Eleanor, Lady Douglas, as she became having married
Sir Archibald Douglas,
was a prophetess. She was arrested and held at Bedlam, and in the Tower
of London.
Eleanor, born in 1590, possibly at Fonthill Giffard, Wiltshire,
was the 5th daughter of George Touchet, Earl of Castlehaven, by his
first wife, Lucy, the daughter of Sir James Mervyn of Fonthill Giffard
in Wiltshire. Her father having sold his Staffordshire estates, Eleanor
grew up and was educated at Fonthill and then in Ireland where the Earl
was Governor of Kells in County Meath. No doubt, this was how she came
to meet the Attorney-General, Sir John Davies, although her father may
also have known him through his connections with the Middle Temple and
her mother’s family were important landowners near his childhood home.
Eleanor was an attractive bright girl of eighteen when she married the
forty-year-old Davies in March 1609. The two lived at Pirton in
Hertfordshire, when in England, but were mostly kept in Ireland by Sir
John’s legal career. They mostly resided in Dublin, but also at Castle
Curlews, which Davies built in County Tyrone. The couple had three
children together. Sadly, their son, Richard, died while still a baby
and, John, a dumb mute, drowned in the Liffey when only about six years
old. Only their daughter, Lucy, survived to adulthood, marrying
Ferdinando Hastings, later 6th Earl of Huntingdon, on 7 August 1623.
These sad losses probably put considerable strain on the marriage.
Soon after the wedding, Davies had begun to discover that marrying into
the aristocracy was not necessarily as advantageous has he might at
first have thought; for his father-in-law was apparently notorious for
his selfish greed and quickly began to pressurize him for political
favours. Presumably, Davies was also unaware of the personal habits of
his unsavoury brother-in-law, Mervyn Touchet, Lord Audley (eventually
Earl of Castlehaven), who was executed in 1631, not only for the
frequent sodomising of his male servants, but also for forcing both his
wife and daughter-in-law to have sex with the same men while he watched.
Eleanor’s own mental instability seems to have first come to public
attention in 1622, three years after she and her husband had returned to
England and settled in London.
Details of these first two cases involving Lady Davies are lacking.
There was some conflict with Lady Jacob over “womanish babbles,” but she
also appears to have been harassing a certain Mrs Brooke and her
daughter with her Protestant religious mania. Brooke fought back,
telling her Ladyship that she had “abandoned all goodness and honesty”
and was “mad, ugly and blinded with pride of birth”. Her husband placed
curses on Eleanor and even threatened to “scratch a mince pie out of
her” if she did not desist further. He also wrote a letter to the Star
Chamber. It may have been because of this incident that, the following
year, Sir John purchased himself a country retreat, Englefield House in
Berkshire, well away from London and the Royal court. In the adjoining
church, their ten-year-old daughter, Lucy, married the fourteen-year-old
Ferdinando, Lord Hastings, the son and heir of the impoverished Earl of
Huntingdon with whom Davies had had business dealings. Eleanor is
recorded as having been instrumental in bringing about the match and
this probably explains her brother’s unfortunate marriage to the
Countess’ sister in the same year. Around this time, Sir John also burnt
the many prophecies that his wife had been industriously recording. She
was livid and immediately predicted “his doom in letters of his own
name, within three years to expect the mortal blow”: John Davies being
an anagram of ‘Jove’s Hand’. From that day onward, Sir John only ever
saw his wife dressed in mourning clothes.
Young Lord Hastings started his studies at Cambridge University in 1625
and Lucy Davies left Englefield to live with her in-laws without fear of
having her marriage consummated. This led to something of a midlife
crisis for Lady Davies, while her husband was occupied with trying to
procure a lucrative appointment at court from the new king. Only a few
weeks before her daughter’s departure, Eleanor had taken in a
thirteen-year-old Scottish lad named George Carr. He was known as the
“Dumb Fortune-teller” and had caused quite a stir in London before
arriving at Englefield. The Berkshire air must have agreed with him, for
he began to talk and was able to explain Lady Davies’ troubled dreams.
He later went abroad. During Carr’s residence, Lady Davies had begun to
read the Book of Daniel and, on 28th July that same year, she was
suddenly awoken at Englefield by the Biblical prophet’s trumpeting voice
exclaiming, “There are nineteen years and a half to the day of Judgement
and you as the meek Virgin”. She felt she had been chosen for a special
mission in life and it was this experience, at the ‘Angels’ Field,’
which formed the rock on which she now built her reputation as a
prophetess.
Lady Davies would mainly spend her time interpreting the Bible and what
it had to say about England’s future, particularly using anagrams. This
led her to criticise local officials, bishops, Parliament and even the
King. However, she would also foretell events concerning specific
people, both upon request and unannounced, as with her husband who did
indeed die in 1626 as she had prophesied. Their marriage having
disintegrated, Sir John left his estates, including Englefield, to his
only surviving child, the thirteen-year-old, Lucy, Lady Hastings. Having
nowhere to live, Eleanor disputed this legacy for years. Presumably she
had a charismatic charm of sorts, for she did remarry, to
Sir Archibald Douglas, 7th of Tilquhillie. He too burnt her
prophecies, for which she struck him dumb, reducing his speech to
pig-like grunts. He lived with relatives and eventually died in 1644.
By 1633, Lady Davies’ activities could be ignored no longer. Banned from
publishing her prophetic tracts – seventy all told – in England, she
travelled abroad and published them in Holland. Upon her return, she
visited the new archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, and directly
related his name to a psalm proclaiming that the Lord would destroy
those who did not trust in him. Laud was furious. He burnt her books
before her very eyes and had her brought before the Court of High
Commission in London. When apparently overtaken by the spirit of the
Biblical Daniel in front of her accusers, she was merely met with
derision and hilarity; and, when she claimed her name, Eleanor Audelie,
proved her chosen calling – it is an anagram of ‘Reveale O Daniel’ – she
was told that Dame Eleanor Davies was also an anagram of ‘Never Soe Mad
a Ladie’. She became silent and was sentenced to be imprisoned in the
Gatehouse Gaol, along with a fine of £3,000. She spent several months
there before her release, when she took up residence in Bath. However,
her bizarre goings-on continued.
In 1636, she became the leader of a small group of ladies in Lichfield
in Staffordshire opposed to the Catholic ways creeping back into the
English Church. They sat in the choir-stalls reserved for gentlewomen
and, later, Lady Davies claimed to be the Bishop and sat in his throne
while pouring a mixture of pitch and wheat paste over the new altar
hangings. For this outburst, she was placed in the Bedlam Mental Assylum
and later moved to the Tower of London. She was eventually released in
1640. She took up residence in Kensington and elsewhere. Publications
followed, including ‘The Stay of the Wise’ (1643), ‘The Restitution of
the Reprobates’ (1644) and ‘The Bride's Preparation’ (1644). She was,
again, arrested in 1646 and had to live in the custody of the Hastings
family for the rest of her life. Her last work, ‘Tobit’s Book,’ was
published in 1652, the year of her death.
She died on 5th July 1652 in the City of London and was buried by the
side of her first husband in the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields at
Charing, near Westminster.d>
|
