Cornish Characters and Strange EventsBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
Cornish Characters and Strange Events
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Cornwall (England : County) -- Biography; Cornwall (England : County) -- History; Legends -- England -- Cornwall (County)
A portrait of the inventor, by Opie the younger, is in the possession
of the family at Helston, as is also the picture of the wreck of the
_Anson_ sketched at the time by Mr. Trengrouse. For permission to
reproduce both I am indebted to the courtesy of the grandson of the
inventor.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] _Morning Leader_, 29th October, 1902.
[9] There is an engraving of it in the _Annual Report of the Society
of Arts_ for 1821. The life-preserving rocket was exhibited on the
Serpentine before the Duke of Clarence, afterwards King William IV, on
May 28th, 1819. People looked on as at some firework display, and
nothing came of it.
[10] Trengrouse's apparatus fitted into a case 4 ft. 3 in. long by 1
ft. 6 in. wide.
THE BOTATHAN GHOST
IN April, 1720, Daniel Defoe published his _History of the Life and
Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell_. In August a second edition was
called for, of which some copies included a pamphlet that had been
printed in June: "Mr. Campbell's Pacquet, for the Entertainment of
Gentlemen and Ladies," and this "Pacquet" contains "A Remarkable
Passage of an Apparition, related by the Rev. Dr. Ruddle, of
Launceston, in Cornwall, in the year 1665."
It has been assumed that this ghost story was a bit of invention of
the lively imagination of Defoe. Mrs. Bray in her _Trelawny of
Trelawne_ stated that the story could not be true, as no such a name
as Dingley, which was that of the ghost, was known in Launceston. As
it happened, James Dingley had been instituted to the vicarage of the
very parish of South Petherwin, in which the ghost appeared, in the
same reign in which the apparition occurred, and he assisted Ruddle in
his ministrations in Launceston, and the name occurs to this day in
the town and neighbourhood. In fact, Dingley, Pethebridge, and Dingley
are bankers there.
In the same heedless fashion Cyrus Redding wrote in 1842 that the
story was "told with so much simplicity of truth that it is difficult
to believe that the tale is not, as novel writers say, 'founded on
fact.'" And he goes on to state: "No clergyman of the name of Ruddle
had been incumbent in Launceston for two hundred years past, at least
in S. Mary's Church." Yet the monument of Parson Ruddle is in the
church, and he occupied the living from 1663 to his death in 1699.
[Illustration: "PARSON RUDALL"
_From a painting in the possession of the Rev. S. Baring Gould_]
Again, Samuel Drew, in his _History of Cornwall_, blunders as to the
locality, making the apparition appear in the parish of Little
Petherick, near Padstow.
Next Mr. Hawker, of Morwenstow, fabricated a "Diurnall" of Ruddle,
which adopted Drew's error, and by altering the date made the story as
given by him disagree with the facts as they stand upon record.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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