I looked under and everywhere about, to see if there were any dog, or cat, or any such creature, in the room, and so we all did, but found nothing…
“It will I know, be said by some, that my friend and I were under some affright, and so fancied noises and sights that were not. This is the eternal evasion. But if it be possible to know how a man is affected when in fear, and when unaffected, I certainly know, for mine own part, that during the whole time of my being in the room, and in th ehouse, I was under no more affrightment than I am while I write this relation. And if I know that I am now awake, and that I see the objects that are before me, I know that I heard and saw the particulars that I have told.”
As already stated, so much excitement was caused by the affair, and it gave rise to so much discussion that Royal Commissioners were appointed to investigate it. It appears from the Letters of the Second Lord Chesterfield that both the King and Queen saw Mr Mompesson and he affirmed the truth of the report to them. Anyway, the King appointed Lord Falmouth and the Queen, Lord Chesterfield, as their representatives and they visited the supposed haunted house, but, wrote Lord Chesterfield, “we could neither see nor hear anything that was extraordinary.” This did not disconcert Glanvill or shake his belief in the genuineness of the story:
“As to the quiet of the house when the courtiers were there,” he wrote,”the intermission may have been accidental, or, perhaps, the demon was not willing to give so public a testimony of those transactions which might possibly convince those whom he had rather should continue in unbelief of his existence.”
Be that as it may, no sooner had the Commissioners gone than the manifestations recommenced and took new forms, such as hiding a Bible in a grate, putting a long spike in Mr Mompesson’s bed, and a knife in his mother’s, filling the porringer with ashes, and turning money in people’s pockets black.
Lord Chesterfield avers that the mystery was solved by a confession on the part of Mr Mompesson. “About a year after,” he wrote, “his Majesty told me that he had discovered the cheat, and that Mr Mompesson, upon his Majesty sending for him, confessed it to him. And yet Mr Mompesson, in a printed letter, had afterwards the confidence to deny that he ever made any such confession.” It would seem that Glanvill was aware of the allegation that this admission had been made, for he emphasises the unlikelihood of a man perpetrating an imposture which could only injure himself and his family, and, as Pepys says, it is a good argument. Ten years after the events Mr Mompesson solemnly declared that he knew of no cheat. “If the world will not believe it,” he declared, “it shall be indifferent to me, praying God to keep me from the same or like affliction.”
It must be left to readers to form their own conclusions, but this much may be pointed out: there is ample evidence that the imagination of those who related the incidents grew as interest in their recital increased. From being at the outset quite an ordinary ghost story it gathered what Pooh-Bah calls “corroborative detail” as time went on, until at length one servant claimed to have seen the ghostly visitant, “a great body, with two red and glaring eyes, which, for some time, were fixed steadily on him.”
What became of the drummer is uncertain, but he seems to have been identified as William Drury, of Uscut, Wilts., and to have been again tried for witchcraft at Salisbury, convicted, and sentenced to transportation, a lenient sentence which occasioned surprise as the offence was usually punished by death. The Tedworth story is believed to have furnished Addison with the idea of his comedy, “The Drummer,” and, though there is no connection between the two, it is interesting to note that Wiltshire is the scene of another ghostly drummer story, that of the Dead Drummer of Salisbury Plain told in “The Ingoldsby Legends.”
Belville S. Penley.
Wiltshire Times and Trowbridge Advertiser, 30th April 1927.
https://archive.org/details/devilinbritainam00ashtrich/page/47/mode/1up
This page
https://salisburymuseum.wordpress.com/tag/witchcraft/
says the house was “Zouch Manor” which is no longer standing.
SU2344249172 according to https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=1538952&resourceID=19191
and on the 1880 map as “Zouch Farm.” If there’s anything now it’s more modern than the 17th century. It’s very close to the church we visited in North Tidworth.