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Reclaiming Ghosts in 1690s England
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
On Wednesday 1 June 1692, a young man, about fifteen years of age, went to his bed. He had no sooner lain down than he heard ‘a Hand sweeping on the wall’. Then it came ‘with a rushing noise on his beds-head’ and ‘stroaked him over the face twice very gently’. Opening his eyes he saw before him ‘an apparition of a woman cloathed in black apparel’. Following this eerie encounter, other members of the family claimed to have seen the apparition ‘in the same room with a lighted candle’. Perplexed by these unexplained visits the mistress of this ‘Civiliz’d Family’ wrote to the editors of the bi-weekly periodical the Athenian Mercury desiring to know ‘what should be the occasion of the disturbance’ and ‘whether it be advisable to ask the question of the apparition’. Samuel Wesley (father of John), Church of England minister and co-editor of the Athenian Mercury, advised the woman to have a chat with the ghost, to find out its purpose and to discover how it might be satisfied.
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References
1 Athenian Mercury, no. 28, Saturday 2 July (1692), 2.
2 Although individual editorial responses were anonymous, questions relating to religion were most likely to be answered by Samuel Wesley.
3 Marshall, Peter, Beliefs and the Dead in Reformation England (Oxford, 2002), 254 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 701–24; Finucane, R. C., Appearances of the Dead: a Cultural History of Ghosts (London, 1982), 117–50 Google Scholar.
5 Athenian Mercury, no. 29, vol. 1 (1691), 1; no. 28, vol. 1 (1691), 1; no. 7, vol. 2 (1691), 2; no. 28, vol. 4 (1691), 2.
6 Athenian Mercury, no. 10, vol. 4, Saturday 31 October (1691), 1.
7 Fear of these heresies was evidenced by a series of measures against nonconformity in this period. See Philip C. Almond, Heaven and Hell in Enlightenment England (Cambridge, 1994), 40–3, and John Spurr, ‘Religion in Restoration England’, in Lionel K. J. Glassey, ed., The Reigns of Charles II and James VII & II (Basingstoke, 1997), 92–4.
8 Richard Baxter, The Certainty of the World of Spirits fully Evinced (London, 1691), 17.
9 Ibid., 1.
10 Athenian Mercury, no. 28, vol. 7, Saturday 2 July (1692), 2.
11 Athenian Mercury, no. 10, vol. 4, Saturday 31 October (1691), 1.
12 Marshall, Beliefs and the Dead, 128.
13 The Athenian Oracle, vol. IV (1703–10), 288.
14 Athenian Mercury, no. 7, vol. 2 (1691), 1; no. 25, vol. 1 (1691), 2; no. 20, vol. 1 (1691), 1.
15 Almond, Heaven and Hell, 156; D. P. Walker, The Decline of Hell: Seventeenth-Century Discussions of Eternal Torment (Chicago, IL, 1964), 9, 108.
16 Athenian Mercury, no. 10, vol. 4, Saturday 31 October (1691), 1.
17 Ibid.
18 Baxter, World of Spirits, 3–4.
19 Ibid., 23.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid., 25.
22 Ibid., 60.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid., 88.
25 Ibid., 147.
26 Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713), ‘A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm to My Lord *****’, in Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, ed. Lawrence E. Klein (Cambridge, 1999), 5.
27 A Narrative of the Demon of Spraiton (London, 1683); The Wonderful and Strange Apparition and Ghost of Edward Ashley (London, 1712).
28 Spurr,’Religion’, 113.
29 Ibid., 112. For ghost story in Cambridge, see The Diary of Abraham De La Pryme, the Yorkshire Antiquary, ed. Jackson, Charles, Surtees Society 54 (Durham, 1870), 39–42 Google Scholar.
30 A true relation of the dreadful ghost appearing to one John Dyer (London, 1691).
31 Athenian Mercury, no. 26 (1692).