Natural history -- England -- Wiltshire; Wiltshire (England) -- History
In the gallery at Wilton hangs, under the picture of the first William
Earl of Pembroke, the picture of a little reddish picked-nose dog (none
of the prettiest) that his lordship loved. The dog starved himself
after his master’s death.
Dr. Ralph Bathurst, Dean of Wells, and one of the chaplains to King
Charles 1st, who is no superstitious man, protested to me that the
curing of the King’s evill by the touch of the King doth puzzle his
philosophie: for whether they were of the house of Yorke or Lancaster
it did. ’Tis true indeed there are prayers read at the touching, but
neither the King minds them nor the chaplains. Some confidently report
that James Duke of Monmouth did it.
Imposture.—Richard Heydock, M.D., quondam fellow of New College in
Oxford, was an ingenious and a learned person, but much against the
hierarchie of the Church of England. He had a device to gaine
proselytes, by preaching in his dreame; which was much noised abroad,
and talked of as a miracle. But King James 1st being at Salisbury went
to heare him. He observed that his harrangue was very methodicall, and
that he did but counterfeit a sleep. He surprised the doctor by drawing
his sword, and swearing, “God’s waunes, I will cut off his head”; at
which the doctor startled and pretended to awake; and so the cheat was
detected.
One M{istress} Katharine Waldron, a gentlewoman of good family, waited
on Sir Francis Seymor’s lady, of Marleborough. Shee pretended to be
bewitched by a certain woman, and had acquired such a strange habit
that she would endure exquisite torments, as to have pinnes thrust into
her flesh, nay under her nailes. These tricks of hers were about the
time when King James wrote his Demonologie. His Majesty being in these
parts, went to see her in one of her fitts. Shee lay on a bed, and the
King saw her endure the torments aforesayd. The room, as it is easily
to be believed, was full of company. His Majesty gave a sodain pluck to
her coates, and tos’t them over her head; which surprise made her
immediately start, and detected the cheate.
[Speaking of the trial of Aim Bodenham, who was executed at Salisbury
as a witch in 1653, Aubrey says:-] Mr. Anthony Ettrick, of the Middle
Temple, a very judicious gentleman, was a curious observer of the whole
triall, and was not satisfied. The crowd of spectators made such a
noise that the judge [Chief Baron Wild] could not heare the prisoner,
nor the prisoner the judge; but the words were handed from one to the
other by Mr. R. Chandler, and sometimes not truly reported. This
memorable triall was printed about 165-. 4to. [See full particulars in
Hatcher’s History of Salisbury, p. 418.—J. B.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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