Devonshire Characters and Strange Events. Baring-Gould Sabine

they have heard and seen him.

      Curiously enough much the same belief adheres to Dunsland, and there one of the Bickfords is thought to be the Wild Huntsman. I know of one who is so convinced that he and his hounds rushed past her through the grounds along a certain drive, that nothing afterwards would induce her on any consideration to go along that drive at night.

      WIFE-SALES

      There is no myth relative to the manners and customs of the English that in my experience is more tenaciously held by the ordinary Frenchman than that the sale of a wife in the market-place is an habitual and an accepted fact in English life.

      It is – so far as my experience goes – quite useless to assure a Frenchman that such transfer of wives is not a matter of everyday occurrence, and is not legal: he replies with an expression of incredulity, that of course English people endeavour to make light of, or deny, a fact that is “notorious.”

      In a book by the antiquary Colin de Plancy, on Legends and Superstitions connected with the Sacraments, he gives up some pages to an account of the prevalent English custom. I heard a country curé once preach on marriage, and contrast its indissolubility in Catholic France with the laxity in Protestant England, where “any one, when tired of his wife, puts a halter round her neck, takes her to the next market town and sells her for what she will fetch.” I ventured to call on this curé and remonstrate, but he answered me he had seen the fact stated in books of the highest authority, and that my disputing the statement did not prove that his authorities were wrong, but that my experience was limited, and he asked me point blank whether I had never known such cases. There, unhappily, he had me on the hip. And when I was obliged to confess that I did know of one such case, “Mais, voilà, mon Dieu,” said he, and shrugged his shoulders with a triumphant smile.

      Now it must be allowed that such sales have taken place, and that this is so is due to rooted conviction in the rustic mind that such a transaction is legal and morally permissible.

      The case I knew was this.

      When I was a boy there lived a tall, thin man in the parish who was the village poet. Whenever an event of any consequence took place within the confines of the parish, such as the marriage of the squire’s daughter, he came down to the manor-house with a copy of verses he had composed on the occasion, and was then given his dinner and a crown. Now this man had actually bought his wife for half a crown. Her husband had led her into Okehampton and had sold her there in the market. The poet purchased her for half the sum he had received for one of his poems, and led her home with him a distance of twelve miles, by the halter, he holding it in his hand, she placidly, contentedly wearing the loop about her neck.

      The report that Henry Frise was leading home his half-crown wife preceded the arrival of the couple, and when they entered the village all the inhabitants turned out to see the spectacle.

      Now this arrangement was not very satisfactory to my grandfather, who was squire, or to my uncle, who was rector of the parish, and both intervened. Henry Frise maintained that Anne was his legitimate wife, for “he had not only bought her in the market, but had led her home, with the halter in his hand, and he’d take his Bible oath that he never took the halter off her till she had crossed his doorstep and he had shut the door.”

      The parson took down the Bible, the squire opened Burns’ Justice of the Peace, and strove to convince Harry that his conduct was warranted by neither Scripture nor the law of the land. “I don’t care,” he said, “her’s my wife, as sure as if we was spliced at the altar, for and because I paid half a crown, and I never took off the halter till her was in my house; lor’ bless yer honours, you may ask any one if that ain’t marriage, good, sound, and Christian, and every one will tell you it is.”

      Mr. Henry Frise lived in a cottage that was on lives, so the squire was unable to bring compulsion to bear on him. But when Anne died, then a difficulty arose: under what name was she to be entered in the register? The parson insisted that he could not and he would not enter her as Anne Frise, for that was not her legal name. Then Henry was angry, and carried her off to be buried in another parish, where the parson was unacquainted with the circumstances. I must say that Anne proved an excellent “wife.” She was thrifty, clean, and managed a rough-tempered and rough-tongued man with great tact, and was generally respected. She died in or about 1843.

      Much later than that, there lived a publican some miles off, whom I knew very well; indeed, he was the namesake of and first cousin to a carpenter in my constant employ. He bought his wife for a stone two-gallon jar of Plymouth gin, if I was informed aright. She had belonged to a stonecutter, but as he was dissatisfied with her, he put up a written notice in several public places to this effect: —

NOTICE

      This here be to hinform the publick as how James Cole be dispozed to sell his wife by Auction. Her be a dacent, clanely woman, and be of age twenty-five ears. The sale be to take place in the New Inn, Thursday next at seven o’clock.

      In this case I do not give the name of the purchaser, as the woman is, I believe, still alive. I believe – so I was told – that the foreman of the neighbouring granite-works remonstrated, and insisted that such a sale would be illegal. He was not, however, clear as to the points of law, and he believed that it would be illegal unless the husband held an auctioneer’s licence, and if money passed. This was rather a damper. However, the husband was desirous to be freed from his wife, and he held the sale as had been advertised, making the woman stand on a table, and he armed himself with a little hammer. The biddings were to be in kind and not in money. One man offered a coat, but as he was a small man and the seller was stout, when he found that the coat would not fit him, he refused it. Another offered a “phisgie,” i.e. a pick, but this also was declined, as the husband possessed a “phisgie” of his own. Finally, the landlord offered a two-gallon jar of gin, and down fell the hammer with “Gone.”

      I knew the woman; she was not bad-looking. The new husband drank, and treated her very roughly, and on one occasion she had a black eye when I was lunching at the inn. I asked her how she had hurt herself. She replied that she had knocked her face against the door, but I was told that this was a result of a domestic brawl. Now the remarkable feature in these cases is that it is impossible to drive the idea out of the heads of those who thus deal in wives that such a transaction is not sanctioned by law and religion. In Marytavy parish register is the following entry: —

      1756. Robert Elford was baptized, child of Susanna Elford by her sister’s husband. She was married with the consent of her sister, the wife, who was at the wedding.

      In this instance there is no evidence of a sale, but we may be sure that money did pass, and that the contractor of the new marriage believed it was a right and proper union, although perhaps irregular; and the first wife unquestionably believed that she was acting in observance of a legal right in transferring her husband to her sister. There are instances in which country people have gone before a local solicitor and have had a contract of sale drawn up for the disposal of their wives. The Birmingham police court in 1853 had to adjudicate on such a case, and the astounding thing in this instance was that a lawyer could be found to draw up the contract. It is no wonder that the magistrates administered a very severe reprimand. But there was a far earlier case than this, that of Sir William de Paganel; the lady stoutly and indignantly resisted the transfer and appealed against the contract to the law, which declared the sale to be null and void.

      Mr. Whitfeld, in his Plymouth and Devonport, in Times of War and Peace, mentions a case that occurred at the former, but without giving the date, of one John Codmore, who was indicted for burglary and for having married without his father’s consent, and then tiring of his wife, having sold her for five pounds – which was a large sum as the price of wives went – to a miller. In December, 1822, the Plymouth crier announced to all and singular: Oh yes! Oh yes! that James Brooks was about to dispose of his wife by public auction. The lady was advertised as young and handsome, and as likely to succeed to an inheritance of £700.

      Expectation was whetted by the intimation that the lady would attend the sale herself, that all might judge of her personal charm, and that she would be mounted on horseback. A curious and babbling crowd assembled to witness the transaction, and precisely at midday, according to the announcement,