Certain cases loom large in the history of the supernatural, especially in relation to the investigation of the supernatural. The 20th century provided the likes of the Enfield Poltergeist. Even Willington Mill in the 19th century offered an earlier opportunity. Yet the Tedworth Drummer offered an opportunity to explore a haunting in the 17th century.
Our investigator was Joseph Glanvill, a Somerset vicar who juggled his religious belief in ghosts and witches with a passion for science. He defended the reality of the supernatural and supported his defence with accounts of ghosts, witchcraft, and the devil. He even investigated such cases himself.
The Tedworth Drummer has become his most famous account…but what was it all about? Let’s find out!
The Back Story
Let’s go back to March 1661 in Tedworth, Wiltshire. John Mompesson was a magistrate, and he confiscated a drum from William Drury, who had been trying to busk for money around the town. Not only that, Drury tried to get money from a local constable using forged papers.
For some reason, someone took the drum to Mompesson’s house while he was in London. His domestic arrangements were fairly standard since he shared his home with his wife, three children, and his widowed mother.
The evening the drum arrived in the house, strange noises occur during the night. Mrs Mompesson put them down to burglars, especially since the house looked like it had been turned over. Yet no one entered the house and nothing went missing.
The Haunting Kicks Off
When Mompesson returned in April, Mrs Mompesson told him about the noises around the house. He also heard them three nights later, when knocking on the outer walls woke him up. When knocks came from inside the house, Mompesson seized his pistols and raced downstairs. The knocks came thick and fast on internal doors. Every time Mompesson threw the door open, the knocking moved to a different door. Finding no one downstairs, he eventually went back to bed. At that point, he heard the sound of drumming above the house (Clarke 2013: 73).
This went on for a few weeks, with the drumming starting once the family put out their bedroom lights. The sounds focused on the room where the drum lay. Mompesson even tried sleeping in the same room as the drum, yet no human arrived to play it.
Mrs Mompesson gave birth, and the sounds stopped altogether on the night of the birth. The family got three weeks of peace before the noises started up again.
The Haunting Focuses On The Children
On 5 November, the noises focused on the children’s room. Boards loosened and started rearing up. A servant pushed them back, only for the boards to rear up again. This happened twenty times until Mompesson scolded the servant for challenging the presence. Those present noted the distinct smell of sulphur in the room.
The local vicar came to pray in the room and once he finished his prayers, chairs danced around the room.
Who visits a haunted house?
You might have noticed I’ve referenced people being in the house. It wasn’t just the local vicar or servants. People visited the house to experience the phenomena for themselves.
At one point, someone called out to Satan, assuming the drummer conjured him to do the work around the house. He asked him to give them three knocks and nothing more. Three knocks respond. Another visitor remarked fairies might be making the sounds, and they were known for leaving money. The presence added the sound of jingling coins to its repertoire in response (Clarke 2013: 76).
On another occasion, a sound of purring came from the children’s bed while strangers saw nothing to make the sound. They also saw the bedclothes and children lifted out of the bed, and six men couldn’t hold them down. Whatever it was, it even emptied chamberpots into the beds, put a metal spike in Mr Mompesson’s bed, and an upright knife in his mother’s bed (Westwood 2005: 797).
Enter Joseph Glanvill
Joseph Glanvill came to visit in 1662 to find proof of the supernatural. He heard the scratching noises in the girls’ room but realised that a) there was no animal in the room and b) he could see the girls’ hands, so they couldn’t be responsible for the noise. He tried putting his hand down the back of the bed where the sound seemed to come from. It stopped until he withdrew his hand. He scratched the bed linen five, seven and nine times, and the presence scratched out the same numbers in response.
He even slept at the house. Surprisingly, he enjoyed a good night’s sleep, but in the morning, knocking outside his door woke him up. He asked who it was, to no response. Eventually, he cried, “In the name of God, who is it, and what would you have?” He finally got an answer: “Nothing with you” (Clarke 2013: 77).
Glanvill grew convinced a demon or spirit must be behind it all (Westwood 2005: 800). When he made preparations to leave, he found his horse lathered in sweat as if it had been running all night. It went lame after a mile or so and died two days later (Clarke 2013: 78). We’d recognise this from folklore as the horse having been ‘hag-ridden‘, something often associated with a witch or fairy having stolen the horse during the night.
Other Phenomena
On Christmas Eve 1661, the presence attacked Mompesson’s son on the way to the toilet. On Christmas Day, it buried a Bible in the ashes in the hearth.
In January 1662, servants heard singing in the chimney. Strange lights moved around the house, including a blue one. People heard the rustling of silk in empty corridors.
Someone spreads ashes on the floor to catch the footprints of the perpetrator. All they found were circles, scratches, and the imprint of a claw (Clarke 2013: 76).
Two Years of Disturbances
The phenomena continued for two years. In the meantime, Drury languished in prison in Gloucester, having been arrested for theft. In 1663, he asked one of his visitors about the drumming in Tedworth. He told his visitor “I have plagued him, and he shall never be quiet, till he hath made me satisfaction for taking away my drum” (Westwood 2005: 800). A judge sentenced Drury to transportation for theft, but he escaped from the barge and returned to Wiltshire.
Mompesson learned of Drury’s confession, and witchcraft ended up on the charge list after Drury’s re-arrest. The court didn’t convict him of witchcraft but he was again sentenced to transportation. This time, he finally went to America (Clarke 2013: 79).
Despite this, Mompesson looked into Drury’s past. He was a soldier for the Parliamentarians during the Civil War, but also spent time working for a vicar, where he read the vicar’s books of sorcery.
Yet still, visitors turned up to hear the sounds in Mompesson’s house. Entertaining such a crowd of guests is expensive. One visitor reported a rumour that two of the maids were behind the whole thing, trying to scare Mompesson’s mother (Clarke 2013: 79). The staff proved a source of contention, since Mompesson couldn’t chide them for a bad attitude; he simply couldn’t find new servants to replace them.
Not all visitors got to see the activity. Charles II sent a committee to investigate, and nothing happened while they were there. Sir Christopher Wren noticed that people only heard the knocks if a particular maid was in the next room. Wren also noted how thin the walls were (Westwood 2005: 800).
Samuel Pepys recorded a conversation with Lord Sandwich about the phantom drummer. As Lord Sandwich explained, the drummer could apparently copy tunes played to it, but one especially complex piece utterly confused it. He suggested a human was behind it after all (Clarke 2013: 80).
So was it a hoax?
A rumour spread that Mompesson admitted everything was a hoax to Charles II. The idea that it was fake appeared in Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft (1677), and Hogarth mocked it in an engraving after the Cock Lane Ghost incident of 1762.
Glanvill published Saducismus Triumphatus in 1668, and his account of the Tedworth Drummer made him famous. While people ridiculed Glanvill for his supernatural beliefs, Glanvill positioned himself as one presenting evidence of ghosts that were perceivable using the senses (Owens 2017: 61). In other words, sensory perception of ghosts provided evidence they existed.
He suffered attacks on his integrity and the 1681 edition added testimonials from Mompesson, attesting that it is all true. Glanvill died in 1682.
Even now, many assume Drury was somehow responsible. The knife in the bed was a warning sign from Drury’s associates, while the initial burglary that began the entire affair could have been an attempt to reclaim the drum.
That said, the drumming continued even after someone burned the drum in a field. Most activity was witnessed by multiple people, making it less likely that someone imagined what they saw. Grown men couldn’t hold down floating children. The dogs didn’t bark during the activity.
But if it was a hoax, who profited from it?
Mompesson couldn’t work because he hated leaving his family alone. While Drury might have earned some satisfaction from it, it seems unlikely his associates could keep it up for two years. Even if staff were behind it, it seems mind-boggling that no one uncovered the trickery for such a long period.
Interestingly, John Wesley’s eldest brother, Samuel, was at Oxford with Mompesson’s son. Samuel asked if it was a hoax, and Mompesson’s son replied no, it was true, but the visitors were getting too expensive to host (Davies 2009: 81).
True, it might have all been an elaborate hoax. It could have also been a genuine haunting. More intriguingly, it might have been an instance of fairy activity; look at the ability to copy sounds, the invisibility, the hag-riding of Glanvill’s horse, and the strange lights around the house. The metal spike and the knife complicate the fairy theory, both of which would presumably include iron. Still, there’s nothing to say a human didn’t capitalise on the weird activity to add their own flourishes.
As Owen Davies notes, “[t]he exposure of frauds was no proof that ghosts did not exist […] If as much time and effort was given to investigating ever instance of apparent spirit activity [as they did the Cock Lane Ghost] then a genuine case would eventually be confirmed beyond doubt” (2009: 125). While the Tedworth Drummer has never been, and probably never will be, confirmed beyond doubt, who knows if these is a case in future that could be?
What do you think? Do you think the Tedworth Drummer was a hoax?
References
Clarke, Roger (2013), A Natural History of Ghosts: 500 Years of Hunting for Proof, London: Penguin.
Davies, Owen (2007), The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts, London: Palgrave.
Owens, Susan (2017), The Ghost: A Cultural History, London: TATE.
Westwood, Jennifer and Simpson, Jacqueline (2005), The Lore of the Land: A Guide to England’s Legends, London: Penguin.
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