Page:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu/289

Rh That Howell's quotation from memory refers to the same four as are named in the tract is, I think, probable. He had not seen the tract, or he would have quoted the names correctly. The letter was not written at the date added to it at a later period, but in the same year as the tract appeared, when he was a prisoner in the Fleet for debt. Whether he ever saw the monument may be doubted, and he may have merely written for publication with mention of the story which he had from hearsay. As to the tract, it was one of those pious frauds by no means uncommon among the "goody-goody" writers of that and other days, and the incident of the white-breasted bird was an invention employed to "catch" the attention of readers, and lead on to the moral and pious sentiments that stuff the remainder of the tract. The trick of giving a list of witnesses was one resorted to by the ballad and tract mongers of the period, and it is noticeable that those whose names are appended as witnesses never existed at South Zeal, in South Tawton parish.

When once this pious fraud had been launched, it rolled on by its own weight, and it became a point of honour in the family to uphold it; and plenty of after-apparitions were feigned or fancied to have been seen.

The whole story of the alleged appearances of the white bird has been gone into with thoroughness by Mr. Cotton, of Exeter, who to some extent credits it; that is to say, he thinks that some real instances of birds fluttering at the window may