108 THE BRIGHTON ROAD 



was arrested on the 11th, and on the 14th the bank 

 suspended payment. 



The failure of the bank was largely due to the 

 extravagance of the partners, Fauntleroy himself 

 living in fine style as a country gentleman ; but the 

 scandalous stories current at the time as to his mode 

 of life were quite disproved, while the partners were 

 clearly shown to have been entirely ignorant of the 

 state of their affairs, which acquits them of complicity, 

 though it does not redound to their credit as business 

 men. Fauntleroy readily admitted his guilt, and 

 added that he acted thus to prop up the long-standing 

 instability of the firm. He was tried at the Old Bailey 

 October 30th, 1824, sentenced to death, and executed 

 November 30th, in the presence of a crowd of 200,000 

 persons. He was famed among connoisseurs for the 

 excellence of his claret, and would never disclose its place 

 of origin. Friends who visited him in the condemned 

 cell begged him to confide in them, but he would never 

 do so, and when he died the secret died with him. 



No one has ever claimed acquaintance with the 

 ghost of Fauntleroy, with or without his rope ; but 

 the road to Hand Cross has long enjoyed — or been 

 afflicted with — the reputation of being haunted. The 

 Hand Cross ghost is, by all accounts, an extremely 

 eccentric, but harmless spook, with peculiar, notions 

 in the matter of clothes, and given, when the turnpike- 

 gate stood here, to monkey-tricks with bolts and bars, 

 whereby pikemen were not only scared, but were losers 

 of sundry tolls. Evidently that sprite was the way- 

 farers' friend. 



" Squire Powlett " is another famous phantom of 

 this forest-side, and is more terrifying, being headless, 

 and given to the hateful practice of springing up 

 behind the horseman who ventures this way when 

 night has fallen upon the glades, riding with him to- 

 the forest boundary. Motorists and cyclists, however, 

 do not seem to have been troubled. Possibly they 

 have a turn of speed quite beyond the powers of such 

 an old-fashioned spook. 



