The Drummer of Tedworth: the Mompesson House Poltergeist (1662)

Spring 1662. William Drury, a former regimental drummer living as a vagrant, was arrested at Ludgershall. His licence to beg was forged. His drum was confiscated and ended up with John Mompesson at his house in North Tedworth, now Tidworth, in Wiltshire.

On 4 May Mompesson came home from London. His household told him of noises. At first he took them for attempted burglaries.

It began outside. Mompesson wrote that it would "thump very hard all in the outside of my house." Then came the drum. It beat the "Tattoo" and "several other points of war, as well as any drummer." It drummed so loud that "the windows would shake and the beds."

Inside, the house came loose. "Chairs, Tables, Trunks & all moveables walk up and down the Rooms." The servants were not spared. "It has taken our servants up in their beds, bed and all, and hath lifted them up a great height, and laid them down softly again."

The children took the worst of it. Scratching like "iron talons" followed them from room to room. Their shoes were hurled over their heads. Their legs were beaten black and blue. Lighted candles were carried up the chimney. A voice cried "A witch, a witch." Blue and glimmering lights came after a tinging in the chimney. A sulphurous smell hung in the air.

January 1663. Joseph Glanvill, a clergyman and fellow of the Royal Society, came to listen. On the stairs he heard "a strange scratching." It came from behind the bolster of the children's bed. He scratched five, seven, ten times. The sound "followed and still stopped at my number." Something panted like a dog out of breath. A linen bag moved. He caught it and found nothing inside. "I was then verily persuaded, and am so still, that the noise was made by some demon or spirit."

Drury, meanwhile, had been arrested for theft. In Gloucester jail he allegedly said: "I have done it; I have thus plagued him; and he shall never be quiet until he hath made me satisfaction for taking away my drum." He was tried for witchcraft at Salisbury in 1663. Four witnesses testified that they saw furniture move on its own. He was acquitted, then transported for the theft. Glanvill wrote that the noises stopped while he was "beyond the seas."

Charles II sent the Earls of Chesterfield and Falmouth. They saw and heard nothing extraordinary. Rumours spread that Mompesson had confessed a cheat. In 1672 he answered: "I must belie myself, and perjure myself also to acknowledge a cheat in a thing where I am sure there was nor could be any." Sir Christopher Wren heard the drumming only when a certain maid-servant was in the next room.

Later writers followed that thread. Charles Mackay blamed Drury and his confederates. H. Addington Bruce suspected Mompesson's eldest daughter. Andrew Lang thought "the children were probably the agents." Alex Boese noted that the cellar was never inspected. Yet Mompesson's son told John Wesley the published account was "punctually true."

Christmas Day, 1667. Samuel Pepys listened as his wife read him the story. He called it "a strange story of spirits, and worth reading indeed." Joseph Addison's comedy The Drummer opened at Drury Lane on 10 March 1716. The historian Michael Hunter has read the case as "conflicting narratives of witchcraft in Restoration England," and The National Archives has written about it too. In 2026 it became an album with the London Symphony Orchestra.