The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Reputed Changeling, by Charlotte M. Yonge

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Title: A Reputed Changeling

Author: Charlotte M. Yonge

Release Date: May 26, 2004 [eBook #12449]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A REPUTED CHANGELING***

Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

A REPUTED CHANGELING, or, THREE SEVENTH YEARS TWO CENTURIES AGO

PREFACE

I do not think I have here forced the hand of history except by
giving Portchester to two imaginary Rectors, and by a little
injustice to her whom Princess Anne termed 'the brick-bat woman.'

The trial is not according to present rules, but precedents for its
irregularities are to be found in the doings of the seventeenth
century, notably in the trial of Spencer Cowper by the same Judge
Hatsel, and I have done my best to represent the habits of those
country gentry who were not infected by the evils of the later
Stewart reigns.

There is some doubt as to the proper spelling of Portchester, but,
judging by analogy, the t ought not to be omitted.

C. M. YONGE. 2d May 1889.

CHAPTER I: THE EXPERIENCES OF GOODY MADGE

"Dear Madam, think me not to blame;
Invisible the fairy came.
Your precious babe is hence conveyed,
And in its place a changeling laid.
Where are the father's mouth and nose,
The mother's eyes as black as sloes?
See here, a shocking awkward creature,
That speaks a fool in every feature."

GAY.

"He is an ugly ill-favoured boy--just like Riquet a la Houppe."

"That he is! Do you not know that he is a changeling?"

Such were the words of two little girls walking home from a school
for young ladies kept, at the Cathedral city of Winchester, by two
Frenchwomen of quality, refugees from the persecutions preluding the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and who enlivened the studies of
their pupils with the Contes de Commere L'Oie.

The first speaker was Anne Jacobina Woodford, who had recently come
with her mother, the widow of a brave naval officer, to live with
her uncle, the Prebendary then in residence. The other was Lucy
Archfield, daughter to a knight, whose home was a few miles from