A Ghost for King and Country!
The English Civil War, a series of armed c o n f l i c t s between the Parliamentarians (“Roundheads”) and Royalists (“Cavaliers”), touched almost every settlement in England as brothers, friends and neighbours fought against each other over the principle of how England should be governed.
Sidney Godolphin was a poet, Member of Parliament for Helston and a staunch Royalist. Despite being the son of a knight and reputedly “very small a body”, he refused an officer’s commission and instead served as a trooper, joined the cavalry of the army commanded by Sir Ralph Hopton.
In February 1643 there was a battle at Bloody Meadow near the head of Fingle Gorge. Sidney was shot in a skirmish following the battle. He was taken to the Three Crowns and laid on a stone bench before being taken to the Tower Room where he tragically died of his wounds. He was buried in the chancel of Okehampton Church.
One day in 1980 chef Jock Harding was standing in the bar of the Three Crowns when “the figure of a man came out, walked through a door to the corridor behind, but without opening it!”
The figure was wearing a large plumed hat and was dressed as a cavalier. The hair on Jock’s neck stood on end! It was the ghost of Sidney.
Love Hurts
Love doesn’t just hurt … sometimes it kills! Throughout history there are instances of revenge extracted by a jealous lover and Chagford played host to one of them. On 11 October 1641 the young and beautiful Mary Whiddon, who was the decendent of Sir John Whiddon, left Whiddon Park where she lived to be married in St Michael’s Church in Chagford. She and her beau, whose name time has forgotten, but who may have been her cousin, were married in the Church. This was no fairytale though and they did not live happily ever after. Tradition says that after the ceremony there was a loud bank and a plume of smoke! Mary’s jilted lover had shot her dead in the porch of the Three Crowns (or more likely the steps of the church!).
Since that fateful day Mary’s ghost, still dressed in her wedding gown, is said to haunt The Bishop’s Room and upstairs corridors of the pub. Legend also has it that there is a secret passage from Whiddon Park House to the Three Crowns. This may explain why there have been sightings of tragic Mary at Whiddon Park House, most notably in 1971 when she appeared to a wedding guest that was staying there.
Mary was buried in the churchyard and there is a memorial to her in the church. It is said that violent act of lover’s revenge was the inspiration for the shooting of Lorna Doone in the church on her wedding day by a jealous suitor.
Extract from Lorna Doone by R D Blackmore:
Her eyes, which none on earth may ever equal, or compare with, told me such a depth of comfort, yet awaiting further commune, that I was almost amazed, thoroughly as I knew them. Darling eyes, the sweetest eyes, the loveliest, the most loving eyes—the sound of a shot rang through the church, and those eyes were filled with death.
Lorna fell across my knees when I was going to kiss her, as the bridegroom is allowed to do, and encouraged, if he needs it; a flood of blood came out upon the yellow wood of the altar steps, and at my feet lay Lorna, trying to tell me some last message out of her faithful eyes. I lifted her up, and petted her, and coaxed her, but it was no good; the only sign of life remaining was a spirt of bright red blood.
Some men know what things befall them in the supreme time of their life—far above the time of death—but to me comes back as a hazy dream, without any knowledge in it, what I did, or felt, or thought, with my wife’s arms flagging, flagging, around my neck, as I raised her up, and softly put them there. She sighed a long sigh on my breast, for her last farewell to life, and then she grew so cold, and cold, that I asked the time of year.
It was Whit-Tuesday, and the lilacs all in blossom; and why I thought of the time of year, with the young death in my arms, God or His angels, may decide, having so strangely given us. Enough that so I did, and looked; and our white lilacs were beautiful. Then I laid my wife in my mother’s arms, and begging that no one would make a noise, went forth for my revenge.