wanted to cut a stick in the hedge. He then threw the "packman" down, cut his throat, and left him for dead on the roadside.
Mr. T. M. Davenport, Clerk of the Peace for Oxfordshire, has kindly given me some particulars about the crime, from which it appears John Price was a lad of 18, and was tried at Oxford on March 2, 1785, for robbing and attempting to murder Thomas Knight, aged 16, on the turnpike road between Wheatley and Tetsworth. He was sentenced to be executed the following Monday, and his body to be hanged in chains on Milton Common.]
[Stanton Harcourt Ghost (v. F. L. vol. xiv. p. 67).—I have just come across a long letter from Pope to the Duke of Buckingham, written from Stanton Harcourt in 1718, giving an account of the old Manor House. It describes how the old steward "led us up the tower by dark winding stone steps, which landed us into several little rooms one above another. One of these was nailed up, and our guide whispered to us as a secret the occasion of it: it seems the course of this noble blood was a little interrupted about two centuries ago, by a freak of the Lady Frances, who was here taken in the fact with a neighbouring Prior, ever since which the room has been nailed up, and branded with the name of the Adultery-Chamber. The ghost of Lady Frances is supposed to walk there, and some prying maids of the family report that they have seen a lady in a farthingale through the keyhole; but this matter is hushed up, and the servants forbidden to talk of it."[1]]
I have many more notes of Oxfordshire folklore, both from Carter's collections and other sources, but here for the present my selection from them must end.
- ↑ Works of Alex. Pope; ed. by Elwin and Courthope. Vol. x. p. 152.
