328 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 287. 



says "is now become very scarce." The story, 

 as abridged in tlie title-page, is : 



" A Just Narrative of the Death of John Duncalf; who 

 being accused of stealing a Bible, cursed himself with the 

 most horrid Imprecations, wishing, if it were true, that 

 his Hands might rot off; which both his Hands and Legs 

 soon after did at King's Swinford in Stafifordshire, where 

 he died a Spectacle of Divine Justice to many Thousands 

 who came daily from all Parts of the Country during his 

 Confinement, out of Curiosity, to see him ; with an Ex- 

 tract from the Rev. Dr. Simon Ford's Sermon, preached 

 on that melancholy Occasion at Old Swinford in Wor- 

 cestershire." 



Duncalf stole the Bible about Jan. 6, 1676-7 ; 

 the dates of his cursing, and the beginning of his 

 sickness, are not given. He was found helpless 

 in a barn of Sir Walter Wroteseley of Parton Hall; 

 kept by the parish of Tettenhal till March 28, and 

 then removed by an order of the magistrates to 

 King's Swinford, where he was placed in the 

 house and under the care of John Bennet. His 

 disease is minutely described, and the conversa- 

 tions of clergymen and others reported : 



" Upon the 8th of May following, both his legs were 

 fallen off at the knees, which the poor man perceived not 

 until his keeper told him, and showed them to him, 

 holding them up in his hands ; and his right hand, hang- 

 ing only by some ligament, by a little touch of a knife 

 was taken off also. The other hand at the same time 

 being black as a shoe ; and not much unlike, in the fancy 

 of some, for roughness and hardness, to the outside of a 

 dried neat's-tongue. This hand hanged on a long time 

 afterwards by some such thing as the former, and might 

 ('tis possible) have continued in that manner until his 

 deatli, had he not desired his keeper to take away that as 

 the former, because it was troublesome to him." — P. 56. 



During the whole of the disease his appetite and 

 digestion were good. He hoped to recover ; and 

 some of the parishioners thought that he might, " if 

 physicians and surgeons were consulted;" but they 

 were not, as " he was judged by some incurable." 



The narratives are drawn up by Mr. J. Illing- 

 worth and Mr. .Jonathan Newey ; and their truth 

 is vouched by Dr. Simon Ford, the rector of Old 

 Swinford, and five residents in the neighbourhood. 

 To them and others, in the latter part of his ill- 

 ness, Duncalf freely confessed the imprecations 

 and other sins ; but an ugly passage suggests that 

 something like torture was used to obtain the first 

 confession. Up to April 20, it appears that he 

 was in a state of neglect and filth, nearly as bad 

 as that of our sick and wounded at Scutari : 



" Yet all that while (though it was rumoured in the 

 country) he would never confess his execrations and 

 wishes against himself till his keeper denied to ease him 

 of the vermin ... He then promised, that if his keeper 

 would cleanse him, he would acknowledge the whole 

 truth, which he did in the manner before related." — P. 54. 



There are two woodcuts in the rudest style of 

 art : in one, Duncalf is eating at a table in the 

 foreground, and stealing the Bible in the back. 

 In tJie other, he is on a bed with his legs quite, 

 and his right hand almost, separated from his bodj, 



as above described. The whole case is attested 

 in the best manner, and probably is not entirely 

 untrue. 



" The Penitent Murderer, being an exact Narrative of 

 the Life and Death of Nathaniel Butler, who, through 

 Grace, became a Convert, after he had most cruelly mur- 

 dered John Knight. Collected by Randolph Yearwood, 

 Chaplain to the Right Hon. the Lord Mayor of the City 

 of London : London, 1657, pp. 80." 



On August 6, 1657, Nathaniel Butler, that he 

 might rob the till, murdered his fellow-apprentice 

 John Knight; on the 9th he was apprehended, 

 and taken before the Lord Mayor ; on the 13th 

 he was tried and convicted at the Old Bailey ; and 

 on the 24th hanged in Cheapside. Up to his ap- 

 prehension, he had been notoriously wicked ; but 

 he confessed his crime before the Lord Mayor, 

 Mr. Alderman Tichborne, who, with his chaplain 

 and some other ministers, visited him in Newgate 

 and made him a pet criminal. He became imme- 

 diately and exultingly pious, to the entire satis- 

 faction of himself and his spiritual advisers, who 

 have in this book published minutes of their con- 

 versations with him. 



Mr. Thomas Case certifies the correctness of 

 Butler's opinions on original sin, " which indeed 

 was the thing which I came purposely to the 

 prison to inquire after" (§ 3.). His views of free 

 grace were right (§ 5.), and (§ 9.) " he was very 

 firm and fixed to the principles of the Protestant 

 religion, though he had but newly suckt them in.** 

 The latter observation is borne out by his dialogue 

 with a "friend that came to visit him" (xxvii.) ; 

 whom he asks, " Pray inform me what is this 

 Popish religion ? " And at his execution, when 

 the public grew impatient, and cut short his writ- 

 ten speech, which he was reading, he put it up 

 and commenced his extempore one, with " humbly 

 desiring the Lord Mayor to look after Popish 

 priests and Jesuits." 



Mr. Yeargood passed the greater part of the 

 night before Butler's execution with him. He re- 

 ports conversations, and says : 



" About five o'clock he fell into a rapture and extasie 

 of consolations as I never saw, nor (I believe) any of my 

 fellow-spectators : for he would shout for joy that the 

 Lord should look on such a poor vile creature as he was. 

 He often cried out and made a noise ; and indeed did not 

 know how to express and signifie fully enough his inward 

 sense of God's favour, saying . . ." 



What he said, I forbear to quote. We have had 

 similar cases in our time. Cook, who killed his 

 creditor to avoid payment, and was detected 

 burning the body piecemeal, was comforted by 

 ladies, and died very much at ease as to his pro- 

 spects. I do not know any older case than But- 

 ler's, but there probably are some, as Archbishop 

 Sancroft's Fur Prcedestinatus was published in 

 1651. 



