." That done, by water, I in the barge with the Maister,
to the Trinity House at London; where, among others, I found my Lords
Sandwich and Craven, and my cousin Roger Pepys, and Sir Wm. Wheeler.
Anon we sat down to dinner, which was very great, as they always have.
Great variety of talk. Mr. Prin, among many, had a pretty tale of one
that brought in a bill in parliament for the empowering him to dispose
his land to such children as he should have that should bear the name of
his wife. It was in Queen Elizabeth's time. One replied that there are
many species of creatures where the male gives the denomination to both
sexes, as swan and woodcock, but not above one where the female do, and
that is a goose. Both at and after dinner we had great discourses 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