Grace Endicott hath had as remarkable history as any woman of her times, and slander, calumny and malice, as well as curiosity and wonder, having noised and mouthed her story until it hath been used as a scorn against the Nonconformists and the town of Bedford, one who was well acquainted with her here putteth forth the facts as they were known to him, of the which he can solemnly attest and sware the truth, by his faith in Christianity. After this preamble he now giveth the case, leaving the judgment thereof to the charity of the human heart and the Eye of God Almighty, only adding for himself that never was there a stranger instance of the dealings of Heaven and Hell with man and woman.

Mrs. Endicott was born at Edworth, in the county of Bedford, in the year 1652, being the period of the high glory of our late the Lord Protector.

Her family was of the yeomanry and of considerable substance; she early lost her mother and had but one sister, younger than herself.

Her father being a pious man, she was brought up to walk in the ways of righteousness, and was well educated beside in the accomplishments of her sex; and she became a hopeful sprightly maiden, full of winning graces, so that she drew unto her many likely swains, yet would have none of them, being contented enough in her present situation.

In the year 1672, Mrs. Endicott being then twenty years of age and her sister married into a house of her own rank, her father left his farm in charge of a steward and bought a residence in Bedford, where he came to live with this remaining daughter.

Here Mrs. Endicott, by reason of her personal endowment and handsome fortune promised, found herself in the midst of much courtship and flush of friendship from the better sort and received many a treat and compliment; in fine she began to lead a life of uselessness and vanity and to lose pleasure in everything but the gauds of the world.

Full often have I seen her setting forth in a little chariot with pearls on her head and a marvel of silk and braid about her person and a coat on her back of sable fur that would have brought a copyhold.

And many of those who watched this maiden thought the Father of Darkness had set some springe to catch her soul, so different was she from the meekness of her tender years, and this was a curious thing withal, for her people had ever leant to Puritan doctrine, and during the civil war had stood for the Godly side. And those who thus made talk of the lightness of Mrs. Endicott’s behaviour soon found a cause for it in the person of Gilbert Farry, who was an attorney of the place.

Now this Farry, for divers reasons, was neither loved nor liked; the main argument against him being that he and his family were unknown in the neighbourhood where he had lived but a few years, and therefore he was, in a manner, a foreigner; nay, some held it that he was foreign indeed, and had false French or Italian blood in him, for his complexion was unnaturally dark and his temper sudden and gusty.

Though he had money enough, and indeed lived above his station, yet he never honestly proclaimed how he came by it nor openly spoke of his parents or former residence, and this closeness caused people to take up a dislike to him and predict no good of his end.

There was something strange in his dress, for he greatly affected outlandish colours of a brightness ill-befitting a Christian, and often when he went abroad there would be a set of boys of the baser sort calling after him, for he had the affliction of a limp that caused his garments to be the more noticeable; yet methinks it true that he overtopped the Bedford gallants in presence and speech, and the old wives said there would have been many a wench glad enough to take him, for there was nought definite against him and he never missed his church-going, though the malicious said it was but fear of the fine that sent him there.

Now it seemed that from the moment of their first meeting this Farry took no manner of heed of any woman but Mrs. Endicott, and she gave him no discouragements, and her father was friendly enough and clearly looked upon the young man as a suitor, and when wise folks shook their heads he would laugh and bid them wait till affairs were riper. Inasmuch as the whole town took notice of this courtship which went on in open freedom a wonderment began to grow that Farry, having screwed himself into the favour of the father, did not demand the hand of Mrs. Endicott.

And there was much pursing of lips and many a round declaration that Mr. Endicott would have done a wiser thing in lending his countenance to one of his own knowledge and county.

Now about this time, it being near Christmas, Mr. Endicott gave a ball, and the expectants said that his daughter’s betrothal would follow this feast, and using curiosity as a cloak for carnal inclinations many worthy folk went who would have served the Lord better by remaining by their own hearth.

The dance was continued till late, indeed when every one became much animated, for Mr. Endicott was open-handed with his meat and drink, and there was music of fiddles and a harp.

At midnight Mr. Farry led out Mrs. Endicott for some new fangled step from the court (and there were many wanted to hear how he came to know it and how he had found occasion to teach her), and they came down the room hand in hand, she in a pink taffeta with trimmings of silvered silks which had been bought in London and her hair trimmed and dressed like a city Madam at least.

So they came down the room, and all eyes were on them; they looked only at each other, and it was commonly averred afterwards that the look on the face of Mrs. Endicott was that of one whom earthly passion hurrieth forward to inevitable actions, maybe of folly or wickedness.

Still gazing at him, she changed hands in the centre of the room, and moving round for the first figure gave him her left.

Then of a sudden her radiant face withered; she cast an affrighted glance at her feet, recoiled like one who has stepped on a springe and with a shriek fell on the ground, passing into fit after fit with many frantic gestures and maniac words.

This thing did completely put an end to that festival, and was blazing matter for talk, for Mrs. Endicott lay ill for many weeks and gave for reason for her sudden disorder that she had had a vision of Hell.

Yea, she declared with floods of tears to all who came about her that Hell itself had opened at her feet, and she gave such details and spoke with such earnestness of the horrid spectacle of smoke and flame and the faces grinning up at her and the hands endeavouring to pull her down that there was none who dare entirely slight or discredit her tale lest they should be casting scorn on one of the Judgments of God; so all made agree to tell her that it was a forewarning brought on her by her careless life and she used all haste to make amends.

She sold all her gauds and fine things and gave the money to the needy; she came often to the prayers and devoted herself to household stuff as was beseeming one in her situation. No longer did she go prinking like an idle wanton lady, but went in a humble habit without adornment and took up thrifty ways and a sober conversation.

Nor would she have any manner of intercourse with Gilbert nor even speak of him; nay, he was of all others the creature she most hated to hear tell of, and though she could give no reason for the aversion she discovered yet she maintained it against her opposition.

Her father argued this matter with her with some heat, declaring that the young man deserved some kindness from her who had so lately encouraged him in a way that had made public comment; in short, being still close in friendship with Mr. Farry, Mr. Endicott made every endeavour to bring him again into his daughter’s favour, yet without success, for she was resolved in this and was by no means to be moved.

She gave as her reasons the horror she felt at the sneering irreverent way Mr. Farry had of talking of holy things and the general looseness and idleness of his life.

To such a height was her hatred against him now raised that when one day in springtide he did send her a wattle basket full of the first rose blooms she cast them from her with a shudder, and let them lie in the garden, where the sun sucked the life from them; yet was she commonly fond of flowers.

Yet did she have to suffer him about the house, for her father every day drew nearer with him in friendship, and even drew up a will leaving most of his goods to Mrs. Grace on condition of her marriage to this Farry.

At this time a wonderful man preached at the Baptist Chapel in Bedford; he had been a soldier in the Parliamentary Army, and of great profanity and wickedness, but having been marvellously converted he had taken to preach the pure Word of God, and there were a many went to listen to him, some to scoff, for he was unlettered to be talking of learned things, but many to pray, moved by the truth that was in him.

Now to hear this preacher, who began to be well known in these parts, went Grace Endicott, and ofttimes took her father and her sister and brother-in-law, for, as hath been told, the family leant to the Noncomformist views. After but a little while Mrs. Endicott became wrapt up in the spiritual life and an ardent convert to the preachings of this poor preacher, Mr. John Bunyan, whose doctrines filled her life with gladness and rejoicings.

Surely she was like a woman transformed, and took no delight save in the meetings at the Baptist Chapel, which were often enough broken by Mr. Bunyan being in Bedford Gaol, for the King had lately issued strong laws against the Nonconformists and had no mind to suffer them to worship in peace.

At first Mr. Endicott was much uplifted by these meetings, and inclined to turn from worldly things and to uphold his daughter in her devotions, but after a while Gilbert Farry worked on him again, and he went but seldom and his fervour died.

Yet truly he in no way interfered with his daughter, but allowed her her will in the matter, and though Farry screwed more and more into his confidence, yet Mrs. Endicott was unmolested in her devotions. About the year 1678 Mr. Endicott sold his house in Bedford and returned to his farm at Edworth, which was at some distance from the chapel where Mr. Bunyan preached.

Yet Mrs. Endicott was nothing daunted by difficulties of road or weather, and attended the meetings as regularly as any grave elder of them all.

Now this persistency of hers gave occasion for Gilbert Farry to influence her father’s mind in an evil fashion; it was not in nature, he said, for a woman young and excessively comely (and who had been addicted to gay things) to be so blinded, addicted and possessed by religious zeal as was Grace Endicott. He hinted that John Bunyan was a personable man and one who had not so long been reformed from the most carnal ways of the Devil; he related how the preacher and the maiden held long conversations, going to and from the chapel, and he spread these scandals until they were known to all Bedford. It happened that while things were in this pass, in the winter of this year ’78, Mr. Bunyan was appointed to preach and administer the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper at Gamlingay, which is some distance from Edworth.

Mrs. Endicott made her preparations to go, but when it came to asking the consent of her father it was angrily withheld.

Whereupon she fell into a great travail of mind and besought him with utter earnestness and piteous entreaties to permit her to attend this meeting, until he weakened before her importunities and gave his consent on the two conditions–that she did her household before she went and that she returned the same night at a godly hour.

On the Friday, therefore, Mrs. Endicott, having well looked to all her duties, left her home and went to her brother-in-law’s house, where she was to wait for a Baptist minister who was to escort her to Gamlingay.

Here she waited, but the hour became late and the minister did not come; then did Mrs. Endicott implore her relative to lend her a horse, but he had not one which was not at work, save only that on which he and his wife were riding to the meeting themselves.

Hearing this, Mrs. Endicott broke into a passion of despair and paced about the apartment in an extremity of anguish, and made such a plaint that even her own sister thought she showed an excess of sorrow. In the midst of this scene Mr. Bunyan himself came riding past, and Mrs. Endicott had him stopped and bid her brother-in law ask if the preacher would take her upon his pillion.

And down she came and stood on the doorstep to second this request.

“Will you take me, Mr. Bunyan,” she asked, “for my soul’s sake?”

And he was mute, for he was both loath and unwilling, for he knew the hard things said of him and her in Bedford town.

“It is for my soul,” says Mrs. Endicott again; and so he must be persuaded, and take her up behind him through the darkling lanes to Gamlingay.

And the chance was that they had not gone a mile before they passed the man Farry standing by the cross roads, who closely looked at them.

Mr. Bunyan did not salute him, not being of his acquaintance, and Mrs. Endicott stared at him with eyes that might have been of glass, so blank they were; thereupon Gilbert Farry went softly to Edworth and spoke to George Endicott, and said–

“I have seen your daughter riding pillion with John Bunyan to Gamlingay as if they were man and wife.”

Now whether or no she pictured Mr. Farry poisoning her father, Mrs. Endicott stayed to the end of the meeting and seemed wrapt in the ecstasy of worship and the joy of the moment.

Yet when the meeting was over her sorrows began again; Mr. Bunyan was riding another way, and there was no manner of means for her to get home. There was much delay and argument, and then she found a woman who had a cart and who would take her as far as her sister-in-law’s house, but from there was no convenience, yet mindful of her promise to her father Mrs. Endicott set out on the dark, miry and rough roads and so came to her home, spent with walking and affrighted with loneliness. Still it was not more than eleven of the clock, and it caused her amaze to see the windows dark and the door locked.

With trembling hands she knocked at the door, and her father came to an upper window with a candle in his hand and demanded who was there.

“It is I, father, come home wet and dirty,” replied Mrs. Endicott. “I pray you let me in.”

“Nay,” he answered. “Where you have been all the evening you may go all the night–and never do you cross my threshold until I have your promise not to see John Bunyan again.”

“That is to give up my soul’s life,” she said; “and I cannot.”

Thereupon he shut the window and took away the light.

Mrs. Endicott did plead desperately and tearfully but to no avail, for the bitter night winds took her words away and her father heard not.

Then, the storm coming up apace, she was fain to go into the barn, and there to lay her down on the straw till the morning.

When her father made his round he saw her there, with her clothes frozen on her and her eyes wet and wild.

“Good morrow, father,” she said. “I have had a dreary night, but it had been worse had not God sustained me.”

“No matter for that,” he answered; “here you stay until you promise never to frequent meetings again and never to speak to John Bunyan.”

Thereupon she hung upon him with vain tears and entreaties, but he would have none of it without her promise, and that she would in no wise give; so at length he flung her from him roughly, and she lay along a byre and wept for comfortlessness.

At noontide up came her brother-in-law, and made the endeavour to conclude a peace, but this was beyond his powers, for George Endicott was obdurate and his daughter would not give her promise; neither would she leave her father’s house, but dwelt without it for several days, living on such food as the pity of the servants gave her and sleeping on the ground or in the stalls of the horses.

And day by day came Gilbert Farry and tempted her with promises of love and comfort, but she would have none of it, but remained a beggar before her father’s door.

On the tenth day her father came to her and again demanded of her her promise; and if she gave it not, he added, she should no longer have even the shelter of his barns, but be cast out upon the high-road among the knaves and gipsies. Grace Endicott rose up from the straw and stood erect in her torn, soiled garments, with her hair unbound and her cheeks stained with weeping.

“Sir,” she made answer, “I stand between Good and Evil, and you would have me choose Evil. This is my immortal soul you ask for. For certainly I was in the power of the Devil from whom I was rescued by Mr. Bunyan, and if you deny me his converse, then I am no better than lost.”

But her father was in no way moved, and asked if she would promise or go upon the roads.

“Well and well again,” she said with much wildness, “I promise, but it is a lost soul you take into your house.”

Thereupon her father took her by the hand and led her in, and as she crossed the threshold she said again–

“It is a damned soul you bring home, my father.”

In the parlour was a feast spread and wine laid out and Gilbert Farry waiting, and he took her to him with no excuse and kissed her.

“So you have won,” she murmured, and made no resistance.

So for a month she lived quietly in her father’s house, until one day near on Christmas she met Mr. Bunyan in the market-place of Bedford town, and he was being taken to prison for his preaching, and there were many of his following going with him with words of encouragement and love. But Grace Endicott denied him, and looked as if she did not know his face, even asking one who stood by, “Who is that fellow?”

At this John Bunyan looked through the press and spoke to her, quoting scripture–

“Whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father which is in Heaven,” he said.

“I obey my father,” answered Mrs. Endicott.

“He that loveth father or mother before Me is not worthy of Me,” spake Mr. Bunyan, and went on his way to gaol.

Now all the rest of that day, being Tuesday, Mrs. Endicott was very silent; those among whom she moved marked it with concern. The next night she came running through the darkness to her sister’s house, all wild and beside herself, and implored them all to come home with her, which they did in a great fright.

Upon the way she told them that her father had fallen ill, and was now dying.

This they found true enough; George Endicott was crouching over a hastily lit fire and bemoaning his sins, and in little while without further speech he died. Mrs. Endicott was taken to her sister’s home on the way, it being then dawn, and they met Gilbert Farry, and told him Mr. Endicott was sudden dead.

“It is no more than I looked for,” said he; whereupon Mrs. Endicott shocked those with her in the cart by laughing, and his remark and her manner of taking it were remembered afterwards.

The end of this business was that the doctors made discovery that George Endicott had been poisoned by a drug given him in his ale; and a drug of this nature had been bought by Mrs. Endicott in Bedford a few hours after John Bunyan had spoken to her; this, together with the circumstances of her late dispute with her father, her being alone with him in the house, the suddenness of his illness and some broken words he had let drop in his last moments, was evidence enough, and Mrs. Endicott was arrested on the awful charge of murdering her father and lodged in Bedford Gaol, to the great scandal and confusion of all Nonconformists and damage to the cause of John Bunyan.

The trial is within the memory of all, and no account of it is here required. Mrs. Endicott defended herself with prudence and spirit and strove to cast the guilt on the man Farry, who was the principal witness against her; and, indeed, his known spite towards her, the fact that Mr. Endicott’s will was in his favour and the misty kind of character he bore gave her some handle, but since she could no wise explain the drug she had bought save lamely saying it was for cleaning tiles and that she knew not its deadly properties, the case looked ill against the woman. Nevertheless, her youth, her comeliness, her known piety and long sweet behaviour, the influence of her relatives and the feeling of the people pleaded for her, and there was no one who doubted that she would be acquitted when on the last day of her trial she startled the court by rising up and declaring herself guilty and a helpmate of the Devil from the moment she abjured John Bunyan in her father’s barn.

In fine she vowed herself a witch, and baring her arm showed them a purple hoof-print on the flesh that was known for the particular mark and sign of Hell. After this she refused to speak again either to her relatives or to the clergyman, and came forth to be hanged next day in a green tabinet gown with red ribbons. Not a word spoke she while being led through Bedford town, but was composed and seemed in a meditation.

With her own hands she tied down her skirts and put up her hair, and so without a prayer or any plea for mercy was hanged in full sight of all Bedford.

There was afterwards found in her gown a paper which was taken possession of by me, being one of the clergy present, and here published by me that all the facts be known to all who care to read. As for Gilbert Farry, he came to the execution and stood close to the gallows, and when she was dead went westward, leaving his properties in his lodgings, nor was he ever seen or heard of again in Bedford.

And his belongings were principally books in pagan languages and gaudy clothes, which were burnt before the Town Hall, for there was a great distrust of this man, it being thought that he had brought to ruin the soul of Grace Endicott.

Here followeth the paper written by Mrs. Endicott the day before she died:–

Many who read this paper did say she was a mad woman, and many did say she was a witch, and Gilbert Farry the Devil himself, while others swore she was crazed with love for John Bunyan and was innocent and the old man died naturally (for, indeed, the doctors afterwards fell out about his having been poisoned), and yet others held she had lost her wits through the terror she had been in through denying her faith–and who shall make truth out of all this tangle?