DRUMMER OF TEDWORTH

Opening

In March 1662, at Ludgershall in Wiltshire, John Mompesson of North Tidworth caught an itinerant drummer, William Drury, demanding money from the constable on a forged pass. Mompesson confiscated his drum and had him charged. Drury got away. In April the drum was sent to Mompesson's house, and within days the family heard knocking at the doors, then drumming on the roof. For about a year the noises came almost nightly, mostly around the children.

Visitors came to hear it, among them the clergyman Joseph Glanvill, who heard scratching behind the children's bolster and searched without finding a cause. Drury, jailed at Gloucester for pig theft, was reported as boasting that the house would get no peace until he had his drum back. Glanvill's account made Tedworth the most famous haunting in England. The King's envoys heard nothing, and the court soon said Mompesson had confessed a cheat. He swore he had not.

Timeline

March 1662At Ludgershall, Mompesson examines the drummer's pass, finds the signatures counterfeit, and has the drum taken from him. Glanvill dates this March 1661, under the old calendar, in which the year began on 25 March.

April 1662The bailiff sends the drum to Mompesson's house while he is in London. On his return, knocking and drumming begin.

1662The noises move indoors into the room where the drum lies, then follow the youngest children, beating military tattoos on their bedsteads. Scratching, panting, smells, lights and moving objects are reported. The children are moved several times.

Winter 1662 to 1663Glanvill visits and spends a night in the house.

February 1663A ballad, A Wonder of Wonders, describes the case.

31 March 1663At the Gloucester assizes Drury is convicted of stealing two pigs and sentenced to transportation. He escapes from the barge and returns to Wiltshire.

April 1663Drury's and Mompesson's depositions appear in the newspapers Mercurius Publicus and The Kingdoms Intelligencer, the only sources to name the drummer.

15 June 1663Pepys records the Earl of Sandwich's suspicion: the drum would answer any tune but one.

3 August 1663At Salisbury assizes Drury is tried for witchcraft. The grand jury finds a true bill; the trial jury acquits. He is sent back to Gloucester and again sentenced to transportation.

1668Glanvill publishes his account in A Blow at Modern Sadducism.

8 November 1672Mompesson writes to Glanvill denying that he ever confessed a cheat.

1681Henry More publishes Saducismus Triumphatus, with the Tedworth account and Mompesson's letters, after Glanvill's death.

Key figures

John Mompesson, landowner, excise officer and militia officer, of North Tidworth on the Wiltshire and Hampshire border.

William Drury, drummer and tailor, from Uffcott near Swindon.

Joseph Glanvill, clergyman and Fellow of the Royal Society, who wrote the case up against those who denied spirits.

Henry More, the Cambridge Platonist who encouraged Glanvill and published his posthumous book.

The Earl of Chesterfield and the Earl of Falmouth, sent by the King to investigate.

Physical and documentary trail

For a seventeenth-century haunting the record is rich: Mompesson's own letters from December 1662, an anonymous eyewitness account in the State Papers, the ballad, the 1663 newspaper depositions, assize records of Drury's theft trial, Glanvill's account, and comments by Pepys, John Aubrey and Chesterfield. The historian Michael Hunter published the early manuscript accounts in 2005. No record of the Salisbury witchcraft trial survives except Mompesson's description.

The confession story comes from Chesterfield, who wrote that a year after his visit the King told him Mompesson had admitted the cheat. Mompesson's reply in 1672 was categorical.

I must belye my self, and perjure my self also, to acknowledge a Cheat in a thing where I am sure there was nor could be any

Corrections to the earlier version of this report. The confiscation was in March 1662 by the modern calendar, not April 1661. Mompesson was himself at Ludgershall and dealt with the drummer there; the drum reached his house in April. Drury was jailed at Gloucester for stealing pigs. The drummer's threat is reported in two forms: in Mompesson's 1674 letter as "he shall never have his quiet again, till I have my Drum, or satisfaction from him", and in Glanvill's account as never quiet until he had made satisfaction for taking the drum. Pepys did not read the story himself at Christmas: his wife read it to him on Christmas Day 1667.

Things you might not know

• Christopher Wren noticed the maid. According to John Aubrey, Wren spent a night there and heard drumming like a hand on the wainscot, but only when a certain maid-servant was in the next room.
• The whisper test failed. Aubrey also recorded that the spirit knocked the number asked for aloud, but gave no answer when the lawyer Anthony Ettrick whispered.
• Drury tried to strike a deal. From Salisbury gaol, Mompesson said, Drury offered to come to the house as a harvest-man and do him good in the matter. Mompesson refused.
• The Wesleys took Mompesson's side. John Wesley wrote that his eldest brother had asked Mompesson's son about the confession, and was told his father let the rumour stand only to stop the expense of crowds of gentlemen visiting.
• It became a play. Joseph Addison's The Drummer (1716) gave the story a rational ending, and Hogarth put a Tedworth drummer on top of his thermometer of credulity in 1762.

Competing explanations

Witchcraft or a spirit. This was Mompesson's and Glanvill's view, sworn to at Salisbury by Mompesson, the minister and two gentlemen. A trial jury, in an age that believed in witchcraft, still acquitted Drury.

Trickery inside the household. Wren's observation, the failure of the whisper test, the drum that could not answer one tune, and the envoys' silent night all point to a person. Addington Bruce in 1908 suggested the children, especially the eldest daughter, then about ten. Andrew Lang thought the children probably the agents, consciously or not.

Confederates of the drummer. Charles Mackay in 1841 blamed Drury's associates, which fits Drury's boast and the nine quiet weeks Glanvill reported while he was away. Against it, Hunter notes the disturbances went on during part of Drury's time in Gloucester gaol.

A cheat by Mompesson. Chesterfield's report of the King's account implies it. Mompesson had no obvious motive, and denied it in the strongest terms.

Later life of the case

Tedworth became the standard English poltergeist, argued over by Webster, Bekker and the early Society for Psychical Research, and reprinted by John Wesley in The Arminian Magazine. Historians now treat it as a key episode in Restoration debates about spirits and science.

Finding

The disturbances at Tedworth were witnessed by many people over about a year and are unusually well documented for the 1660s. The best contemporary observations, Wren's and Ettrick's, point to someone in the household. But the only confession is the King's account relayed by Chesterfield, which Mompesson flatly denied, and no one was ever caught. The case remains unexplained, with trickery the likeliest unproven answer.

What still will not resolve: who made the noises. The children, a servant and Drury's friends all had the opportunity, and the record names no one.