The Wicked Lady Ferrers

The Wicked Lady Ferrers By Jessie Adelaide Middleton © 2006 by http://www.HorrorMasters.com

“Markyate Cell,” a beautiful old house about three miles from Dunstable, is haunted by the ghost of “The Wicked Lady Ferrers,” who formerly lived there. Tradition says that she was a highwaywoman, and rode forth on a splendid coal-black horse with white feet, in full armour, robbing the mail-coaches and making the passengers prisoners until ransomed. I have long felt an interest in this picturesque story, and after a good deal of investigation, I have at last obtained the following particulars from several sources, and also a pedigree of the Ferrers family. A letter to Mr. William Macleod, the present owner of “Markyate Cell,” begging for more light on the matter, brought me the following courteous reply from Mrs. Macleod. “I am afraid,” she writes, “we do not know very much about Lady Ferrers; I wish we did. All that we do know is contained in the enclosed account of ‘Markyate Cell,’ which I am sending to you to read. . . . I also enclose a picture of the house. The little secret chamber is in the wing covered with ivy—the only part of the house that escaped the fire. “Luckily Mr. Adye, the former occupant, had the good taste to rebuild the house in the same style and with the old materials, so that it is a very pretty old house. “Last year, when we were making some alterations in the yard, we came on a large grave, beautifully built in stone. We expected to find some skeletons of nuns (as we had already dug up nine), but found instead the skeleton of a horse! “We think it must be that of Lady Ferrers’ horse, which brought her back to the ‘Cell’ when she was wounded. She is supposed to have kept her ‘kit’ in the secret room, and died there. “We have never seen or felt a ghost here, though I am rather a ‘spooky’ person, and this is supposed to be one of the authentic haunted houses. “Miss Adye told me that Lady G , who had the place one summer, passed a lady on horseback in the park one evening at dusk, and, wondering if it was a caller, turned to go back, but as she did so the horse and rider vanished. “There is a novel called Black Mark, by A. Whisper, which has taken the story of Lady Ferrers as an outline.” *** The manuscript so kindly enclosed by Mrs. Macleod runs as follows. It is an extract from Cussan’s History of Hertfordshire, and forms a footnote to that work— “Popular tradition ascribes the destruction of ‘Markyate Cell’ to the malignant influence of ‘Wicked Lady Ferrers,’ but the individuality of the lady is not clearly determined. It is said that in the disguise of male attire, and mounted on a coal-black horse with white fore-feet, she robbed travellers on the highway, but at length was fatally wounded at No-Man’s Land when so engaged. “She was found lying dead outside a door leading, by a secret staircase, to a chamber where she changed her dress. The doorway was built up, and so remained for nearly a

hundred and fifty years. The late Mr. Adye, who pulled down a large portion of the old building after the fire of 1840, determined to re-open the doorway, but there was not one of the local labourers who could be induced to undertake the work, and Mr. Adye was obliged to send to London to get men to do it. “On opening the doorway a narrow stone stairase was found. At the top was a stout oak door, which was broken down, but it afterwards appeared that it might have been opened by pressing a concealed spring. Nothing was found in the rooms but innumerable bats, which had gained an entrance through a small opening in the wall. “During the last fire, in 1840, many of the labourers who were assisting in checking it positively asserted that they saw Lady Ferrers swinging herself on a branch of a large sycamore standing near the house. Mr. Adye was away from home at the time, but before his return so impressed were the men with the reality of the apparition that they took upon themselves to saw the branch off, and were greatly surprised that they were not handsomely rewarded by the owner for their zeal. “Such is the story of ‘Wicked Lady Ferrers,’ which in this present year of 1878 iS religiously believed in by the majority of the inhabitants of Markyate Street. Though the incidents of the story have no resemblance to the circumstances which led to ‘The Wicked Lord Ferrers’ being hanged at Tyburn in 1760, it is not improbable that, in the bucolic mind, some of the stigma attaching to the name of the lord may, in some hazy manner, have been attributed to the lady. Although the surname of the Earl of Ferrers was Shirley, and in no way connected with the family of Ferrers, the lady is always described as the wife of Lord Ferrers. “Tradition also asserts that under the sycamore tree before referred to is buried a large amount of treasure. The tradition is embodied in the following doggerel— “Near the Cell is a Well, Near the Well is a Tree, And under the Tree the Treasure be.” *** The following version of the Ferrers story was supplied to me in manuscript by a lady who copied it from some notes in her possession. She assured me, at the same time, that Markyate was really haunted. “ ‘Markyate,’ or rather ‘Markyate Cell,’ Beds, is haunted to this day. The house is surrounded by a small park with a little church in it, and small kitchen garden with spinney and a beautiful little bowling green, with a yew hedge more than two hundred years old, also cloisters. “It is eight miles from the monastery or church of St. Albans, and was, in the earlier centuries, a nunnery with a subterranean passage leading to the former. It has been three times nearly burnt down, and only the kitchen, which was originally the church, succeeds in being claimed as part of the original house. The wall at the back of the house has retained all its original beauty, being formed like a chessboard, and is so curious that people go miles to see it. “The bricks of the house contain a great deal of silica, which lights up when the moon shines on it, and the simple folk declare it is on fire.

“Markyate is haunted by two ghosts, one a nun with a beautiful face, and the other the restless spirit of Lady Ferrers. “Regarding the first, it was usual long ago to put a nun into solitary confinement for disobedience or any other sin, and the nun in question was so shut up and never released. Many years after her death—in fact, recently—when workmen were repairing the kitchen chimney, they came upon a chair in a niche, but whatever was on it crumbled into dust. The chair was sent to the British or South Kensington Museum. “Lady Ferrers later took the cell, or priory, as it had formerly been called. She was a highway-woman, and had a beautiful black horse which she used to ride. Her servants wondered why the horse was covered with foam in the early morning, as if it had been hard-ridden during the night. Lady Ferrers’ coat-of-arms may yet be seen on the old oak stairs. She used to go out at night, rob mail-coaches and detain the unfortunate passengers in one of the cells at Markyate until a ransom had been paid. If that was not forthcoming—well! “Once she had a great haul and hid the treasure under a tree. “The legend runs— ’Beneath the tree The treasure be.’ Hitherto no one has found it, though the tree is still in existence. “One lady staying in the house was awakened one night by seeing a vision which she described as similar to a vision of the Madonna. There was a light burning in the room at the time. The vision waved its arms backward and forward, as if beseeching her to get up and follow it, but being of a nervous disposition she dared not move. This happened three times, the bells in the house ringing loudly at the same moment. Probably this visitor could have comforted the restless spirit and recovered the treasure, but she was too fainthearted to follow the apparition.” There is an old English ballad called “Lady Ferrers of Markyate Cell,” published in 1811. The story it sets forth is that Lady Ferrers entertained her friends by day, and by night went out, dressed in armour, slaying all the travellers she could lay her hands upon. She used to lock her servants in their rooms at night and let them out again in the morning; but one day she did not open the doors and a groom, breaking one down, got out, and they searched the house. They found the lady’s bed empty, but at last came upon her body, in full armour, lying dead on the turret-stairs, she having been killed by an accidental fall on her way out to rob strangers on the King’s highway. An assassin’s dirk was found fixed in her girdle. The ballad professes to be founded on fact, and says that “the existence of the heroine, her singular habits, the alternate seclusion and splendour of her life, together with its mysterious close, form a detail still remembered in Hertfordshire, at the hamlet which gives title to the legend.” In a book published by F. E. Smedley and E. Yates, called Mirth and Metre, there is a rhymed version of the story of Lady Ferrers entitled “Maude Allinghame.” Here it is told in what I can only describe as atrociously bad Ingoldsby, and that being so, I may be excused from quoting it, but any reader curious to pursue the subject any further will find the book under the above heading, at the British Museum.

Who was Lady Ferrers? According to Cussans, “the individuality of the lady was not very clearly determined.” Markyate came into the possession of the Ferrers family when the Priory was granted to George Ferrers of St. Albans. It remained vested in the family of Ferrers until it descended to Katherine Ferrers, who married Thomas (afterwards Viscount) Fanshawe, who joined her in selling it to Thomas, son of Sir George Coppin, Knight. Below is a pedigree of this branch of the Ferrers family— GeorgeFerrers of Markyate, son of Thomas Ferrers of St. Albans, descended from Robert de Ferrers, first Earl of Derby. Buried at Flanstead, Jan. 11, 1578. | Julius Ferrers of Markyate married Cicely, daughter of Sir John Botcher of Walton, Eoodhall, Herts. | Sir John Ferrers of Markyate married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Edmund Lucy, Kt. Buried in Broxbourne Church. Married secondly Anne, daughter of Sir Geo. Knighton of Bayford, Kt. Knighton Ferrers, born | 1607, died 1640. Katherine, daughter of Sir William Walter, who married secondly Simon Fanshawe | Katharine. Tradition does not relate which of the Ladies Ferrers named was the one of daring highway exploits. Personally I am inclined to think it may have been Anne, daughter of Sir George Knighton of Bayford and second wife of Sir John Ferrers.