Transcribed , email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
I do not think I have here forced the hand of history except by givingPortchester to two imaginary Rectors, and by a little injustice to herwhom Princess Anne termed ‘the brick-bat woman.’
The trial is not according to present rules, but precedents for itsirregularities are to be found in the doings of the seventeenth century,notably in the trial of Spencer Cowper by the same Judge Hatsel, andI have done my best to represent the habits of those country gentrywho were not infected by the evils of the later Stewart reigns.
There is some doubt as to the proper spelling of Portchester, but,judging by analogy, the t ought not to be omitted.
C. M. YONGE. 2d May 1889.
“Dear Madam, think me not to blame;
Invisible the fairy came.
Your precious babe is hence conveyed,
And in its place a changeling laid.
Where are the father’s mouth and nose,
The mother’s eyes as black as sloes?
See here, a shocking awkward creature,
That speaks a fool in every feature.”GAY.
“He is an ugly ill-favoured boy—just like Riquet àla Houppe.”
“That he is! Do you not know that he is a changeling?”
Such were the words of two little girls walking home from a schoolfor young ladies kept, at the Cathedral city of Winchester, by two Frenchwomenof quality, refugees from the persecutions preluding the Revocationof the Edict of Nantes, and who enlivened the studies of their pupilswith the Contes de Commère L’Oie.
The first speaker was Anne Jacobina Woodford, who had recently comewith her mother, the widow of a brave naval officer, to live with heruncle, the Prebendary then in residence. The other was Lucy Archfield,daughter to a knight, whose home was a few miles from Portchester, Dr.Woodford’s parish on the southern coast of Hampshire.
In the seventeenth century, when roads were mere ditches often impassable,and country-houses frequently became entirely isolated in the winter,it was usual with the wealthier county families to move into their localcapital, where some owned mansions and others hired prebendal houses,or went into lodgings in the roomy dwellings of the superior tradesmen. For the elders this was the season of social intercourse, for the youngpeople, of education.
The two girls, who were about eight years old, had struck up a rapidfriendship, and were walking hand in hand to the Close attended by thenurse in charge of Mistress Lucy. This little lady wore a blacksilk hood and cape, trimmed with light brown fur, and lined with pink,while Anne Woodford, being still in mourning for her father, was wrappedin a black cloak, unrelieved except by the white border of her roundcap, fringed by fair curls, contrasting with her brown eyes. Shewas taller and had a more upright bearing of head and neck, with morepromise of beauty than her companion, who was much more countrifiedand would not have been taken for the child of higher station.
They had traversed the graveyard of the Cathedral, and were passingthrough a narrow archway known as the Slype, between the south-westernangle of the Cathedral and a heavy mass of old masonry forming partof the garden wall of the present abode of the Archfield family, whensuddenly both children stumbled and fell, while an elfish peal of laughtersounded behind them.
Lucy came down uppermost, and was scarcely hurt, but Anne had fallenprone, striking her chin on the ground, so as to make her bite her lip,and bruising knees and elbows severely. Nurse detected the causeof the fall so as to avoid it herself. It