"JUNE 26, 1889.--Had a sitting at Planchette with Mrs. R. this morning. Planchette said there was a spirit there who thought it could draw if we wished it. We said we should be glad if he would try. Accordingly Planchette made a rude attempt at a hand and arm proceeding from an embattled wall and holding a sword. A second attempt made the subject clearer. Planchette said it was meant for a test. The spirit signed it 'J. G.' No connection of ours, he said. We gradually elicited that his name was John Gurwood, who was wounded in the Peninsula in 1810, and killed himself on Christmas Day, 1845. It was not the wound but the pen that did it. "JULY 5, 1889.--I made the foregoing memorandum the same day, having very little expectation that there would be any verification. "H. WEDGWOOD." Quoting again from Mrs. R.'s journal: "Friday, Sept. 27.--Mr. Wedgwood came, and we had two sittings--in the afternoon and evening. I think the same spirit wrote throughout, beginning without signature, but when asked the name, writing John Gurwood. The effort, at first incoherent, developed afterward into the following sentences: 'Sword--when I broke in, on the table with plan of fortress--belonged to my prisoner--I will tell you his name to-night. It was on the table when I broke in. He did not expect me. I took him unawares. He was in his room, looking at a plan, and the sword was on the table. Will try and let you know how I took the sword to-night.' "In the evening, after dinner: 'I fought my way in. His name was Banier--Banier--Banier. The sword was lying on a table by a written scheme of defence. Oh, my head! Banier had a plan written out for defence of the fortress. It was lying on the table, and his sword was by it.... Look! I have tried to tell you what you can verify.'" Mr. Wedgwood reports his verification as follows:-- "When I came to verify the messages of Planchette, I speedily found that Col. Gurwood, the editor of the duke's dispatches, led the forlorn hope at the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo in 1812 (note Planchette's error in date), and received a wound in his skull from a musket-ball, 'which affected him for the remainder of his life,' (_Annual Register_, 1845). In recognition of the bravery shown on that occasion, he received a grant of arms in 1812, registered in the College of Arms as having been passed 'upon the narrative that he (Capt. G.) had led the forlorn hope at Ciudad Rodrigo, and that after the storming of the fortress the Duke of Wellington presented him with the sword of the governor who had been taken prisoner by Capt. Gurwood.'" The services thus specified were symbolized in the crest, described in the "Book of Family Crests": "Out of a mural coronet, a castle ruined in the centre, and therefrom an arm in armor embowed, holding a cimeter."