LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 34, 9 July 1874, Page 4

LITERATURE.

SPIRITED AWAY,

(From “All the Year Round,” Concluded. John, Joan, and Richard were tried at the next assizes: first, for stealing, in J 059, a hundred and forty pounds out of Harrison’s dwelling-house ; next, for murder. To the first they pleaded not guilty ; “ but, some one whispering behind, ttiey soon after pleaded guilty, and were pardoned by the Act of Oblivion (framed after his sacred Majesty’s restoration for far other purposes.) They that prompted them were probably unwilling to lose time and trouble the Court with their trial, in regard the Act of Oblivion pardoned them. Nevertheless, afterwards, and at their deaths, they earnestly denied they knew anything about this robbery.” The judge could not try them on the second count, because the body had not been found ; so they were kept in prison, John persisting in his story, and adding that his mother and brother had tried to poison him in jail, and that he durst neither eat nor drink with them.

At the next assizes, in the spring of 1 CGI, the judge was loss scrupulous, and the three were tried for murder. All pleaded not guilty, and when John’s confession was proved by the J.P. and several witnesses, he replied that he was then mad and knew not what ho said. Richard further averred that his brother had accused others, as the tinker and the squire’s serving man ; but these were not questioned, and the jury found all three guilty. Then followed one of the most shocking outrages on justice which English law has ever committed. On Broadway Hill, in the sight of Carnpden, the mother was first hanged, •* being reputed a witch, and to have so bewitched her sous they could confers nothing while she lived.” Then Richard with his foot on the ladder, once more professed his innocence, and that ho know absolutely nothing of Harrison’s death or what was become of him, and with great earnestness begged his brother, to say what he knew about him. But John, “ with a surly and dogged carriage, told the people he was not obliged to confess to them.” At last, however, Richard having been hanged, be declared be knew nothing about what had happened to his master ; “ butby-and-by perhaps,” he said, “ it may be found out.” And so it was ; for, in 1663, Sir Thomas Overbury, J.P. of Burton, in Gloucestershire (what relation of the Sir T. Overbury so mysteriously murdered in the reign of James I. we cannot tell) received a letter from old William Harrison himself, telling how on that night, of the 16th August, in the narrow passage amongst Ebrington furzes (the good old law of Richard 11., that there should be fifty feet plain and bare on each side of the king’s highway, seems to have been become obsolete) a horseman met him and called out, ‘ Art thou there?’ ‘I, fearing that he would have rid over me,’ said Harrison, * struck his horse over the nose, whereupon he struck mo with his sword and ran it into my side, while another came behind me and then another, and hoisting mo up behind one of them, fastening my wrists round his body with something that had a spring lock, and gave a snap as they put it on.’ They then put a lot of money into his pocket, why, is not explained, and carry him to the sea-side at Deal, keeping him alive, wounded and bruised as he is, with broth and strong waters. One Wrcnshaw then takes him on board a ship, there being some talk between Wrenshaw and the men about seven pounds. On shipboard he remains six weeks, and gets pretty well of his injuries. He finds plenty on board “in the same condition as himself but when the captain comes round one day and says he has spied three Turkish cruisers, they all, captives as they are, volunteer to fight in defence of the ship. “No ; keep you close, says the captain, and I’ll deal with them well enough.” He soon calls them on deck, and they see two Turkish ships close by, into one of which he and others arc put, and after various sufferings at sea and on shore are brought out for sale. Each being asked bis trade or calling, Harrison says he has some skill in physic, and is handed over to “ a grave physician of 87 years of age, who lived near Smyrna, but bad been in England, and knew Crowland in Lincolnshire, which he preferred before all other

places in England. . . . He employed me to keep his still-house, and gave me a silver bowl, double gilt, to drink in. . . . once he set me to gather cotton wool, which I not doing to his mind, he struck mo down to the ground, and drew his stiletto to stab me, but I, holding up my hands to him, he gave a stamp, and turned from me.” After a year and three quarters, the old Turk calls him, “ as he was used by the name of Boll,” (query Bull), and says : “ I am going to die, and you must shift for yourself.” As soon as he is dead Harrison goes down a day’s journey to the nearest port, and finds no English ship, but a ship of Hamburgh, bound for Portugal in three or four days. The Hamburghers are afraid to take him on board, lest the searchers should find him, and so their goods and and lives should be forfeit. At last one of them, who had been- “ very stiff in his denial, at the sight of the bowl is put to a pause,” and agrees, in exchange for it, to let him lie down in the keel, covering him with boards and such like. There ho stays, “ daily furnished witli victual,” till they get to Lisbon, where he is put ashore moneyless, to shift for himself, Going up into the city he comes into a fair street, and being weary, turns his back to a wall and leans upon his staff. There soon pass four gentlemen, one of whom speaks to him Portuguese; he answers in English; whereupon the speaker replies in f ho same tongue, that he is a Wisebeach man, and, hearing his story gives him lodging and diet, till he can make interest with the master of an English ship to take him home. “ Bringing me aboard, be bestowed on me wine, and strong waters, and give me eight stivers, and recommended me to the master’s care. He landed me at Dover whence 1 made shirt to get to London.” And so, with a few lines of praise to God, concludes this “true account,” ou which Sir Thomas Overbury’s comment is, that he considers “ the whole business amongst the most remarkable occurrences of this age.” Many, he tells ns, questioned the truth of Harrison’s statemerits, and believed ho was never out of England. Bat, then, why should he—for fifty years and mere in honorable and plentiful service with the Campdcn family, a man, too of sober life and conversation, and reputed a just a I'aithl'al servant —have so strangely misbehaved himself in his old ago / it was not because his accounts were out of order,

Moreover, ho left in his house a considerable sum of the viscountess’s money. Of one thing there is no doubt, the Perrys suffered unjustly ; Harrison affirmed that he never set eyes on any of them that evening, those who carried him off being men whom he had never seen before. That he was “ spirited away as some arc said to have been,” sir Thomas cannot believe, “ in respect he was an old and infirm man,” fairies being notoriously particular, and choosing cither promising babies or stout, well set up fellows, like Ogier lo Danios. He also remarks how hard it is to think that any one would take the trouble to carry off an old man who would only fetch seven pounds all the way from the middle of Gloucestershire to the coast of Kent.

Old Harrison did not live long ; and his son succeeded to the stewardship, in which office he was not popular ; and his enemies set afloat the story that he had contrived his father’s removal, in order the sooner to step into his shoes. Yet, admits Sir Thomas, it is hard to think that he, knowing what had happened, should prosecute the Perrys to the death, and should provide for their being brought for execution to Broadway-hill, near twenty miles from where they were condemned, close, indeed, to his own gates, and where he could daily see them hanging in chains. “So bitter was he, that he himself stood at the foot of the ladder when they were put to death.” This bitterness may to some seem like conscious guilt determined to thrust away suspicion from itself. On the whole, however, we must feel, as Sir T. Overbury did, that “ it is best to suspend hard thoughts till Time, the great discoverer, shall bring to light this dark and mysterious matter” Time, however, is sometimes a concealer; and from that day to this, nothing more has come out about the Harrison mystery.

There was, of course, nothing incredible in the carrying a man off and selling him to the Turks. Crimping and kidnapping were regular professions. Bristol stood at the head of this nefarious traffic, which went on with the connivance of Government so far as “ our plantations ” were concerned. Labor was wanted out there ; negro-land was so well-worked by Spaniards and others that we could not supply our needs thence; and “the, labor field of the South Pacific ’’ was not yet opened up, nor had the happy thought occurred to any one of getting hold of Chinese or Hindoo coolies. So political prisoners were sent out wholesale, much under the same conditions under which French 1 reds ’ and 1 suspects ’ have been shipped any time the last twenty-five years to Cayenne and Lambessa and New Caledonia. Barbadoes alone must have had enough, what with Cavaliers, and Irish (sent over in swarms by Cromwell), and Scotch Covenanters (those who escaped hanging after Bothwell Brigg and Claverhouse’s subsequent raids), to have peopled the whole of the West Indies, if they had been sent out to live instead of to die. But the demand continued ; for so long as men could be easily got it did not seem worth while to take much care of them. I suppose whenever there was a glut in the “ plantation ” market, the Turks came in for their share ; or perhaps at times they outbid the Christians. Now and then they took the matter into their own hands ; Sallee rovers were, in those days, by no means unknown in the channel, and they were always ready to pick up what came in their way. Nearly half a century after, when our navy was at a low ebb, and Tourville, having destroyed Teignmoulh and harried the coast of Torbay was defeating Sir G. Hooke and scattering the great English and Dutch Smyrna fleet, an Algerine cruiser fell on the town of Baltimore in Ireland, sacked it, and carried off nearly all the inhabitants. Thereis, then, no pr'ma Aide improbability in Harrison’s story What he related might have befallen him ; and those who seized him might have been naying off an old grudge, or might have xaucied the old steward would have a great deal more about him than twenty-three pounds. Anyhow the affair was much talked of at the time ; and has never since been cleared up. For one thing we may be thankful; people are certainly not hanged now-a-days on the miserable insufficient evidence which was enough to bring the three unhappy Perrys to the gallows.