St. Teath, Cornwall — April 1646
Abductee becomes a healer
A woman named Anne Jefferies fell ill and claimed to have acquired healing powers after being abducted by six ‘small people’. Anne Jefferies was the daughter of a poor laborer who lived in the parish of St. Teath. She was born in 1626, and is said to have died in 1698. When she was nineteen years old, Anne went to live as a servant in the family of Mr. Moses Pitt, where she suffered a sudden loss of consciousness. A letter from Moses Pitt to of the Right Reverend Dr. Edward Fowler, the Bishop of Gloucester, dated May 1 , 1696, explains how one day Jefferies had been knitting in an arbour in the garden when something so shocking happened to her “that she fell into a kind of Convulsion-fit.” Soon afterwards members of the family found her writhing on the ground and carried her indoors, where she was taken to her bedroom and allowed to rest. When she regained consciousness she startled everyone gathered at her bedside by crying out, “They are all just gone out of the Window; do you not see them?” This and similar outbursts were immediately “attributed to her Distemper,” her employers supposing she was suffering a bout of feverish iight-headedness.’ Anne Jefferies remained in an unstable condition for some time, unable even to “so much as stand on her Feet.” Gradually, however, she managed to recover from her sickness and by the following year was able to reassume her duties as a maid but she had not exactly become her old self again. Pitt writes that the first indication that Jefferies had acquired new skills came “one Afternoon, in the Harvest-time,” when his mother slipped and broke her leg on the way back from the mill. A servant was told to saddle a horse and fetch Mr. Hob, the surgeon, from a nearby town. “Anne Jefferies came into the room and saw Mrs. Pitt with her leg outstretched. She asked her to show her the wound, which the woman did after some persuasion, and to rest the leg on her lap. Stroking it with her hand, Anne asked whether the woman was feeling any better. My Mother confess’d to her she did. Upon this she desired my Mother to forbear sending for the Chyrurgeon, for she would, by the Blessing of God, cure her leg.” What surprised Mrs. Pitt the most was not the maid’s newfound healing powers but the fact that she seemed to know exactly when and where her fall had happened. Yet how could she? Moses writes that his mother demanded an explanation. Anne said “You know that this my Sickness and Fits came very suddenly upon me, which brought me very low and weak, and have made me very simple. Now the Cause of my Sickness was this. I was one day knitting of Stockings in the Arbour in the Gardens, and there came over the Garden-hedge of a sudden six small People, all in green Clothes, which put me into such a Fright and Consternation that was the Cause of this my great Sickness; and they continue their Appearance to me, never less that 2 at a time, nor never more than 8: they always appear in even Numbers, 2, 4, 6, 8. When I said often in my Sickness, They were just gone out of the Window, it was really so; altho you thought me light-headed (…) And thereupon in that Place, and at that time, in a fair Path you fell, and hurt your Leg. I would not have you send for a Chyrurgeon, nor trouble your self, for I will cure your Leg.” From that time on, Anne Jefferies became famous throughout England as a faithhealer and fairy contactee. Moses Pitt writes that “People of all Distempers, Sicknesses, Sores, and Ages” travelled from far and wide to Cornwall to see the girl and receive her magical treatment. She charged no fee for her work.” Unfortunately, so many strange goings on and her growing reputation as a seer worried the local authorities. They sent “both the Neighboro-Magistrates and Ministers” to question the maid on the nature of her supernatural contacts. Despite hearing Anne Jefferies’ “very rational Answers to all the Questions they then ask’d her,” her interrogators concluded that the spirits she spoke to were “the Delusion of the Devil,” and they “advised her not to go to them when they call’d her.” Not long after this, the Justice of the Peace in Cornwall, John Tregagle Esq., issued a warrant for her arrest. Jefferies spent three months in Bodmin Gaol. When she was finally freed it was decided that she could not return to the house of the Pitts, so she went to stay with Moses Pitt’s aunt, Mrs. Francis Tom, near Padstow. There “she liv’d a considerable time, and did many great Cures,” but later moved into her own brother’s house and eventually married.
Source: Letter from Moses Pitt to the Bishop of Gloucester in Robert Hunt, Popular Romances of West England (1871). Case: W199