LITTLECOTE
From the everyday respectable dulness of Hungerford itself we will pass to the exciting scandals which make up much of the story of Littlecote, that gloomy and romantic Tudor mansion, which has become famous (or infamous, if you will have it so) through the crimes and debaucheries of Will Darell. There are two ways of reaching Littlecote from the Bath Road. The most obvious way is by turning to the right when in the midst of Hungerford town; the other, which is the more rural, is by a lane a mile further down the road. Either will bring the traveller to that secluded spot in the course of three and a half miles.
It stands, that hoary pile, in a wide and well-wooded park, sheltered beneath the swelling Wiltshire downs and close beside the gentle Kennet, whose stream has been fruitful of trout ever since “trouts” (as our ancestors quaintly called them, in the plural) were angled for. Littlecote, as we now see it, was built by the Darells in the closing years of the fifteenth century, in whose early years it had passed from the Colston family by the marriage of the heiress of the Colstons to William Darell, son of Sir William Darell, of Sesay, in Yorkshire. A descendant of this emigrant from the North Riding, the “Wild Will Darell” of this blood-boltered history was born into an estate comprising an ancestral home and many thousands of acres in the counties of Wilts, Berks, and Hants, and might have been accounted fortunate had it not been for the rather more than trifling circumstances of an unhappy up-bringing which included a shameful treatment of himself and his mother by an unnatural father; the paternal extravagances which had alienated much of the property; the heavy charge made on the estate for the benefit of the mistress of his brother, who preceded him in the estate; and, finally, the crop of lawsuits into which he was plunged immediately upon succeeding to this singularly-encumbered patrimony. At this interval of time it has become quite impossible for serious historians to discriminate between the facts and the—fancies, shall we call them?—of the Wild Darell story. This difficulty does not arise from lack of patient research on the part of Darell commentators, who have ransacked the Record Office to prove that he was not a villain of the most lurid kind, or the industry of others who have searched among musty muniment chests to determine that he was. It would, considering the fact of the records in the Littlecote muniment room not having yet been explored for the benefit of these historic doubts, be rash indeed for any one to pronounce definitely for either of the very diverse views held of Darell as Villain, or Darell as Good Young Man.The story, which first became widely known through a footnote appended to Sir Walter Scott’s “Rokeby,” is of a midwife summoned from the village of Shefford, seven miles away, on a false pretence of attending Lady Knyvett, of Charlton, near by, and of her being blindfolded and led on horseback in the darkness of the night to quite another house, in one of whose stately rooms lay a mysterious masked lady for whom her services were required. The horrid legend then goes on to say that a tall, slender gentleman, a lowering and ferocious-looking man, “havinge uppon hym a goune of blacke velvett,” entered the room with some others, and, without a word, took the child from her arms and threw it upon a blazing fire in an ante-room, crushing it into the flaming logs with his boot-heel, so that it was presently consumed.
A prime horror, this, and rich in ferocity, mystery, and all the incertitude that comes of age and conflicting testimony. Masked lady, blindfolded nurse, burnt baby, taciturn and horrible stranger, what lurid figures are these! and how royally abused for the possession of an over-imaginative mind would be that novelist who should dare conceive incidents so romantic!
WILD DARELL
Scott gleaned his traditions from the weird legends current in the country-side. They had, when he first printed them, been the fireside gossip of that district for over two hundred years, and of course in that length of time had lost nothing in the repetition. For that reason we are asked nowadays to discredit them altogether. We cannot, however, do that, because there came to light some years ago the actual deposition to the facts made by the midwife, Mrs. Barnes of Shefford, taken down on her deathbed by a Mr. Bridges of Great Shefford, a magistrate, who was also a cousin of Darell, and would not, it may well be supposed, be inclined to spread any baseless gossip to the hurt of a family with which he was connected. This deposition tells the story as already narrated. It does not identify Darell or Littlecote, nor does it even hint the identity of any person or place. But the sinister discovery, some twenty years ago, at Longleat, of an original letter from Sir H. Knyvett, of Charlton, to Sir John Thynne, of Longleat, dated January 2, 1578/9 (about the time of the midwife’s confession), brings us to the original rumours pointing to Darell’s being the man and Littlecote the place.
LITTLECOTE.
DEATH OF DARELL
There was then residing at Longleat a Mr. Bonham, whose sister was well known to be living with Darell as his mistress, and this letter requests that “Mr. Bonham will inquire of his sister touching her usage at Will. Darell’s, the birth of her children, how many there were, and what became of them: for that the report of the murder of one of them was increasing foully, and would touch Will. Darell to the quick.” To that letter there is no reply, and it remains uncertain whether Darell was ever arraigned for murder and acquitted (as the story goes), or whether the rumours simply were never crystallized into a definite charge against him. The probability seems to be that he never was called upon to stand his trial. It is quite certain, however, that the legend of his being haunted along the roads by the apparition of a burning infant which startled his horse so that Wild Darell was thrown and killed is a more or less pleasing invention. Darell died quite peacefully in his bed, at Littlecote, eleven years after the midwife’s death, and was buried in the Darell Chapel at Ramsbury, where he was laid to rest, October 1st, 1589. Notwithstanding these well-ascertained facts, Darell is now, if we are to credit the stories of the country-side, an apparition himself, and superstitious rustics still fear to face the roads o’ nights because of a Burning Babe and a Spectral Horseman, who comes dashing down them at a terror-stricken gallop, mounted on a horse of coal-black hue, with a breath like steam and eyes like burning coals!
As for the elaborate embroideries added to the Wild Darell story from time to time, there are many. According to these ingenious fictions, the midwife counted the stairs of the strange house, and cut a piece out of the bed curtains, which she carried away. By these means; by finding the number of the stairs at Littlecote to tally with her counting, and by fitting her piece of tapestry to a hole in the curtains of a bed at Littlecote, we are told to believe the truth of the story. The singular thing, however, is that Mrs. Barnes made absolutely no mention of these things in her deposition. There remains, it is true, the fact already alluded to, that the magistrate who took down the woman’s statement was a connection of Darell’s, and might possibly have suppressed facts which could point to his relative being concerned in the affair. Another story is that upon Darell being arraigned (which in itself is uncertain), he made interest with Sir John Popham, the Chief Justice, to procure an acquittal.
THE HAUNTED CHAMBER.
Now it is quite certain that Popham did not become Chief Justice until 1592, when Darell had been in his grave nearly three years, and could not therefore have done so. He was, it is true, Attorney-General at the time of Darell’s supposed crime, and, had there been a trial, and had he been bribed, could possibly have procured a nolle prosequi.
But Darell certainly made over the reversion of Littlecote to Popham in 1586, and Popham took possession upon Darell’s decease. The story of this transaction being the bribe in question we owe to Aubrey, the county historian (or rather, the county gossip), who actually gives an account of the trial and says, “Sir John Popham gave sentence according to law, but being a great person and a favourite, he pronounced a noli prosequi.”
More to the point is the fact that Darell, in 1583, offered Lord Chancellor Bromley the then large sum of £5000 to be “his good friend.”
Those who are interested in the Darell story are equally divided as to his general character. One would have us believe that he was a Model Squire, who fished for trout, took an enthralling interest in his flower-garden, and if he did not always come home to tea (because tea not having at that period been introduced, it was impossible to do so), was content with a modest pint of claret at dinner, and spent the rest of the evening in reading what improving literature was to be had in the Elizabethan age; which, I fear, judging from the general character of the time, was of a somewhat meagre nature.
THE REAL DARELL
The real Darell was not quite like that picture. We already know that he had one mistress at Littlecote, and then there was Lady Anne Hungerford, an elderly charmer, whom by some means Wild Will had seduced from her husband, and whose letters, still preserved, to her “deare Dorrell” are not so improving as the recipient’s other reading. One learns from these choice communications that Lady Anne had been accused of murder, adultery, and trying to poison her husband; and, under the circumstances, it seems quite likely that all these charges were well-founded, even though she says that “luker and gaine makes many dissembling and hollow hearts” (which sounds like one of the admirable copy-book maxims of our youth), and that she anticipates being cleared from suspicion of these “vill and abomynabell practiscis.” Add to these hot-blooded intrigues the extravagances which, together with his litigious disposition, served to ruin his estate and to bring him into disfavour with his neighbours, and we obtain the genesis of all the ill-favoured legends of this picturesque figure of the Elizabethan era.
