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 any tune that you will play to him upon another
drum, yet one tune he tried to play and could not; which makes him suspect
the whole; and I think it is a good argument. Sometimes they talked of
handsome women, and Sir J. Minnes saying that there was no beauty like
what he sees in the country-markets, and specially at Bury, in which I
will agree with him that there is a prettiest women I ever saw. My Lord
replied thus: "Sir John, what do you think of your neighbour's wife?"
looking upon me. "Do you not think that he hath a great beauty to his
wife? Upon my word he hath." Which I was not a little proud of. Thence
by barge with my Lord to Blackfriars, where we landed and I thence walked
home, where vexed to find my boy (whom I boxed at his coming for it) and