The
Stranger asked the poor old man how long he had been ill? the poor man
told him. Said the Stranger, "I can cure you. Take two or three balm
leaves steeped in your beer for a fortnight or three weeks, and you
will be restored to your health; but constantly and zealously serve
God." The poor man did so, and became perfectly well. This Stranger
was in a purple-shag gown, such as was not seen or known in those
parts. And no body in the street after even song did see any one
in such a coloured habit. Doctor Gilbert Sheldon, since Archbishop
of Canterbury, was then in the Moorlands, and justified the truth of
this to Elias Ashmole, Esq., from whom I had this account, and he hath
inserted it in some of his memoirs, which are in the Musseum at Oxford.
**MR. J. LYDAL of Trinity College, Soc. Oxon. March 11, 1649, 50,
attests the ensuing relation, in a letter to Mr. Aubrey, thus,
MR. AUBREY,
CONCERNING that which happened at Woodstock, I was told by Mr.
William Hawes, (who now lives with Sir William Fleetwood in the
park) that the committee which sat in the manor-house for selling the
king's lands, were frighted by strange apparitions; and that the
four surveyors which were sent to measure the park, and lodged
themselves with some other companions in the manor, were pelted out
of their chambers by stones thrown in at the windows; but from what
hands the stones came they could not see; that their candles were
continually put out, as fast as they lighted them; and that one with
his sword drawn to defend a candle, was with his own scabbard in the
mean time well cudgelled; so that for the blow, or for fear, he fell
sick; and the others were forced to remove, some of them to Sir
William Fleetwood's house, and the rest to some other places.
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