10 s. VIIL DKC. 28, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
515
indicate, is entirely concerned in detail with
the Darrells and their connexions. A
perusal of this work, with its copious
.appendix of original documents, enables
the facts and fictions of the Littlecote
legend to be separated and distinguished.
A rehash of the story, with the place- name altered to " Middlecote," but with the personal names of " Darryll " and Pop- ham retained, appeared a few years ago under the title of ' The Haunted Hall ' in No. 36 of a now defunct periodical en- titled Complete Stories.
WILLIAM MCMXJRBAY.
The best version of the terrible events which gave Littlecote such notoriety is to be found in the notes to ' Rokeby ' >{No. LVIL). Scott had the legend from Lord Webb Seymour.
A few months ago I met with the follow- ing passage, which forms an interesting addition to Scott's notes :
" The deposition of the midwife, Mrs. Barns, taken on her death-bed by Mr. Bridges, of Great Shefford, Berks, was actually found within the present century. This corroborates the story of the crime in all essential particulars, and further states that the lady whom she attended was herself masked. The deposition also states that the messenger had persuaded her to accompany him by stating that he had been sent by Lady Knyvett, of Charlton House, with whom she was acquainted.
"About the same time the late Canon Jackson, the well-known Wiltshire antiquary, discovered a letter at Longleat, which practically completes the evidence. It was addressed to Sir John Thynne by Sir H. Knyvett, of Charlton, under date Janu- -ary 2, 1578, and concerns a Mr. Bonham, then employed at Longleat, whose sister was DareH's mistress at Littlecote. The writer 'desires that Mr. Bonham will inquire of his sister concerning 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.' Bradley, 'Round about Wiltshire,' p. 72.
The murder, therefore, took place in 1577 ; and the reversion to Sir John Popham fell in on Darrell's death about ten years later.
Macaulay's characteristic reference to Littlecote is well known :
" A manor house renowned down to our own
times, not more on account of its venerable archi- tecture and furniture than on account of a horrible and mysterious crime which was perpetrated there in the days of the Tudors." ' History of England,' chap. ix. (Albany ed., vol. iii. p. 154).
The " venerable architecture and furni- ture " show to advantage in one of Nash's beautiful lithographs ( ' Mansions of England in the Olden Time,' Second Series, plate 3). The leathern jerkins mentioned by Lord
Webb Seymour as having been worn by the
retainers of the Darrells are displayed upon
the walls ; and a gallant company of ladies
and gentlemen are represented playing at
shuffleboard. Illustrations of the mansion
and the haunted chamber are also given in
' Coaching Days and Coaching Ways.'
Robert Chambers ('Book of Days,' ii. 554) narrates similar stories. I remember read- ing in a newspaper early in 1901 an account of a mysterious murder which had just occurred in Brittany, in;which many of the details of the Littlecote crime were repeated. B. L. MOBETON.
AMERICAN MAGAZINE CONDUCTED BY FAC- TORY WORKERS (10 S. vii. 469 ; viii. 354). There has fallen in my way a little book called A New-England Girlhood,' from which may be gathered a good deal of in- formation about The Lowell Offering. Its author was Miss Lucy Larcom, who in her teens was herself a millgirl and a constant contributor to the Offering, and in maturer life was widely known as a literary worker of pleasant ability.
The rumour that the magazine was not wholly written by the girls themselves she calls " almost too foolish to contradict," and she says that although for its first two years it was edited " by a gentleman of acknow- ledged literary ability," the later editors were mill-workers, one being the daughter of a clergyman who had received an excel- lent education, and another a very original young woman, who, while she was working at Lowell, wrote novels that were published by the Harpers.
To understand what seems incongruous to Civis, it is needful to consider the conditions of both American life in general and of mill-life in Lowell in the forties of the last century. The country everywhere was seething with impulses toward both mental and material progress, and in Lowell, where the operatives were guarded with almost paternal care, and as yet there were practic- ally no foreign women to compete in such work with the native-born, the girls, drawn by the new enterprise, with its alluring opportunity for earning money, came very many of them from the best middle-class homes of New England, the daughters of farmers and tradesmen or of professional men of small means. Not only had they inherited the vigour and capability of their pioneer ancestors, but they came of a people who were everywhere readers of good books, so that to a certain degree what we may call a literary atmosphere was familiar to
