Baring-Gould Sabine
Devonshire Characters and Strange Events
PHILIPPA CARY AND ANNE EVANS
In the month of August, 1672, the wife of a dyer of Plymouth, one William Weeks, died after “many and frequent vomitings.” Shortly after that Mr. Weeks and his daughter were seized with the same symptoms – violent pains internally, cold sweats, faintings and vomitings; and in an engraving of the period relative to the tragic event about to be related, Mr. Weeks is shown in bed affected by this last symptom. At the outset the physician who attended them suspected poison, and he was confirmed in his suspicions when a neighbour who had entered the house found a pot in the kitchen with “crude arsenick” in it. Moreover, Mr. Weeks’s grand-daughter, child of a Mistress Pengelly, was affected in precisely the same manner.
Philippa Cary, the nurse, together with Anne Evans, the servant, first drew attention to themselves by counterfeiting sickness and vomiting, but the general prostration and agony were lacking in their case. The administration of emetics led to the recovery of the child and of Mr. Weeks, but Mistress Pengelly died in great agonies.
This “horrid accident” caused much commotion, and the nurse and the girl were arrested. The first brought before the mayor was Anne Evans, “apprentice to the said Mistress Weeks, a poor child, whose mother being dead, had been bound out in the Mayoralty of Mr. Peter Schaggel, Anno 1672, by the Churchwardens and overseers of Charles parish, being then about twelve or thirteen years old.”
The poor child Anne, on being questioned by the mayor, allowed that she bought “a pottle of girts” in the market, and that when they had been cooked she had noticed “some yellow thing in the girts,” and the family were afflicted by incessant tortures after they had partaken of it. There had been a dispute between Mrs. Weeks and the nurse, and the latter had asked Evans whether she knew where she could get some rat’s-bane. Cary admitted that there had been words between her and the old lady, and said that it arose over the frying of some pilchards. She added that Anne Evans was on bad terms with her mistress, and that the girl had threatened to run away and join “the mountebanks.”
The mayor plied one witness against the other. Next Evans said that as she was gathering herbs she found a packet of rat’s-bane, and on showing it to Cary the latter exclaimed that was just the very thing needed to “fit” Mrs. Weeks, and that a little dose of it would soon “make work.” Next the girl mentioned that Cary abused her for removing a great spider from some beer that Mrs. Weeks was about to drink. A spider was, according to popular belief, a concentration of deadly poison. Cary had said, “Thou shouldst have let it alone, thou Fool, and not have taken it out, but shouldst have squatted it amongst the beer.” When Cary was taxed with this, she denied having said any such thing, but asserted that Evans had threatened to do away with her mistress “on Saturday week was fortnight.”
The mayor continued his interrogations of each witness separately, playing the statements of one against the other. Then Evans improved her story by asserting that she saw Cary crush the rat’s-bane into fine powder between two tiles, and she added that when she asked the nurse what she was about Cary replied that she was making a medicine to “fit” the old woman.
Having placed the powder in a cloam dish, she added small beer, and allowed it to steep overnight. She then gave some of the poison to Anne to put in the “Old Woman’s Dish” of porridge, adding, “You shall see what sport we shall have with her to-morrow.”
But the amount then administered was small: it was designed to cause only preliminary discomfort. After that, Cary said, “We shall live so merry as the days are long.” She cautioned the girl to hold her tongue, and told her that if she did so nothing could come out; and she threatened that if Evans betrayed what had been done, she would lay all the blame upon her. In due time Mrs. Weeks asked for her porridge, and the girl put the arsenic into the bowl according to the instructions she had received from the nurse. Later on Cary drank from a jug; and after pouring in the poisoned liquor, administered it to Mr. Weeks, but he did not relish the taste of it and passed it on to the others to try. They all averred that it had a “keamy” taste, but, small though the quantity was that they drank, all who tasted it had convulsions. In some concern at seeing her master and mistress in such anguish, the girl affirmed that she had exclaimed, “Alas! nurse, what have you done that our master and mistress are so very ill?”
Cary replied, according to Anne’s statement, that “she had done God good service in it to rid her out of the way, and that she had done no sin in it.”
This confession was read over to Cary, who denied every particular.
Cary and the little girl – who, be it remembered, was only twelve or thirteen years of age – were put in prison, and were to appear at the next assizes. Cary and Evans found themselves “in the very suburbs of Hell,” for the local prison was no better than “a seminary of all vilainies, prophaneness and impieties.”
After months of waiting, the prisoners were sent to Exeter, where they were tried for their lives. They responded “with heavy hearts though with undejected countenances.” Sentence of death was pronounced against them both, but they petitioned to be transported.
The unfortunate little girl was sentenced “to be drawn on a hurdle to the place where she shall be executed, and there burnt to death.”
John Quicke was a Nonconformist minister, and he interested himself in the criminals. “Methinks,” said he, “the very sentence should have struck her dead; an emblem and lively picture of Hell’s torments. Drawn as if dragged by devils. Burnt alive, as if in the Lake of Fire and Brimstone already.”
The nurse, Philippa Cary, was ordered to hang till she was dead. “Too gentle a death,” wrote the harsh Quicke, “for such a prodigy of ungodliness. She pleads stiffly her innocence, disowns her guilt, takes no shame, her brow is brass, she is impudent and hath a whore’s forehead. If ever there were a daughter of Hell, this is one in her proper colours. No evidence shall convince her. ‘Confess,’ saith she, ‘then I shall hang indeed. I deny the fact, none saw, none knew it but the girl; it may be that vile person, my husband, hath a hand in it, but he is gone. Some will pity me, though none will believe me, none can help me.’” And now, according to Quicke, Satan helps Cary to “an expedient that may help her life.” She pleaded before the judge that she was in the family way. “If I must dye, let my child live.”
Thereupon the judge ordered a jury of matrons to be empanelled, but they found that the plea of Cary was false.
As Plymouth had been the scene of the murder, the judge had little difficulty in consenting to the petition of the relatives of Mrs. Weeks that the execution should take place there. “Provided that the magistrates of the towne, or Mr. Weeks, whose wife was by the malefactors above named poysoned, shall defray the extraordinary charges thereof, and shall undertake for the same before Easter Day, being Sunday next. The day of execution is to bee on Thursday in Easter weeke, but if you, the magistrate of the said towne, or Mr. Weeks, shall fail to undertake before Easter Day to defray the extraordinary charges thereof, then the execution on these malefactors is to be done at the common-place of execution for this Countie,” i.e. at Exeter.
The local authorities gladly undertook the arrangements for carrying out Lord Chief Justice North’s sentence, and for affording to the citizens of Plymouth an exciting scene, and for the domestic servants of that borough a moral warning.
Every endeavour was made to persuade Cary to confess, but she laid the crime upon the girl. Of all the ministers who strove to turn her to repentance, John Quicke, the Nonconformist, was the most importunate. He warned her that “she had sworn a bargain with the Devil for secrecy to her own destruction, that all would come out at last, as cunningly and closely as she did carry it before men and angels; and, said I, you are one of the most bloody women that ever came into gaol; you are guilty of two murders, one of your master, another of your mistress, and a third of having drawn in this poor girl like a Devil, as you are, to joyn with you to ruin them and herself also.” Quicke further assured her that he did “as verily believe she would be in Hell, unless there were a very wonderful change wrought upon her, as that old Murderer, her Father, the Devil, was.” Quicke was obviously not a man to move a sinner to repentance. His exhortation made her cry, but extorted no confession; and when Cary implored this sour and remorseless minister to have some little pity and indulgence towards her, he declined to tone his invectives till he knew that “her stony heart was riven and shivered in pieces and her bones broken under her hellish wickedness.”
Waiting without the cell door whilst this appalling denunciation was being delivered was “a crowd of vulgar persons,” all pressing and impatient to obtain admission. The gaolers derived not a little revenue by charging the inquisitive and curious with fees for admission to see criminals condemned to death, and they reaped a good harvest on this occasion.
During a subsequent visit, influenced by apparent relenting, Quicke assured the two criminals that it was quite as “easy going to Heaven from the stake and the gallows as if it was from their beds,” but then, they must confess their guilt. But Cary was not to be induced to admit anything. He was highly incensed that his words produced no effect, and he abused her roundly as “a brazen impudent hypocrite thus to dissemble with God and man”; and he warned her that, as she kept the devil’s counsel, to the devil she would go. He added that he saw no promise of a good result if he expended any more labour upon her. “Look to it, woman,” he shouted to her at parting, “that this do not make thy Hell hotter than ordinary.”
As the prisoners were conducted from Exeter on horseback, we are told that the nurse exchanged ribald and obscene jests with the spectators, and at the entrance to Plymouth the procession was met by thousands. Persons of every age and sex and quality rushed forth to the suburbs to see the arrival of the two unfortunates. Although, we are informed, many had “bowels of pity for the poor girl,” none “hath charity for the nurse.”
On being conducted to their cells, various ministers attended them; but crowds poured in, tipping the gaolers, to have a sight of the criminals, and the ministers of religion could effect nothing. The nurse remained resolute in denying her guilt, but the little girl admitted hers.
On the appointed day Philippa Cary and Anne Evans were escorted to the gallows erected on the heights of Prince Rock. “The streets were crowded, the Mayor, the Magistrates and Under Sheriff can hardly pass for the throng. The poor maid was drawn on the hurdle. The posture she lay in was on her left side, her face in her bosom, her Bible under her arm, seeming like one dead rather than alive. At length we came, though slowly, to the place of execution. Plimouth was then naked of inhabitants, the town was easy to be taken, and the houses to be plundered, if an enemie had been at hand to have done it. Catdowne, the Lambhay, the Citadel, and Catwater are pressed with a multitude of twenty thousand persons. But commanders, who have lived in wars and seen great armies, and are therefore the most competent judges in this case, estimate them at one-half. I write within compass. The maid, being nailed to the stake, and the iron hoop about her, and the nurse mounted on the ladder, she desires that the Relater may pray with her.” With passionate invocations to the Deity, Mr. Quicke complied; the crowd were invited at the close to join in the singing of a psalm, and in this part of the ceremony the clear childish voice of Anne Evans was heard to rise like that of the lark. Then Quicke laboured through extemporary prayers of inordinate length, smiting at the flinty heart of Cary, hitting right and left at impenitent sinners in those around. It has been said that as a front rank of soldiers kneels to shoot, so do certain divines in their prayers aim, not at God, but at those who hear them. It was so with Quicke. Then the poor sufferers were urged to avow their theological opinions with regard to certain dogmas of religion, not this time by Quicke, but by other ministers.
The rope was now drawn close round the child’s neck, “and the hangman would have set fire unto the furze before she was strangled; but some, more charitable and tender-hearted, cryed to him to take away the block from under her feet, which having been done, she soon fell down and expired in a trice.”
The executioner could cause neither powder, wood nor fuel to catch fire till the girl had been dead a quarter of an hour; and then, as the flames kindled, the wind blew the smoke into the face of the nurse, “as if God had spoken to her; ‘the smoke of My Fury and Flames of My Fiery Vengeance are now riding upon the wings of the wind towards thee.’”
For two hours Cary was compelled to remain and watch the death and burning of the little girl, and again attempts were made to wring a confession from her. Such she steadily and persistently put from her. When the word went forth to dispatch her, the executioner could not be found. He had run off with the halter under the cliffs; and, on being found, was carried by the exploring party to the scene and cast dead-drunk at the foot of the gallows, there to sleep off his intoxication, whilst the nurse was still pestered by the Nonconforming ministers to repent and confess.
But the last words she uttered before being swung into the air were: “Judge and revenge my cause, O God.” “A sure proof,” concluded Quicke, “that she went into the lake of brimstone and fire, there to be tormented for ever and ever.”
We are inclined to judge otherwise, and that she was guiltless of intent to poison the Weeks family. This was done by the child, in a fit of temper and resentment. Only after this had been done, did Cary find it out, and, frightened for the consequences, simulated sickness and cramps, lest she should be accused of the poisoning. As to Quicke’s statement that on the ride into Plymouth she used obscene and ribald jests, we do not believe a word of it. He was furious against her because she would not confess; and he was not with her on the ride to hear what her words were. He invented this, and put it into his narrative to prejudice the reader against her who was not amenable to his exhortations, and who accordingly galled his self-conceit.
The authorities for this tragic story are three: —
“Horrid News of a Barbarous Murder committed at Plimouth … 1676.”
“Hell Open’d, or the Infernal Sin of Murther Punished. Being a True Relation of the Poysoning of a whole Family in Plymouth … by J. Q. (John Quicke), Minister of the Gospel. London, 1676.”
“The Poysoners Rewarded, or the Most Barbarous of Murthers detected and Punished … London, 1687.”
Mr. Whitfeld has summed them up in his book, Plymouth and Devonport, in War and Peace. Plymouth, 1900.
JACK RATTENBURY
The coasts of Devon and Cornwall, north and south, are bold, with cliffs starting out of the sea, white near the Dorset frontier, then red, and then of limestone marble, or, on the north coast, of slate and schist. The rocks are riddled with caves, the highland is cleft by narrow valleys sawn through their mass by descending streams. The whole coast, north and south, lends itself to smuggling; and smuggling had been carried on as a profitable speculation till it ceased to pay, when heavy duties were removed, and when the coastguard became efficient.
The smugglers formerly ran their goods into the caves when the weather permitted, or the preventive men, nicknamed picaroons, were not on the look-out. They stowed away their goods in the caves, and gave notice to the farmers and gentry of the neighbourhood, all of whom were provided with numerous donkeys, which were forthwith sent down to the caches, and the kegs and bales were removed under cover of night or of storm. Few farmhouses and squires’ mansions were not also provided with hiding-places in which to store the kegs obtained from the free-traders. Only the week before writing this I was shown one such in the depth of a dense wood, at Sandridge Park on the Dart; externally it would have been taken for a natural mound or a tumulus. But there are a concealed door and a descent by a flight of steps into the subterranean cellar, that was carefully vaulted, and also carefully drained.
The other day I saw an old farmhouse in process of demolition in the parish of Altarnun, on the edge of the Bodmin Moors. The great hall chimney was of unusual bulk, bulky as such chimneys usually are; and when it was thrown down it revealed the explanation of this unwonted size. Behind the back of the hearth was a chamber fashioned in the thickness of the wall to which access might have been had at some time through a low walled-up doorway, that was concealed behind the kitchen dresser and plastered over. This door was so low that it could be passed through only on all fours.
Now the concealed chamber had also another way by which it could be entered, and this was through a hole in the floor of a bedroom above. A plank of the floor could be lifted, when an opening was disclosed by which any one might pass under the wall through a sort of door and down steps into this apartment, which was entirely without light. Of what use was this singular concealed chamber? There could be little question. It was a place in which formerly kegs of smuggled spirits and tobacco were hidden. The place lies some fourteen or fifteen miles from Boscastle, a dangerous little harbour on the North Cornish coast, and about a mile off the main road from London, by Exeter and Launceston, to Falmouth. The coach-travellers in old days consumed a good deal of spirits, and here in a tangle of lanes lay a little emporium always kept well supplied with a stock of spirits which had not paid duty, and whence the taverners along the road could derive the contraband liquor, with which they supplied the travellers. Between this emporium and the sea, the roads – parish roads – lie over wild moors or creep between high hedges of earth on which the traveller can step along when the lane below is converted into the bed of a stream, also on which the wary smuggler could stride, and keep a look-out whilst his laden mules and asses stumbled forward in the concealment of the deep-set lane.
A very noticeable feature of the Devon and Cornwall coasts is the trenched and banked-up paths from the little coves. By these paths the kegs and bales were removed under cover of night.
As an excuse for keeping droves of donkeys, it was pretended that the sea-sand and the kelp served as admirable dressing for the land; and no doubt so they did; the trains of asses sometimes came up laden with sacks of sand, but not infrequently with kegs of brandy.
Now a wary preventive man might watch too narrowly the proceedings of these trains of asses. Accordingly squires, yeomen, farmers alike set to work to cut deep ways in the face of the downs, along the slopes of the hills, and bank them up, so that whole caravans of laden beasts might travel up and down absolutely unseen from the sea and greatly screened from the land side.
Undoubtedly the sunken ways and high banks are a great protection against the weather. So they were represented to be – and no doubt greatly were the good folks commended for their consideration for the beasts and their drivers, in thus at great cost shutting them off from the violence of the gale. Nevertheless, it can hardly be doubted that concealment from the eye of the coastguard was sought by this means quite as much as, if not more than the sheltering the beasts of burden from the weather.
A few years ago, an old church-house in my own parish was demolished. The church-house was originally the place where the parishioners from a distance, in a country district, put up between the morning and afternoon services on the Sunday, and was used for “church ales,” etc. It was always a long building of two stories; that below served for the men, that above for the women, and each had its great fireplace. Here they ate and chattered between services, as already said, and here were served with ale by the sexton or clerk. In a great many cases these church-houses have been converted into taverns. Now this one in the writer’s parish had never been thus altered. When it was pulled down, it was found that the floor of large slate slabs in the lower room was undermined with hollows like graves, only of much larger dimensions – and these had served for the concealment of smuggled spirits. The clerk had, in fact, dug them out, and did a little trade on Sundays with selling contraband liquor from these stores.
The story is told of a certain baronet near Dartmouth, now deceased, who had a handsome house and park near the coast. The preventive men had long suspected that Sir Thomas had done more than wink at the proceedings of the receivers of smuggled goods. His park dipped in graceful undulations to the sea and to a lovely creek, in which was his boathouse. But they never had been able to establish the fact that he favoured the smugglers, and allowed them to use his grounds and outbuildings.
However, at last, one night a party of men with kegs on their shoulders were seen stealing through the park towards the mansion. They were observed also leaving without the kegs. Accordingly, next morning the officer in command called, together with several underlings. He apologized to the baronet for any inconvenience his visit might occasion – he was quite sure that Sir Thomas was ignorant of the use made of his park, his landing-place, even of his house – but there was evidence that “run” goods had been brought to the mansion the preceding night, and it was but the duty of the officer to point this out to Sir Thomas, and ask him to permit a search – which would be conducted with all the delicacy possible. The baronet, an exceedingly urbane man, promptly expressed his readiness to allow house, cellar, attic – every part of his house, and every outbuilding – unreservedly to be searched. He produced his keys. The cellar was, of course, the place where wine and spirits were most likely to be found – let that be explored first. He had a cellar-book, which he produced, and he would be glad if the officer would compare what he found below with his entries in the book. The search was made with some zest, for the Government officers had long looked on Sir Thomas with mistrust; and yet were somewhat disarmed by the frankness with which he met them. They ransacked the mansion from garret to cellar, and every part of the outbuildings, and found nothing. They had omitted to look into the family coach, which was full of rum kegs, so full that, to prevent the springs being broken or showing that the carriage was laden, the axle-trees were “trigged up” below with blocks of wood.
When a train of asses or mules conveyed contraband goods along a road, it was often customary to put stockings over the hoofs to deaden the sound of their steps.
One night many years ago, a friend of the writer – a parson on the north coast of Cornwall – was walking along a lane in his parish at night. It was near midnight. He had been to see, and had been sitting up with, a dying person.
As he came to a branch in the lane he saw a man there, and he called out “Good night.” He then stood still a moment, to consider which lane he should take. Both led to his rectory, but one was somewhat shorter than the other. The shorter was, however, stony and very wet. He chose the longer way, and turned to the right. Thirty years after he was speaking with a parishioner who was ill, when the man said to him suddenly: “Do you remember such and such a night, when you came to the Y? You had been with Nankevill, who was dying.”
“Yes, I do recall something about it.”
“Do you remember you said ‘Good night’ to me?”
“I remember that someone was there; I did not know it was you.”
“And you turned right instead of left?”
“I dare say.”
“If you had taken the left-hand road you would never have seen next morning.”
“Why so?”
“There was a large cargo of ‘run’ goods being transported that night – and you would have met it.”
“What of that?”
“What of that? You would have been chucked over the cliffs.”
“But how could they suppose I would peach?”
“Sir! They’d ha’ took good care you shouldn’t ha’ had the chance!”
The principal ports to which the smugglers ran were Cherbourg and Roscoff; but also to the Channel Islands. During the European War, and when Napoleon had formed, and forced on the humbled nations of Europe, his great scheme for the exclusion of English goods from all ports, our smugglers did a rare business in conveying prohibited English wares to France and returning with smuggled spirits to our shores, reaping a harvest both ways. If a revenue cutter hove in sight and gave chase, they sank their kegs, but with a small buoy above to indicate where they were, and afterwards they would return and “creep” for them with grappling irons. But the preventive officers were on the alert, and although they might find no contraband on the vessel they overhauled, yet the officers threw out their irons and searched the sea in the wake of the ship, and kept a sharp look-out for the buoys. If the contraband articles were brought ashore, and there was no opportunity to remove them at once, they were buried in the sand, to be exhumed when the coast was clear.
The smugglers had more enemies to contend with than the preventive men. As they were known to be daring and experienced sailors, they were in great request to man the navy, and every crib and den was searched for them that they might be impressed.
The life was hard, full of risks, and although these men sometimes made great hauls, yet they as often lost their cargoes and their vessels. They were very frequently in the pay of merchants in England, who provided them with their ships and bailed them out when they were arrested. Rarely did a smuggler realize a competence, he almost invariably ended his days in poverty. One of the most notorious of the Devon free-traders was Jack Rattenbury, who was commonly called “The Rob-Roy of the West.” He wrote his Memoirs when advanced in life, and when he had given up smuggling, not that the trade had lost its attraction for him, but because he suffered from gout, and he ended his days as a contractor for blue-lias lime for the harbour in course of erection at Sidmouth.
It will not be necessary to give the life of this man in full. It was divided into two periods – his career on a privateer and his career as a smuggler – spent partly in fishing, partly as a pilot, mainly in carrying on free trade in spirits, between Cherbourg, or the Channel Islands, and Devon. Naturally, Rattenbury speaks of himself and his comrades as all honourable men, it is the informers who are the spawn of hell. The record year by year of his exploits as a smuggler, presents little variety, and the same may be said of his deeds as a privateer. We shall therefore give but a few instances illustrative of his career in both epochs of his life.
John Rattenbury was born at Beer in the year 1778. Beer lies in a cleft of the chalk hills, and consists of one long street of cottages from the small harbour. His father was a shoemaker, but tired of his awl and leather apron, he cast both aside and went on board a man-of-war before John was born, and was never heard of more. It is possible that Mrs. Rattenbury’s tongue may have been the stimulating cause of his desertion of the last.
The mother of John, frugal and industrious, sold fish for her support and that of her child, and contrived to maintain herself and him without seeking parish relief. The boy naturally took to the water, as all the men of Beer were fishermen or smugglers, and at the age of nine he went in the boat with his uncle after fish, but happening one day when left in charge to lose the rudder of the row-boat, his uncle gave him the rope’s end so severely that the boy ran away and went as apprentice to a Brixham fisherman; but this man also beat and otherwise maltreated him, and again he ran away. As he could get no employment at Beer, he went to Bridport and engaged on board a vessel in the coasting trade. But he did not remain long with his master and returned to Beer, where he found his uncle entering men for privateering, and this fired John Rattenbury’s ambition and he volunteered.
“About the latter end of March, 1792, we proceeded on our first cruise off the Western Islands: and even now, notwithstanding the lapse of years, I can recall the triumph and exultation which rushed through my veins as I saw the shores of my native land recede, and the vast ocean opening before me.”
Instead of making prizes, the privateer and her crew were made a prize of and conveyed to Bordeaux, where the crew were detained as prisoners. John Rattenbury, however, contrived to make his escape to an American vessel lying in the harbour, on which, after detention for twelve months, he sailed to New York. There he entered on an American vessel bound for Copenhagen, and on reaching that place invested all the money he had earned and carried away with him from Bordeaux in fiddles and clothes. Then he sailed in another American vessel for Guernsey, where he profitably disposed of his fiddles and clothes. He had engaged with the captain for the whole voyage to New York, but when at Guernsey at his request the captain allowed him to return to England to visit his family, on passing his word that he would rejoin the ship within a specified time. Rattenbury returned to Beer, and broke his promise, which he regards as a mistake. He remained at home six months occupied in fishing, “but,” says he, “I found the employment very dull and tiresome after the roving life I had led; and as the smuggling trade was then plied very briskly in the neighbourhood, I determined to try my fortune in it.” Fortune in smuggling as in gambling favours beginners so as to lure them on. However, after a few months, Rattenbury had lapses into the paths of honesty. In one of these, soon after, he did one of the most brilliant achievements of his life. I will give it in his own words: —
