The Drummer of Tedworth

The Haunted Drumming

Mompesson traveled back home and something strange awaited him there. The drum that were confiscated from Drury, ended up at his doorsteps the following April that year. It was then the strange banging noise started to haunt him. During the night he kept hearing the sound of drums and Mompesson was certain it was witchcraft from Drury.

The drumming came from everywhere, from the walls, the ground, even from the roof. One night, Mompesson drew his pistol, chasing the sound like a madman, sleep deprived and scared of the haunting of his house.

“The noise of thumping and drumming was very frequent, usually five nights together, and then it would intermit three. It was on the outside of the house, which is most of it board. It constantly came as they were going to sleep, whether early or late. After a month’s disturbance without, it came into the room where the drum lay, four or five nights in seven, within half an hour after they were in bed, continuing almost two. The sign of it, just before it came was … an hurling in the air above the house, and at its going off, the beating of a drum like that at the breaking up of a guard….”

A month passed and the sound of drums seemed to move from the room where the drum was placed into the childrens bedroom. The bedframes of the childrens bed were beaten, and they kept hearing a scratching sound from under their beds, leaving them shaken and frightened in their beds.

**The Drummer of Tedworth:** The devil and the drum, from the frontispiece to the third edition of Saducismus Triumphatus (1700).

The only break the family got from the alleged poltergeist was when Monpessons wife was in labor and the house stopped its drumming beat as she gave birth. But afterwards it came back, even more than before.

It wasn’t just the drumming sound that haunted the house. Lights kept moving around without anybody touching them, staff and family members alike were lifted from their beds, and weird smells of sulfur came from everywhere and nowhere. And it wasn’t even only at nighttime the hauntings occurred either, but even in broad daylight.

One time a servant claimed to have seen a moving board in the room. He asked the spirit to pass it to him, and the spirit listened. Then, they continued to throw it between them, back and forward around 20 times until the servant stopped after his master ordered him to.

This continued for the next two years and the sound of drumming grew louder, not only confined to the house, but nearby villagers were woken from the spectacle from the house as well. And even visits from a priest didn’t help with the hauntings in the long run.

The Drummer William Drury

So what happened to the original drummer, William Drury? He was arrested and sentenced to deportation in 1662. He confessed to the crimes of tormenting Mompesson and his family and being behind the paranormal stuff happening. But before he was deported and could be charged for any more, he escaped deportation and fled.

But in 1604, he was brought back to court, this time because of witchcraft were he would once again be trialed as The Drummer of Tedworth. He was acquitted because of the lack of evidence, but because of a prior pig stealing debacle he was sentenced for theft and sent to the American colonies, never to be heard of again.

The Book of Witchcraft

It was not only Mompesson himself that heard these drumming noises, but also his visitors claimed to have been bothered by the sounds.

Joseph Glanvil published in 1681 a book of witchcraft after his death called Saducismus Triumphatus where the story of the Drummer of Tedworth is detailed. This was a book where he affirmed the existence of witches and dark magic and looked at any skepticism of this like blasphemy. It is also said that this particular book was a big inspiration and influenced the people during the Salem witch trials.

In 1661 he visited Mompesson’s house in Tedworth in Wiltshire, England and heard the sounds himself. He also claimed to have heard additional scratching noises under a bed in the children’s room.

Speculations of Fraud

There have been countless people that have tried to debunk the story of The Drummer of Tedworth since it was first heard of. Charles Mackay wrote about it all being a trick of the mind in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds in 1841. Instead of it being a poltergeist at work it was simply Mompesson who was easily deceived by someone holding a grudge, something Drury himself confessed to.

In 1881 the American skeptic Amos Norton Craft said this about The Drummer of Tedworth:

We are to remember also, that the house of Mr. Mompesson contained several servants who doubtless possessed a good degree of human nature; Mr. Mompesson had caused the arrest and imprisonment of a member of a band of gypsies, who were intensely enraged at him

Even Mompesson’s own children were believed to be behind the drumming noises and the culprit of The Drummer of Tedworth, especially his ten year old daughter as much of the mysterious sound came from her bedroom.

“Mr. Mompesson perceiving that it so much persecuted the little children, he lodged them at a neighbor’s house, taking his eldest daughter, who was about ten years of age, into his own chamber, where it had not been a month before. As soon as she was in bed, the disturbance began there again, continuing three weeks drumming, and making other noises, and it was observed that it would exactly answer in drumming anything that was beaten or called for. After this, the house where the children were lodged out, happening to be full of strangers, they were taken home, and no disturbance having been known in the parlor, they were lodged there, where also their persecutor found them, but then only plucked them by the hair and night clothes without any other disturbance….

The Last Drumming Sound

So how did it all end for the family? Apparently it ended after Drury was sent away to the colonies and the drum burnt to a crisp. And the house, after two years of intense drumming by whoever the The Drummer of Tedworth was, go quiet again.