Cunning Murrell Read Online

Cunning Murrell

RGL e-Book Cover 2015©

First UK edition: Methuen & Co., London, 1900
First US edition: Doubleday, Page & Co., New York, 1900

This e-book edition: Roy Glashan’s Library, 2015
Produced by Colin Choat and Roy Glashan

Only the original raw text of this book is in the public domain.
All content added by RGL is proprietary and protected by copyright.

“Cunning Murrell,” Methuen & Co., London, 1900

TO JOHN LOUIS WIMBUSH

My Dear Wimbush, I think you will not yet have forgotten our holidays in old Essex, in the days ere the speculative builder had dreamed of Leigh, and when Hadleigh was still the Hadleigh of another century.

It is in memory of those times that I offer you my little story, headed with a name familiar to us both; and with the hope that it may please you to find among my puppets images—imperfect enough—of some other old Essex friends. For myself when some tell me, as they will, that such a man as Murrell and such beliefs as he lived on were impossible in the time and place I give them, I shall know that you, at least, are better informed: for indeed you know Murrell’s doings as well as I, and you have handled the amazing (and grimy) heap of documents that he left behind him. You can testify, too, that a man was swum for a witch (and died of it) in this same county ten years after the period of the tale. But there!

Yours always, A.M.
Loughton, Essex, June 1900.

INTRODUCTORY:
THE “CUNNING MAN” OF HADLEIGH

James Murrell was born the seventh son of a seventh son in Rochford in 1780. In 1812 Murrell moved to Hadleigh, Essex and set up business as a shoemaker. Somewhere about this time he met a witch/wizard called Neboad from whom he learnt about the craft. His natural skill in the art led him to give up shoe-making and become a full-time ‘cunning man.’ His fame grew as a cunning-man of unequalled ability and he was sought out by both local people and wealthy aristocrats from further afield. It was said that he would always ask people if their problem was ‘high or low,’ i.e. did they need material or magic help. Material help would involve the use of herbal potions to combat ills. To tackle supernatural forces, Murrell would summon good spirits or angels to fight the bad ones. He was an expert in astrology and was consulted on a wide range of issues including finding lost objects, clairvoyance and his ability to cast and break other witches spells. For instance one legend refers to his using a potion to send a ‘burning sensation’ to a gypsy woman who was believed to have cursed a girl. The potion when heated exploded and the next day the body of the gypsy was found burnt to death and the girl cured….

His connection with [the village of] Canewdon was also a strong one. The villages [of Hadleigh and Canewdon] lie about sixty-two miles from each other. It was reputed that Murrell was once engaged in a contest with a Canewdon witch to prove who was the most powerful. Commanding her to die, the witch immediately fell down dead. This ability to control other witches appears in another story. According to the legend the Canewdon villagers petitioned their vicar, Rev William Atkinson “to let Murrell exercise his whistling powers and make the witches confess themselves by dancing round the churchyard.” The vicar refused to give in to their demands as he knew such an exercise would reveal his own wife to be a witch (his wife Mary Ann and her sister, Lady Lodwick were believed by many to be part of a coven in existence prior to 1860). Apart from emphasising the traditionally believed link between the church and witchcraft these stories also confirmed for many Murrell’s position as Master of Witches.

Quoted from The Haunted Palace — History, Reviews and the Supernatural.

“Cunning Murrell,” Doubleday, Page & Co., New York, 1900

I. — NEWS AND A BOTTLE

THE sun was low in the haze that hid the hills about Tilbury Fort, ten miles up the Hope. Here, at the Thames mouth, where there was no more river, but salt sea, green marshes made the shore, and Canvey Island lay broad and flat and low, like a duller, thicker water rather than land, marked off from the shore by the Ray, pale gold in the reddening light. Deep in coarse grasses and salt sedge, with purple thistles between, Casey Marsh lay low and level for half a mile inland. Thence the ground rose, gently at first, then more steeply, to the irregular green ridge that backed the marshes far as eye could see.

Stately and grey on the boldest hill rose the ruined towers of Hadleigh Castle, mighty still in their decay, and imposing even because of their rent flanks and the vast thickness of wall there displayed. About their foundations and clogged under-passages the fallen masonry was half covered with bramble and bush, and, lower, a thicker coppice fringed the hill and marked the foot of its steeper slope.

From the ruins the view was wide. Two miles along the marshes below, toward the east and the open sea, stood the fishing village of Leigh, its jumble of red roofs seeming to rest on the broad water itself, thick trees clothing the hill behind it, and its grey church tower standing high over all. Across the estuary, five miles away at its nearest, lay the Kent shore, now growing misty, and the quiet, smooth water between was dotted with the Leigh boats, like gnats on a pond.

From the lowest of the loop-holes in the castle’s boldest tower the end of a brass telescope protruded, for there Roboshobery Dove kept his daily watch for the sole news of the outer world that he cared for—news of the war, in so far as it might be learned from the traffic about the Nore. For it had been his fortune, since the Baltic fleet had been at work, more than a few times to spy a sloop of war with a tail of captured Russian vessels, making across the Little Nore for the Medway mouth, on the way to Sheerness hulks and Chatham Dockyard.

The hole was far wider within than without, and among the boulders of ragstone Roboshobery sat snugly, his unstrapped wooden leg fixed in a crack, and so offering, with its wide socket, a convenient rest for the telescope. He was a large man, though his size was mainly a matter of breadth. His face was brown and round, and his broken nose gave it an undue appearance of flatness; nor was it the handsomer for the few large pock-marks that speckled its surface. His hair hung thick in iron-grey curls that were nearly black from beneath the hard glazed hat, which was the commonest head-gear in the neighbourhood alike for seamen and landsmen; and all of beard that was unshorn was the thick roll—sometimes called “monkey-choker”—that grew from ear to ear below his jaw. His green smock might have inclined the observer to judge him an agriculturist, were it not contradicted by the earrings visible among his thick curls; earrings that were a tradition and a matter of professional equipment among mariners for the bettering of the eyesight.