The Devil · Ghosts · Oxfordshire

The Just Devil of Woodstock

The site of Woodstock Manor, in Blenheim Park, Woodstock

Family-friendly

In the autumn of 1649 King Charles was dead, and Parliament ruled England. That October a party of Parliament's commissioners rode into Woodstock to take over the old royal manor house and its park. They meant to sweep away everything that bore the name of King.

They made themselves at home in the King's own rooms. The royal bedchamber became their kitchen and the council hall their brew-house. In the high park stood an ancient tree everyone knew as the King's Oak. They dug it up by the roots, chopped it into firewood, and piled the logs in the dining room.

For two nights all was quiet. On the third, something came into the bedchamber in the shape of a dog and went under the beds, and they heard it gnawing at the bed-cords. In the morning the cords were whole, and a side of beef on the floor hadn't been touched.

After that it grew worse every night. The King's Oak logs moved themselves from room to room. Chairs and stools went flying. The feet of the beds rose up higher than the heads, then crashed down so hard the men bounced. Something walked up and down with the warming-pan, making more noise than five church bells. Wooden plates sailed through the air and landed on the sleepers. Bricks fell out of the chimney. Glass rained down so thick they thought it was money, though not one window was broken. One night came a crash like forty cannon fired at once, which woke the whole neighbourhood, and the commissioners shrieked for help so wildly that one of them nearly ran another through with his sword in the dark. The rabbit poachers out in the park that night fled in such a hurry they left their ferret behind, down past Rosamund's Well.

At last one brave man called out, in the name of God, to ask what it was and what it wanted. There was silence for a while. Then, they all said, it came back and brought seven devils worse than itself. One of them saw the shape of a hoof kick the candle into the middle of the room, then scrape out the flame, three times, as neat as you like. When he drew his sword, an invisible hand wrestled it from him and knocked him senseless with the hilt.

That was enough. The commissioners said their prayers, sang psalms, moved their beds over the gatehouse, and within the week they had packed up and gone. The people called their nightly visitor the Just Devil of Woodstock. And the honest folk who slept in those rooms after them were never troubled at all.

No plate yet. We are still looking for an old picture of this place.

What people said

  • The Just Devil. The people of Woodstock called the haunting “the History of the just devil of Woodstock”, just, because it only tormented the men who had come to destroy the King's things.
  • It left good people alone. According to the man who wrote down the events at the time, honest people of good standing slept in the same rooms afterwards and were never disturbed in the least.
  • Hard to explain. Robert Plot heard the story from several eyewitnesses and from one of the commissioners himself. He thought most of it could have been done by trickery, but not the noises beyond the power of man, the split bedposts, the hoof that put out the candle, or the invisible hand on the sword.

Other tellings

  • Funny Joe. After King Charles II came back in 1660, the truth came out, according to Walter Scott. One of the commissioners' own clerks, who called himself Giles Sharp, was really Joseph Collins of Oxford, known as Funny Joe. He was a secret royalist who had grown up in the old manor and knew all its trap-doors and secret passages. With the help of the other servants, he had played every trick himself. Scott noticed that trusty Giles Sharp was always the one who saw the strangest sights.
  • Scott made the story into his novel Woodstock (1826).
  • Plot's account is the earliest we have found. He took it from a written record by someone who lived on the spot, and checked it with eyewitnesses. Scott mentions that the events were also told by George Sinclair. [TODO: Sinclair's book and date, and the 1660 pamphlet that revealed the trick]

What the history says

The Parliamentary commissioners really were sent to Woodstock in 1649 to survey the royal manor and park after the execution of Charles I. Plot's dates run from 13 October to early November 1649.

The medieval manor of Woodstock was a royal house, where Henry II is said to have hidden Fair Rosamund. Nothing of it stands today. Blenheim Palace was built nearby in the 1700s. [TODO: when and how the old manor was cleared away, from Blenheim or Historic England]

Go and See

Where
Blenheim Park, Woodstock. The pin marks the site of the old manor. Fair Rosamund's Well, where the poachers lost their ferret, is a short walk to the west.
Access
Inside Blenheim's park, which charges for entry. [TODO: current park-only ticket prices and opening times from blenheimpalace.com, and whether the manor site can be reached by a public footpath]
Allow
An hour for a walk to the manor site and Rosamund's Well. Much longer if you visit the palace too.
Families
A funny, not frightening, tale: a ghost story that turns out to be a practical joke. Good for all ages.

51.8461° N, 1.3637° W · Open in OpenStreetMap

Make a day of it

From our sister sites

Acorn & InkWrite your own legendStory planners to print. Plan the perfect haunting prank.The Name GeneratorsName a ghost of your ownEvery good haunting needs a name. Funny Joe chose Giles Sharp.

Sources

  1. Robert Plot, The Natural History of Oxford-shire (1677), chapter 8, sections 37–45, pp. 206–210. The earliest account we have found, taken from a written record made at the time and checked with eyewitnesses. Internet Archive.
  2. Sir Walter Scott, Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (1830), letter X, for the unmasking of Joseph Collins. Project Gutenberg.
  3. Charles G. Harper, Haunted Houses (1907), mentions the Woodstock pranks of 1649. Internet Archive.

This is a legend, told as people told it. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.