es of the
nature and power of spirits, and whether they can animate dead bodies;
in all which, as of the general appearance of spirits, my Lord Sandwich
is very scepticall. He says the greatest warrants that ever he had to
believe any, is the present appearing of the Devil

[In 1664, there being a generall report all over the kingdom of Mr.
Monpesson his house being haunted, which hee himself affirming to
the King and Queene to be true, the King sent the Lord Falmouth, and
the Queene sent mee, to examine the truth of; but wee could neither
see nor heare anything that was extraordinary; and about a year
after, his Majesty told me that hee had discovered the cheat, and
that Mr. Monpesson, upon his Majesty sending for him, confessed it
to him. And yet Mr. Monpesson, in a printed letter, had afterwards
the confidence to deny that hee had ever made any such confession"
("Letters of the Second Earl of Chesterfield," p. 24, 1829, 8vo.).
Joseph Glanville published a relation of the famous disturbance at
the house of Mr. Monpesson, at Tedworth, Wilts, occasioned by the
beating of an invisible drum every night for a year. This story,
which was believed at the time, furnished the plot for Addison's
play of "The Drummer," or the "Haunted House." In the "Mercurius
Publicus," April 16-23, 1663, there is a curious examination on this
subject, by which it appears that one William Drury, of Uscut,
Wilts, was the invisible drummer.--B.]

in Wiltshire, much of late talked of, who beats a drum up and down.
There are books of it, and, they say, very true; but my Lord observes,
that though he do answer to any tune that you will play to him upon
another drum, yet one tune he tried to play and could not; which makes
him suspect the whole; and I think it is a good argument. Sometimes they
talked of handsome women, and Sir J. Minnes saying that there was no
beauty like what he sees in the country-markets, and specially at Bury,
in which I will agree with him that there is a prettiest women I
ever saw. My Lord replied thus: "Sir John, what do you think of your
neighbour's wife?" looking upon me. "Do you not think that he hath
a great beauty to his wife? Upon my word he hath." Which I was not a
little proud of. Thence by barge with my Lord to Blackfriars, where
we landed and I thence walked home, where vexed to find my boy (whom
I boxed at his coming for