48 The Littlecote Legend. 



no individual by name, nor does it specify the house in which the 

 transaction occurred. Indeed Mr. Long argues it to be 'incredible' 

 that the better part of the night should have been spent in convey- 

 ing the old woman the six miles which alone separate Shefford from 

 Littlecote, But surely nothing would be more likely than that 

 the men who fetched her should have been directed to carry her 

 about by a long circuitous route, on purpose to deceive her as to 

 the place she was taken to. As to the river she crossed and 

 supposed it might be the Thames, it was probably the Kennet at 

 Hungerford, which is there almost as broad as the Thames. She 

 may even have been taken round by Newbury, and this would 

 lead her past Donington Park, which she says she thought she 

 recognized. 



Again the deposition has no date. But upon this point Mr. 

 Long, I think, labours under a mistaken impression, which inter- 

 feres with the view he would otherwise, perhaps, take of the whole 

 matter. He seems to think that to implicate Darell as the perpe- 

 trator of the crime, it must have occurred within a few months 

 before his death. Now as that was in 1589, if the deposition is 

 to be supposed to bear nearly the same date as the letter, viz. 

 1578, eleven years previous, " the whole tradition " he says, as 

 regards Darell, " is scattered to the winds," (p. 391 vol. vi.) But 

 there is in fact no authority for supposing any close connection in 

 time of the imputed crime with the death of the perpetrator. 

 Aubrey says nothing of the kind. And if among the traditional 

 versions of the story picked up by Lord Webb Seymour or others 

 in the neighbourhood, or still current there, some may, to heighten 

 its horror, have related that the violent death of Darell closely 

 followed his crime, this may be supposed an error, without the 

 least impeachment of the main facts of the narrative. 



I may here mention another of the points of the story which 

 Mr. Long characterises as " preposterous " (p. 395 vol. vi.) and 

 therefore rendering the whole incredible ; but only because he 

 mistakes altogether the meaning of the phrase employed in the 

 deposition of the midwife, — " viz. that if the lady was safely 

 delivered, she, the midwife, was to be well rewarded, whereas if 



