May 1, 1897.] 



KNOWLEDGE. 



123 



Heywood'8 method of attacking the supposed witch was 

 evidently a survival of the earliest and most famous style 

 of superstitious incantation of the Anglo-Saxons, called 

 "stacung" (or sticking), which consisted in sticking spikes, 

 pins, or thorns into the detested person, with the expression 

 of a wish that the wounded part might mortify or wither 

 away. In most parts of England where a belief in witch- 

 craft has existed, this has been the form which the testing 

 has taken, though in some instances, as Sir Walter Scott 

 states, clay images of the detested person were made and 

 stuck over with pins or spikes. 



The year 1875 was quite a witch year in the Vale of the 

 Red Horse. All the little lonely villages, clustering there 

 in silence and suspicion, were bitten by the craze for witch 

 finding. Whether Long Compton started the cry or not 

 cannot well be determined, but it passed mysteriously from 

 village to village and made a very sad time for ancient 

 dames. One such suffered at the village of Tysoe, a short 

 distance from Long Compton. She was reputed by her 

 neighbours to be a witch, so much so that some people 

 came over from Brailes, an adjacent village, and, taking 

 her unawares, scored her hand with a corking pin, in 

 order, as they said, to nullify the effects of the evil eye she 

 had cast upon them. 



To draw blood was always the favourite method of deal- 

 ing with supposed witches. That there were persons 

 thought to possess the power of witchcraft in Warwickshire, 

 and that blood was drawn from them, three hundred years 

 ago, may be assumed from the fact that Shakespeare 

 alludes to the practice in the first part of " King Henry 

 VI." when he makes Talbot say to La rucelle : 



"Blood will I draw on thee : thou art a witch ; 

 And straightway give thy soul to him thou servest." 



It is an interesting though painful fact, therefore, to 

 notice that blood should have been drawn from a supposed 

 witch in Shakespeare's own neighbourhood so recently as 

 the year 1875. 



Superstition in Warwickshire has from a very early 

 period associated itself with a staunch belief in the 

 appearance of the "night coach." This is a form of 

 vision-seeing quite peculiar to woody districts, and similar 

 to the spectral apparition of " the boggart," which was 

 formerly asserted to be so often seen in the neighbourhood of 

 Meriden — anciently called the " Miry Den," because of its 

 swampy condition — which is seated in the thick portion of 

 the once famous Forest of Arden. 



A " night coach " is recorded to have nightly ridden over 

 the flats and hills in the district of the villages of Mickleton, 

 on the Gloucestershire border, and Ilmington, within the 

 boundary lines of " leafy Warwickshire." Many people 

 staunchly averred that they saw this phantom coach, and 

 even to this day the memory of it remains deeply rooted 

 in the minds of the old and solitary inhabitants, the 

 uncanny story having been told to them by their super- 

 stition-enthralled ancestors. This coach has been described 

 by those who professed to have seen it as a heavy family 

 coach, at that date — somewhere about 1780 — grown old- 

 fashioned, and drawn by six dark horses. Its course was 

 over the springy turf of the hills towards the Gloucester- 

 shire boundary of the county, whence it passed abruptly 

 over the brow of the steep hills into the deeps beneath, in 

 a manner which never could have been accomplished by 

 an earthly coach, drawn by six natural horses, and driven 

 by a natural coachman. I am sometimes disposed to think 

 that there may be traced some connection between this 

 " night coach " and the famous spectral six-in-hand of the 

 equally famous Elizabethan knight, One-handed Boughton, 

 of Lawford Hall, near Rugby, in the north-west district of 

 Warwickshire, as this coach appeared about the same date, 



and made its excursions during the nocturnal hours, which 

 was of course quite natural in a phantom coach. 



What the particular cause of the nightly racings ot 

 One-handed Boughton was, cannot precisely be determined ; 

 but that his spirit was by some means violently exercised, 

 and that men of light and leading firmly believed in the 

 apparition, may be assumed from the fact that several 

 Warwickshire gentlemen and clergymen met together one 

 night when One-handed Boughton was taking his nightly 

 ride, and by bell, and book, and prayer, succeeded in 

 catching his perturbed spirit, and enclosed it in a phial, 

 which they threw into a neighbouring marl pit filled with 

 water. 



As showing the grip which these old-time superstitions 

 have upon the mind of the Warwickshire rustic — though 

 I must confess that there is something mysterious and un- 

 explainable in this case of One-handed Boughton, and 

 am reminded of the speech Shakespeare puts into the 

 mouth of Hamlet : " There are more things in heaven 

 and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy " 

 — it may be of interest to note that in the early " seventies," 

 though the old hall at Lawford had long since been razed 

 to the ground, there was a revival of the belief in the 

 ghostly visitation of One-handed Boughton, and it exists 

 to this day in the vicinity of Rugby. 



One instance among several was afforded by a Mr. John 

 Watts, an old and respected inhabitant of Rugby, who 

 died about the year 1803, aged ninety-three. He was, it 

 is said, one day out walking with a friend in the neighbour- 

 hood honoured by the appearance of One-handed Boughton, 

 when the friend suddenly started, and, pointing to a 

 distance, cried, " There is One-handed Boughton ! " Mr. 

 Watts averred that he stared with all his might in the 

 direction indicated, but he could see notliing whatever. 



It is probably owing to the still leafy and undulating 

 condition of Warwickshire that so many of the current 

 superstitions have become connected with outdoor life. 

 There are strong beliefs in haunted houses, and it would 

 be strange if there were not in a country so rich in 

 historic mansions, each of which has its own particular 

 romance, and many of which have their own familiar 

 spirits ; but where the superstitious hold upon the peasant 

 mind is greater is in the vicinity of ancient fabrics whose 

 character is shadowed by some grim story that has come 

 down through the ages, where some dark deed of bloodshed 

 committed in the past has woven a cloud of superstition 

 and fear, which generally results in the so-called " appear- 

 ance " of a ghostly visitant to some of the rustics. 



Thus we find, and not unnaturally when the romance 

 and history of the place is recalled, that the spirit glamour 

 has settled down upon the ancient seat known as Guy's 

 Cliffe — one mile from Warwick by the Coventry road — 

 now the residence of Lord Algernon Percy, son of the 

 Duke of Northumberland ; and also over Blacklow 

 Hill, a slight eminence a little distance north-west of the 

 Cliffe. 



This very picturesque house, charmingly seen at the end 

 of a venerable avenue of Scotch firs, is, as every reader of 

 English and Warwickshire history is probably aware, 

 the scene in which is laid the romantic story of Guy, 

 Earl of Warwick, whose exploits in love and war form a 

 subject which, if mythical, as antiquarians declare, has 

 nevertheless developed into a belief which centuries have 

 not removed, and which no amount of antiquarian dis- 

 cussion can exorcise. Blacklow Hill is the historic spot 

 upon which the witty and unscrupulous Gaul, Piers Gaves- 

 ton. Earl of Cornwall, and favourite of Edward II., lost his 

 head at the instigation of Guy de Beauchamp, Earl of 

 Warwick— called by Gaveston "the Black Dog of Arden " — 



