Now! Then! A scholar must also pursue a modern scoundrel like Dugdale the demoniac

Excerpt

[Letter written in Hull to Zachary Taylor, rector of Croston, Lancashire]

Having been most of this month seeking antiquities in the country, I received your kind and obliging letter as soon as I got home, and am exceeding glad to understand your good resolution of not laying down the prosecution of the Surey cause, though your great and worthy studies otherwise might move you to the same.

I cannot but wonder sometimes at the fate of writers, just as this very business has called you from other weighty studies, which the vanity (as you are pleased to term it) of your fancy led you to think might have been of some service to the public, even so as it happened to me, none of all the scandalous lying pamphlets that the godly have published these many years awaked me so much as this pretended devil they’d conjured up, it being in my eyes like to do more mischief, not only amongst the mob, but also amongst others that are superficially learned, and that cannot penetrate into the depth of the design, so that I flung by my History and Antiquities of Hatfield, near Doncaster, my History and Antiquities of the famous city of Jerusalem from its first building unto this day, my Introduction to the excellent knowledge and study of Antiquities, my Origins of Nations and Languages, some almost finished, and took pen in hand to draw up something to quell this monster of the godly with, in such a form, and on such heads, as I have in my former letter mentioned unto you. But, as for my performance, I have neither had time nor opportunity nor those plenty of books that are requisite to make such an undertaking either perfect or indifferent, yet, upon the reception of your kind letter, I have begun to review and new-model the same, but what I shall do therewith I know not yet.

I am very glad of that challenge that you give the papist priests, and their brethren in iniquity, about the existence of corporeal possessions in these latter days, not doubting at all but that it may easily be proved that they are all ceased long ago, as I have briefly endeavoured to show from the fathers, counsels, and divines, of the Church of England.

But that I am so far off of your country, and has so much business on my hands, I would willingly make a journey on purpose to examine Dugdale, for to try to make him confess his knavery, and show how he did his tricks, and who set him on work. I humbly move this unto you to enquire further into him, by spies and underhand, and secret dealings and examinations, and to see to catch him in drink, and such like ways, as also after the same manner to pump his father and relations, who must necessarily be confederate with him.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations

Comment

Henry Fishwick summarises some of the pamphlet evidence:

In 1689 there was living at Surey (now known as Surey Barn), in the parish of Whalley, one Richard Dugdale, aged 19, who “was not very big nor small, but of middle size and stature.” He and his father were gardeners by trade, and though they professed to be Protestants they led “profane lives in a place where iniquity did so abound.” This boy was taken with all the symptoms of “possession,” and indeed the parents confessed (and the devil corroborated the statement) that at the last Whalley Rushbearing (25th June, 1688), when there was a great dancing and drinking bout, Richard saw a young woman with whom he wished to dance, but not being an adept in that art, he said he would give himself to the devil if he “might but excel others in dancing” – the only immediate result being that he and his father both got drunk; but the week afterwards, as he was on his way to Westby Hall, where he was going to work in the hay field, he saw an apparition of a man’s head, when he was taken with “unusual merriness,” and having in the evening again got drunk, the “bystanders concluded that the devil had some extraordinary power over him.” Afterwards came other symptoms, such as “jibs,” “foretelling of weather,” “dancing,” etc., etc. (Fishwick 1883).

Zachary Taylor sees Dugdale as a tool of the Catholic exorcists against the Nonconformist ones, and observes theatrics in his dress sense:

Another argument that R. was sometimes sensible in his pretended fits, and only played the knave, is the odd dresses that he affected to habit himself in: I will give you an account of one, which is thus. R. takes a large coarse blanket, and mantles himself in it; one of the corners he so orders, that as occasion is, with a nod he may drop it over his face, or with a toss back fling it like a monk’s cowl upon his shoulders; the opposite corner he reserves for a long train to trail after him as he frisked it about. In this fantastic garb, he traverseth [Surey] Barn, and comes pretty close up to whom he thought it would more powerfully affect, and gives a nod with his head, and flap goes a corner of the blanket on his face; then he gives another toss of it back again, stands upon his Tip toes, and stares and heaves, as he would fly away. Whisk about then he turns to another, so to a third, &c. Thus he keeps the people in fears, and expectation of what’s to be done… (Taylor 1697).

Taylor sourced via Roy Booth’s excellent piece on the subject (Booth 2011).

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Original

[Letter written in Hull to Zachary Taylor, rector of Croston, Lancashire]

Having been most of this month seeking antiquities in the country, I received your kind and obliging letter as soon as I got home, and am exceeding glad to understand your good resolution of not laying down the prosecution of the Surey cause, though your great and worthy studies otherwise might move you to the same.

I cannot but wonder sometimes at the fate of writers, just as this very business has called you from other weighty studies, which the vanity (as you are pleased to term it) of your fancy led you to think might have been of some service to the public, even so as it happened to me, none of all the scandalous lying pamphlets that the godly have published these many years awaked me so much as this pretended devil they’d conjured up, it being in my eyes like to do more mischief, not only amongst the mob, but also amongst others that are superficially learned, and that cannot penetrate into the depth of the design, so that I flung by my History and Antiquities of Hatfield, near Doncaster, my History and Antiquities of the famous city of Jerusalem from its first building unto this day, my Introduction to the excellent knowledge and study of Antiquities, my Origins of Nations and Languages, some almost finished, and took pen in hand to draw up something to quell this monster of the godly with, in such a form, and on such heads, as I have in my former letter mentioned unto you. But, as for my performance, I have neither had time nor opportunity nor those plenty of books that are requisite to make such an undertaking either perfect or indifferent, yet, upon the reception of your kind letter, I have begun to review and new-model the same, but what I shall do therewith I know not yet.

I am very glad of that challenge that you give the papist priests, and their brethren in iniquity, about the existence of corporeal possessions in these latter days, not doubting at all but that it may easily be proved that they are all ceased long ago, as I have briefly endeavoured to show from the fathers, counsels, and divines, of the Church of England.

But that I am so far off of your country, and has so much business on my hands, I would willingly make a journey on purpose to examine Dugdale, for to try to make him confess his knavery, and show how he did his tricks, and who set him on work. I humbly move this unto you to enquire further into him, by spies and underhand, and secret dealings and examinations, and to see to catch him in drink, and such like ways, as also after the same manner to pump his father and relations, who must necessarily be confederate with him.

498 words.