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They say the presence of Dame Dorothy Selby can still be felt at Ightham Mote, that inexpressibly beautiful, moated medieval house. There is here such an overwhelming sense of the past in its mottled outer walls, in its great banqueting hall, in its Jacobean drawing rooms, in its chapel and crypt, along its silent passageways and in the inner courtyard. And there always had been a chill in the area where workmen found, a hundred years ago now, a concealed door within the walls.
They broke in and found a female skeleton. Dame Dorothy? Even today in the tower bedroom there is still an unexplained chill in the air no matter what the time of day. That's Dame Dorothy, we are told, the one who betrayed the Gunpowder Plot to her cousin, Lord Mounteagle. Privy to the plotters' designs to blow up Parliament and indeed supportive of their aims, she nevertheless had no wish that her favourite cousin should die. So she penned the following lines. Or so some say.
'My Lord, out of the love I bear to some of your friends, I have a care to your preservation. Therefore, I would advise you, as you tender your life, to devise some excuse to shift of your attendance at this Parliament: for God and man have concurred to punish the wickedness of this time. And think not slightly of this advertisement, but retire yourself to the county where you may expect the event in safety. For though there be no appearance of any stir, yet I say they shall receive a terrible blow this Parliament; and yet they shall not see who hurts them. This counsel is not to be condemned because it my do you good and can do you no harm; for the danger is passed as soon as you have burnt the letter. And I hope God will give you the grace to make good use of it, to whose holy protection I commend you.'
Well, from there, matters went from bad to worse. The plotters, among them Guy Fawkes, were betrayed, rounded up, questioned, tortured, made to confess and then hanged, drawn and quartered. Some, however, were never taken and escaped, dallying long enough, according to the story, to call in at Ightham Mote and to punish Dame Dorothy. They walled her up and since then she has been the source of the sense of brooding and from her presence, has come the sudden falls in temperature experienced in different parts of the house.
But is that really so? Look in the church with its great monuments and there you will find her memorial. No mention there of her being walled up. 'She was a Dorcas', the tablet says: that is, she was famed for her good works. Furthermore, she was a fine needlewoman and on the back of her tomb are two representations of her famed needlework pictures. From here emanate the false charges and, indeed, the false legend associated with her. In fact, Dame Dorothy Selby is said to have bled to death after pricking her finger when at her tapestry.
The first picture on her tomb illustrates Adam and Eve in Eden. The second is an attempt to illustrate the Roman Catholic conspiracies against England: in the centre the Pope presides at a meeting at which these plots are hatched; then, on the left are the ships of the Armada; on the right are the cellars of Parliament with powder barrels covered with faggots and Guy Fawkes approaching with a lantern. Then comes the line from which the whole connection of Dorothy Selby with the plotters comes: 'Whose Arte disclosed that Plot, which had it taken, Rome had triumphed and Britain's walls had shaken'.
This line, misinterpreted, is the one which suggests her guilt and from it flows the story of the walling up.
But then, if it is not Dame Dorothy, who is it who haunts Ightham Mote? Difficult to say but there are candidates from a story dating back to 1552. At that time, for some reason or other, the legend has it that the then occupant of the Mote, Sir Thomas Browne, murdered a serving girl and hid the body inside the walls. Another version of the tale has the priest to Sir Thomas involved in a scandalous affair with a female servant. He apparently committed suicide and the girl was punished, presumably by Sir Thomas, by being bricked up. So perhaps the ghost of Ightham Mote is not Dame Dorothy Selby, one of Queen Elizabeth's waiting ladies, but rather an earlier much less exalted figure.
There is little doubt about the haunting but it does not seem right that Dame Dorothy, though she may be one of the ghosts, should be made to carry the burden of such a twisting of her life story. As in the case of Sir John Baker of Sissinghurst, a reputation takes a tumble. Was he the wicked and cruel persecutor whose ghost used to walk at Sissinghurst?
Baker's story has much of the fairy tale about it. He was known not just as a persecutor of Protestants in Mary Tudor's reign and called 'Bloody Baker' but he also came to be called 'the English Bluebeard'. And just as a reminder, here is the French Bluebeard...
Once upon a time there was a man who owned splendid town and country houses, gold and silver plate, tapestries and coaches gilt all over. He had already married several wives and no one knew what had become of them. One day his latest wife was left alone in the house and given charge of the keys and in her curiosity she decided to open the door to the Forbidden Room. At first she saw nothing for the windows were closed but after a few moments she perceived dimly that the floor was entirely covered with clotted blood and that in this were reflected the dead bodies of several women that hung along the walls. These were all the wives of Bluebeard whose throats he had cut one after another.'
Well, that is the Bluebeard of the French writer, Charles Perrault. And we, it seems, had our own English Bluebeard, another mass murderer, we are told, more or less along the lines of the French one. Sir John Baker may well be a Kent ghost but whether he deserves such a bad reputation is doubtful.
Still, they tell the tale in Kent of how one of Baker's betrothed decided to take her friend along with her to see the fine castle in which he lived in Sissinghurst. And when the friend saw the place in the distance, its long driveway and its fine gate house, its commanding turrets, its broad pitched roofs and towers, she could scarce contain her envy. And when she approached the wonderful gardens and the splendid walls and the massive oak door, she was almost speechless at the good fortune of the young girl who was to be the wife of the owner of such a fine place.
Then they pushed their way into the great hall with tits beautiful furnishings and from all over the world. And they gazed together in admiration at the splendour of it all when from behind them came a call, a fierce squawking, and as they turned, their eyes fell upon a parrot with a plumage of red and green and gold. And the parrot spoke to them thus:
'Peapot, pretty lady, be not bold
Or your blood will soon run cold.'
But they did not take notice of what they were told for they simply laughed at such a quaint message and they continued to peep here and pry there. And then they heard the master of the house approaching from outside, heard him turn the handle of the great door, heard his footsteps as he entered the hall.
'Let us hide for the sport of it,' Sir John's fiancee said. 'Let us give my loved one a surprise.' And so they hid in the stairwell and he came slowly closer and closer. As he came they saw that he carried something over his shoulder, and as he drew yet closer it was plain that what he carried was a woman's body. Nor did he see them as he mounted the stair whilst the young women below held their breath. And when he was but a few steps from the top of the stairs one of the dead woman's fingers which had a heavy ring snagged on the banisters. So he took his dagger from his waistband and chopped it off.
The finger, still with its ring in place, fell down the stairwell where the girls caught it, placed it in a neckerchief and when they could, they made their escape. They fled to the nearest town and alerted the mayor and the justices who went to make an arrest. The dead woman was recognised by the ring on her finger and the wicked Sir John Baker was caught and punished with death.
Thus the Bluebeard of Kent, Sir John Baker of Sissinghurst Castle. Hardly surprising that there is a ghost at this castle, considering such a monster of a man.
But such are reputations. Sir John Baker never really matched up to the story which came to be told about him. He was of course a significant political figure in Tudor England. He held positions of the highest rank being in turn a Member of Parliament, Attorney General, Chancellor and Speaker of the House of Commons. But it was his role in the diocese of Canterbury during the reign of Mary Tudor that most effectively earned him his reputation.
He was commissioned by the Queen to hunt out heretics - Protestants - within the diocese of Canterbury. And as a Catholic and a servant of his Queen that is precisely what he did. Whilst he most certainly questioned some over their religious allegiances and signed many a death warrant, it is most unlikely that he personally participated in torturing anyone. It is said that in a little apartment over the south porch of the parish church, known as Baker Hole, he abused those found guilty before having them burned at the stake. More likely he worked conscientiously according to his beliefs and held the view that what was being done was for the good of the country. And let us not forget that this was the 16th century.
Other stories abounded about this most hated man, stories which grew in the telling, year upon year. He was a lecher and rapist, it is said, a man who had personally slain a woman with his sword when she disobeyed him in some or other matter. And this was to be the basis of the Bluebeard tale as it attached to him.
Sir Robert Baker, by the way, contrary to the story, died in his bed at the age of seventy. He might of course have been sent to the stake himself had he lived long enough. Fortunately for him, he died just as Queen Elizabeth came to the throne and before it was the turn of the Catholics to be persecuted. One story has it that he was in his turn tortured and then buried in an iron cage which he had made for his own victims. Don't believe it.
Still, as you might expect, Baker's ghost used to walk the grounds of Sissinghurst. In more recent times a priest has been seen. But who is he? Was he walled up in the castle as some have said? Or is he a spirit anxious in some way to save the wicked soul of 'Bloody' Baker? Or does he seek revenge on that man?
Dame Dorothy and Sir John may well be among the best known ghosts of Kent but are the reputations they have been saddled with truly their own?