[139] “A True relation of an Apparition in the likeness of a Bird with a White Breast, that appeared hovering over the deathbeds of some of the children of Mr. James Oxenham, of Sale Monachorum, Devon, Gent. Confirmed by Sundry witnesses. London, printed by I. O. for Richard Clutterbuck, and are to be sold at the figure of the Gun in little Britain, near St. Botolph’s church. 1641.” British Museum, Press-Mark E. 205-9.
A copy of this pamphlet is also to be found amongst Gough’s collection in the Bodleian. The British Museum copy contains a curious and very effective engraving, representing the actual appearance of the Bird to a person dying in bed.
[140] It is also stated in this pamphlet that the clergyman of the parish had been appointed by the bishop of the diocese to inquire into the truth of these particulars, and that a monument had been put up with his approbation with the names of the witnesses of each apparition of the Bird. The pamphlet states that those who had been sick and had recovered, never saw the apparition. It further came out in the evidence tendered, that the same Bird had appeared to Grace, the grandmother of John Oxenham, who died in 1618.
[141] Lysons states that these monumental inscriptions _do not now_ exist either in the church or churchyard of Tawton or Sale Monachorum. But, considering the shameful destruction of monuments in late years by so-called “Church Restorers,” this is not to be wondered at.
[142] It has been shrewdly and perhaps not untruly observed, that “a genuine and solemn citation may tend to work its own fulfilment in certain minds, who, by allowing the thing to prey upon their spirits, enfeeble the powers of life, and perhaps at the critical date arouse some latent or dormant disease into deadly action.”
[143] The following is from a MS. note of a member of the Editor’s family--George Henry Lee, Lord Litchfield, who was Chancellor of the University of Oxford in the latter part of the last century. Lord Rochester, it should be added, was allied to that family through his mother, Anne, Countess of Rochester, previously the widow of Sir F. H. Lee:--
“Lord Rochester told me of an odd presage that one had of his approaching death in the Lady Warre his mother-in-law’s house. The chaplain had dreamt that such a day he should die, but being by all the family put out of the belief of it, he had almost forgot it till the evening before at supper, there being thirteen at table, according to a fond conceit that one of these must soon die, one of the young ladies pointed to him that he was to die. He, remembering his dream, fell into some disorder; and the Lady Warre reproving him for his superstition, he said he was confident he was to die before morning; but he being in perfect health, it was not much minded. It was Saturday night, and he was to preach the next day. He went to his chamber, sat up late, (as appeared by the burning of his candle,) and he had been preparing his notes for his sermon, but he was found dead in his bed next morning. These things he said made him inclined to believe [that] the soul was a substance distinct from matter, and this often returned into his thoughts.”