212 Wild Darell of lAttlecote. 



In the above statement there are three ascertained errors. In 

 the first place, Darell was not a knight. In the next, he was never 

 married. Thirdly, Popham could not have given any judicial 

 sentence, for he was not made a Judge until three years after 

 Darell's decease. Finally, though in some cases a nolle prosequi 

 might perhaps be entered after verdict given, it is questionable 

 whether, in such a case as the one alleged, it could be procured after 

 sentence passed. Under any circumstances, it would be the act, not 

 of the presiding Judge, but of the Attorney General on the part 

 of the Crown. 



Such mistakes, though in themselves of a kind not Tinusual 

 among retailers of anecdotes, are sufficient to stamp Aubrey's 

 story as one of which he had no accurate knowledge, and which he 

 had taken no pains to verify. 



On the other hand, we are fully disposed to acquit him of inten- 

 tional misrepresentation, as well as of all attempt to exaggerate. 

 For in point of fact, the story as he tells it, is by far the most 

 simple, and least melo-dramatic, of all that have appeared upon 

 the subject. He is not responsible for the celebrated patch stitched 

 into the bed-curtain, nor for the escape of the supposed culprit from 

 the gallows, nor for the judgment upon him in breaking his neck 

 over a stile, nor for many other incidents engrafted upon the origi- 

 nal tale. This colouring has been the work of later artists, bor- 

 rowing their materials from local tradition or their own imagination, 

 certainly not from Aubrey. That he being a Wiltshire-man, living 

 at one time at no great distance from Littlecote, cotemporary with 

 Darell's nephew. Sir John, and by profession a county antiquary, 

 should not have dived into the facts of the story, so far at least as 

 to have avoided the palpable errors committed in his narrative, 

 would be matter of surprise, did we not recollect that John Aubrey 

 was after all, admitted, even by Sir Eichard Hoare, to have been 

 somewhat of an "eccentric historian." 



The correspondent to whom Sir Walter Scott was indebted for 

 that supply of the marvellous, out of which he wove the pretty 

 ballad in his poem of "Eokeby," was, as has always been under- 

 stood, Lord Webb Seymour of Monkton Farley. For that noble- 



