Could the ‘real’ Gollum be the evil goblin of Pen Park Hole in Bristol?

Wiki

The somewhat tiresome news that a new Lord of The Rings movie entitled The Hunt for Gollum is set to be released in 2026 got me thinking as to whether any ‘real’ cave dwelling Gollum/goblin/troll-like creatures were ever recorded in the British Isles.

Warner Bros. to Release New ‘Lord of the Rings’ Movie ‘The Hunt for Gollum’ in 2026, Peter Jackson to Produce and Andy Serkis to Direct

Warner Bros. will release its first new 'Lord of the Rings' movie in 2026. Andy Serkis will direct 'The Hunt for Gollum,' while Peter Jackson produces.

variety.com

And, lo and behold, my research uncovered the story of the evil goblin of Bristol’s Pen Park Hole cave, located in the Southmead district of the city.

Wikimedia Commons

Pen Park Hole was discovered accidentally in the 17th century. According to Frankie Chappie’s The Goblin’s Curse, published by The Royal Society, a letter dated 21 August 1669, sent by alchemist and writer Thomas Henshaw to politician and 1st Earl of Yarmouth Sir Robert Paston, states that the hole was discovered whilst quarrying for stone, and that the discovery was reported to King Charles II.

In Robert Hooke’s Lectures de Potentia Restitutiva (Of spring explaining the power of springing bodies) Captain Samuel Sturmy (1633-1669) states that the King commanded him to explore the hole, a sign of the royal interest in the potential financial benefit of a new mine as well as his passion for ‘novelty and prodigy’. Captain Sturmy, described as an ‘inquisitive sea man’ made the first recorded exploration in July 1669.

Current access is severely restricted by Bristol City Council and is a Site of Special Scientific Interest due to its geological origins and invertebrate community including the cave shrimp Niphargus kochianus.

Royal Society Classified Papers

A document in the Royal Society Classified Papers series contains a description of the hole and a version of Captain Sturmy’s account of his descent.

The main chamber of the Hole is 68 metres (223 ft) high, 30 metres (98 ft) long and 15 metres (49 ft) wide. The lake within it is 15 metres (49 ft) at its deepest point.

Sturmy describes the cave as having an ‘abundance of strange places, the flooring being a kind of a white stone, enameled with lead core, and the pendent rocks were lazed with salt-peter which distilled upon them from above and time had petrified’ containing ‘a river or great water, which I found to be twenty fathoms broad, and eight fathoms deep’.

Captain Sturmy - Copyright: richardvalenciaphotography

Panicked by the sight of an evil spirit

During the exploration, Sturmy was accompanied (wisely enough) by a former miner who used a ladder to investigate a ‘great hallowing in a rock some thirty foot above us’. Apparently, he found the ‘rich mine’ he was looking for but was panicked by the ‘sight of an evil Spirit’ and refused to go back. Sturmy was shocked by this incident; four days later he was afflicted by, ‘an unusual and violent headache’ which he attributed to the hole. Later that year the captain developed a fever and died shortly after. This portent, along with the report of the nasty spirit, kept explorers from descending into the hole until 13 years later in 1682.

A Captain Collins was surveying the coast in the area in 1682 and met Sir Robert Southwell (future President of the Royal Society), who told Collins the story of the hole, claiming it ‘had amused the country’, but ‘wanted only some courage, to find out the bottome of itt.’ Taking up the challenge, on the 18th and 19th September 1682, Collins descended into the cavern with a group of interested companions; no strange occurrences were reported as ‘the Candles and Torches burnt clear soe as to discover the whole extent … nor was the Ayre any thing offensive.’ There was ‘nothing else in itt except a few Batts.’

Oh, the Captain had need be a fearless soul

However, the legend of the Pen Park Hole Goblin prospered. Lived on. Reverend Thomas Newnam visited the hole in 1775 and ‘fell into this dreary Cavern.’ There were attempts to retrieve the priest’s corpse in the weeks after, but 39 long days passed until, for a bet, a fellow descended into the cave and found Newnam’s body.

In 1876, a poem entitled ‘The Goblin’s Curse’ about Sturmy’s expedition was published in the Bristol Mercury and Daily Post. The verses include the following Gollum-ish lines:

What a hideous shape! What goggle eyes!

What a head, exceeding the body in size!

What a strange, repulsive, scaly skin!

What a tongue that goes out as the eyes go in!

But uglier far is that horrible grin,

Less like a laugh than a spiteful sneer,

Which seems to extend from ear to ear!

Oh, the Captain had need be a fearless soul

To tackle the Goblin of Pen Park Hole!

"Bravo, my Captain!" the Goblin cried,

Swaying himself from side to side,

And parting his lips, to show beneath

A couple of rows of faultless teeth!

"Bravo, my Captain! so you've come down

All the way from Bristol town!

And you are the man with pluck so high

Who dares the Goblin's curse defy!

Bravo ! Now watch, and in my lake

I'll angle—and yours be the fish I take!"

Gollum at w:Supanova Pop Culture Expo 2014 (Wikimedia Commons)

Pen Park Hole

www.penparkhole.org.uk

The goblin's curse | Royal Society

A document in the archives of the Royal Society explores the dark legend of Pen Park Hole in Bristol.

royalsociety.org

The Coblynau can be thought of as a Welsh 'Goblin'.

The Hunt for Gollum is a well-reviewed 2009 British fantasy fan film based on the appendices of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy:

Incidentally, as a lad I dwelt in the leafy London suburb of Pinner, not especially noted for Gollum-like creatures, but home to some extensive medieval and later chalk mines, one of which caved in and damaged the junior school I was a once a pupil at:

Pinner school faces closure after chalk mine discovery

Geological surveys have found the ground beneath the Pinner Wood School is unstable.

www.bbc.co.uk

The area also has connections with much older civilisations, as evidenced by the ancient ‘Weald Stone’ and Celtic Grim’s Dyke in the wooded Old Redding area.

The history of the 'Weald Stone' in Harrow Weald - Harrow Online

The "Weald Stone" in Harrow is an ancient monument, said to mark the boundary between Harrow and Harrow Weald. It's a big, unmarked rock sitting on the

harrowonline.org

Other interesting cave complexes relatively nearby:

Stephen Arnell’s historical novel, THE GREAT ONE, now on Amazon Kindle:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-One-Secret-Memoirs-Pompey-ebook/dp/B0BNLTB2G7

Skeptics and Parapsychologists Have Something in Common

A new paper published in Frontiers in Psychology examines the similarities and differences between skeptics, parapsychologists, (scientists who study psychic ability), and believers in psychic ability. It challenges the idea that skeptics somehow possess different or superior thinking skills in evaluating the evidence for psychic ability. Here’s the introduction:

Introduction: Belief in psi, which includes psychic phenomena such as extra-sensory perception and post-mortem survival, is widespread yet controversial. According to one of the leading and perhaps most tested hypotheses, high belief in psi can be explained by differences in various aspects of cognition, including cognitive styles. Most of this research has been conducted with lay individuals. Here, we tested the hypothesis that academic researchers who investigate psi may exhibit different cognitive styles than lay individuals interested in psi, and are more similar to skeptics.

And this was their overall conclusion:

Discussion: Our research shows that academics who work with psi differ from lay psi individuals, but not from skeptics, in actively open-minded thinking. In other words, despite their high belief in psi phenomena, psi researchers demonstrate a commitment to sound reasoning about evidence that is no different from that of skeptics.

One of the myths that this research dispels is that skeptics are somehow superior critical thinkers when it comes to psychic research. This is certainly consistent with my own observations over the years. I have personally never seen any case where skeptics demonstrated superior skills at evaluating parapsychological research, or indeed, anything related to the paranormal or psychic ability at all. At best, they are equal in their critical thinking and at worst, they demonstrate obvious biases in their evaluations.

A very important aspect of this discussion is the idea of objective vs. subjective experience. This line isn’t clear cut and there is a lot of ambiguity on the table. What this means is that people who rely on their subjective experiences to create their worldview aren’t necessarily worse thinkers, only different in what they rely on. Objectivity itself relies ultimately on choosing what data to believe.

Better Informed Equals better at Being Objective

Also, lay individuals, whether skeptics or experiencers, were generally worse at critical thinking. No surprise there either. Objective evaluation is a scholarly skill that has to be learned. In general, lay skeptics and experiencers tend more towards knee jerk reactions to data that they don’t like and both exhibit more defensiveness over their positions.

A lot of bias comes from having an emotional attachment to a particular position. Spending more time with a subject includes careful considerations of contrary positions, which in turn will slowly erode strong emotions surrounding a subject and introduce more objectivity.

So these study results shouldn’t be very surprising. Informed people are better at evaluating a subject than uninformed people. Having said that, my long history with the controversies in parapsychology tells me that the situation is decidedly more complicated. This has less to do with logic and rational thinking and more to do with the nature of psychic ability. Believers are not really believers and skeptics aren’t really skeptics. There are deeper layers to this situation.

Who is Really the Believer?

Belief implies a reliance on faith without evidence and skepticism implies objectively examining evidence and not drawing unsupported conclusions. Yet “believers” often rely on evidence, it’s merely a question of interpretation and how much evidence they think that they need. And skeptics often begin from their own sets of beliefs before they examine evidence.

One complication comes from the self reporting nature of the study. It can only measure people’s view of themselves, not the accuracy of their self reflection.

For example, when examining beliefs about psychic ability, it is important to establish the reality of psychic ability first. If, for example, we were examining a discussion about whether trees exist, we would immediately divide that group into rational people who know that trees exist and irrational people who did not believe in trees.

The believers in trees would not be criticized for being inflexible about the reality of trees nor would their critical thinking skills be questioned for refusing to entertain any discussion about it, rather the tree skeptics would be criticized as tree deniers. The entire narrative completely flips depending on what we agree is real.

Who is the Rational One?

So if it’s assumed that psychic ability is real, then of course people are not going to be open to changing their minds about it. Doubt about whether a particular experience is real is weighed against whether it is within the boundaries of ordinary psychic experiences. If psychic experiences are not considered to be exceptional, then the bar for acceptance is not very high. In this case the classification of “believer” is grossly misleading because they are operating on knowledge based on experience, not on personal beliefs.

The other thing to consider is that skeptics tend to talk big about being open minded, and often sincerely believe this to be true about themselves, but in practice most of them demonstrate just the opposite to be true. What passes for careful rationality and critical thinking is often just pride and stubbornness with a lot of ego mixed in. So a skeptic might claim that their mind can be changed by evidence, but when push comes to shove, it gradually becomes obvious that no evidence will ever be enough. In the study, this was somewhat acknowledged by measuring a “need for closure.” While this is certainly related to stubbornness, there may still be a gap between what a person thinks about themselves and what they actually do.

Measuring Skeptical Stubbornness

Skeptical stubbornness is difficult to uncover because it requires repeatedly probing the skeptic to see whether they will change their mind in the face of contrary evidence, but revealing this trait is extremely important in evaluating their critical thinking skills. Part of stubbornness is the belief that one isn’t being stubborn, merely holding steadfast to the truth, so a survey or a psych test that is not designed to specifically uncover this is probably insufficient.

For example, if you asked a skeptic if sufficient evidence would change their mind, they would say that yes, it would. If you instead forced them to quantify exactly what evidence would definitively change their mind, (a successful telepathy test? A personal experience?) they would likely refuse to commit to a concrete answer that would force them to concede, or choose an answer that will always be out of reach. Either path demonstrates stubbornness and a deficiency in critical thinking.

When it comes to these two things: sorting out whether belief is actually experience or whether claims of being open minded and objective are just lip service, it’s very hard for academic studies to sort these two things out, but they have huge ramifications for the conclusions. The flaky believer magically transforms into an open minded holistic thinker and the critically thinking skeptic becomes a stubborn fool.

Know Your Universe Before Passing Judgment

This is an important point because evidence is mounting that we live in a universe where consciousness, not the material world, is fundamental to reality. In that case, reality itself is relative to the observer, which must necessarily change our perception about what constitutes belief vs. reality. It no longer becomes a question of whether someone is correctly viewing reality, but about how far off they are from what is often referred to as “consensus reality.”

The takeaway here is that I think that we have to be careful in our assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of “believers” and “skeptics.” It is a question with far more depth and nuance than first appears. If we don’t question our underlying assumptions, we may lose sight of thinking processes that are far more complex than first appears.

London's Cabinets of Curiosities: Here be Monsters...and John Dee

A fake merman from Netherlands, 1800-1900. Science Museum, London (Wikimedia Commons)

Cabinets of curiosities, also known as ‘wonder-rooms’, were esoteric collections of objects whose precise rules were undefined. With the growth of world trade and growing interest in early modern science, all sorts of objects were brought back to Europe (and later the USA) to be shown off by the wealthy with a taste for the bizarre, occult-tinged, and vaguely salacious, all under the guise of expanding common knowledge.

John Dee - man of many curiosities

Wikipedia

John Dee performing an experiment before Queen Elizabeth I by Glindoni (1913, Wikimedia Commons)

English scholar, mathematician, magician, astronomer, and Queen Elizabeth I’s astrologer, John Dee (1527–1608), was known for his interest in the occult and possession of various cabinets of curiosities. The British Museum displays objects once owned by Dee, including Dee's Speculum - an obsidian Aztec-made demon-summoning device in the shape of a hand mirror, a crystal ball, and various amulets.

An entire article could be devoted to the enlightening life story of John Dee and his scientific interest in alchemy, alongside other eminent scientists of the time, but the following points of interest will have to suffice for now:

“According to MacTutor History of Mathematics biographers J J O'Connor and E F Robertson (2002), before becoming the Queen’s astrologer and, according to some historians, her ‘spy’, on 28 May 1555, Dee was arrested and charged with "calculating". At this time, mathematics in England was considered to be equivalent to the possession of magical powers. Although he was guilty of the charges brought against him, Dee was released in August.

On 15 January 1556, he presented plans for a national library to Queen Mary but failed to receive official backing. Possibly because Mary instigated a campaign against eminent Protestants which included his father Roland Dee who was arrested and taken prisoner in August 1553. He was released after being deprived of all his financial assets.

Queen Mary died in 1558 and the Protestant Elizabeth became Queen. Dee quickly found favor with and was even asked to use his astrological skills to select the most appropriate day for her coronation.

In 1568 he published Propaedeumata Aphoristica and presented the work to Queen Elizabeth. Elizabeth was impressed and Dee gave her mathematics lessons to enable her to understand it. The book contains a mixture of good physics and mathematics, and also a lot of astrology and magic. Let us emphasise that we should not think any the less of Dee because of his interests in magic; most of the great scientists and mathematicians of his time, and much later, had such interests. For example Brahe firmly believed in alchemy and astrology as did Cavalieri and Kepler while Newton, like Dee, was obsessed with studying alchemy.

Despite becoming close to Queen Elizabeth, and frequently advising her, he never achieved from her the financial security that he longed for to enable him to devote himself completely to his studies and quest to to understand the ultimate truths about the universe.

According to Gwyn A.Williams, author of When was Wales?: A History of the Welsh (1985), as a political advisor, Dee advocated the foundation of English colonies in the New World to form a "British Empire”, a term he is credited with coining.

We note that in his diaries, Dee refers to himself as Δ, a clever pun on the fact that Δ is the Greek character for the letter "dee" and also a magical symbol.”

The Mystical Artefacts Of John Dee At The British Museum

As Damon Albarn writes a musical about the 16th Century mystic, we track down his magical gizmos.

londonist.com

Allin's Cabinet of Curiosities

The heyday of the Cabinet was from around the late 15th century to around the 1750s, when Enlightenment thinking began to regard the collections as vulgar and rather déclassé, a bit ‘naff’ in other words.

Case in point, in England, Birmingham’s 'Allin's Cabinet of Curiosities'.

Wikimedia Commons

‘In Allin’s cabinet there were taxidermied animals; ‘birds of all kinds and beasts of rare creation’ and in the image above there are two birds on the window ledge of the first floor window. Also on display were ‘shells, medals [and] foreign coins from every nation’, and Allin had his own coin struck advertising his shop and his miniature panorama. The scenes in his panorama changed on alternate days, unlike the full scale panorama nearby on New Street, which changed, usually, monthly. He also boasts of a 'crooked telescope that views straight', a mirror that distorts the image and a model of the solar system.’

Tour of Lost Birmingham Nᵒ.8: Birmingham's 'Old Curiosity Shop' (Ann Street & Congreve Street)

Circa 1740s-1874 ~Reproduction from the 1870s of John Allin’s business (run from c. 1785-1813), made by his great-grandson Clement Sel...

mappingbirmingham.blogspot.com

There were of course later exceptions, such as New York’s Hobby Club (1908-17), a businessmen’s dining club which showcased ‘cabinets of wonder’ and selected collections of their unique interests.

The club constitution read, "This Club shall be called THE HOBBY CLUB. The object of the Club shall be to encourage the collection of literary, artistic and scientific works; to aid in the development of literary, artistic and scientific matters; to promote social and literary intercourse among its members, and the discussion and consideration of various literary and economic subjects."

Annals of the Hobby club of New York city, 1912-1920

babel.hathitrust.org

Reminiscent in some ways of the ‘Club of the Damned’, the setting for the BBC1 TV series Supernatural (1977), where prospective members were required to tell a horror story, their application judged on how frightening the story was. Those who failed to tell a sufficiently chilling tale were killed.

One of the club’s entrance stories, presented for you, dear reader:

In 2022, Netflix premiered Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities; rather a good show, but little really to do with actual Cabinets.

Today, the Cabinet of Curiosities is making a something comeback, alongside the renewed interest in already extant collections.

The US

Alex Jordan’s House on the Rock in Spring Green, Wisconsin , boasts a collection of various functioning automata.

Rhode Island’s Musée Patamécanique contains works representing the field of ‘Patamechanics.’ Patamechanics is an artistic practice and area of study inspired by 'pataphysics’, a concept invented by French writer Alfred Jarry (1873-1907) who asserts that the systems of order we live by are ultimately human creations.

VIDEOS | museepata

www.museepata.org

Houston’s Museum of Natural Science houses its own Cabinet of Curiosities, and in Los Angeles, the Museum of Jurassic Technology ventures to replicate the thrill that the old cabinets of curiosity once invoked.

In July 2021, the UK saw a ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’ room opened at The Whitaker Museum & Art Gallery in Rawtenstall, Lancashire.

Collections - The Whitaker Museum

www.thewhitaker.org

In Yorkshire’s very pretty village of Haworth (home of the Brontës) stands The Cabinet of Curiosities, a shop, not a museum, but nicely rendered, nevertheless.

The Cabinet of Curiosities

The Cabinet of Curiosities. Travellers, Seekers &a Finders. Makers of Botanical Soaps, Candles & Bath Preparations. Merchants of Extraordinary Gifts.

www.thecuriositysociety.com

In my own abode, I have an extensive collection of what I have termed ‘Knick-Knackery’ which includes some authentic and inauthentic objects of interest from around the globe, displayed for the visitor’s amusement and awe. Gewgaws, sculptures, Roman and Greek spoila, coins, engravings, machines, medals, toys, and the like.

Chez Arnell

Where to find curious collections in London

Confining myself to London, here are some (usually free) establishments where Paranormal Daily News readers can gaze and wonder at all sort of bizarre esoterica:

Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Rd., London NW1 2BE

The library

Our library’s collections cover thousands of years of health and medicine across different cultures.

wellcomecollection.org

The Science Museum, Exhibition Rd, South Kensington, London SW7 2DD

Home | Science Museum

The home of human ingenuity, come and visit award-winning exhibitions, iconic objects and stories of incredible scientific achievement for free.

www.sciencemuseum.org.uk

The Horniman Museum, 100 London Rd, London SE23 3PQ

Fossil Folklore - Horniman Museum and Gardens

Visitor Host Vicky tells about some of the myths that surrounds fossils, which inspired her gallery tour at the Horniman - fossil folklore.

www.horniman.ac.uk

The Hunterian Museum, The Royal College of Surgeons of England 38, 43 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PE

Hunterian Collection

hunterianmuseum.org

ESPECIALLY: The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History, 11 Mare St, London E8 4RP

The collection includes curiosities such as hairballs, two-headed lambs and Fiji mermaids, dodo bones and extinct bird feathers, as well as the skeleton of a giant anteater. It also includes Sebastian Horsley's nails from his crucifixion (I knew Sebastian as a fellow member of Soho’s notorious Colony Room Club), human remains including shrunken heads, tribal skulls, dead babies in bottles and pickled genitalia of sex workers, tribal art from New Guinea, plus scientific and medical instruments. It also houses celebrity excrement, erotica and contraceptive sheaths used by the Rolling Stones.

The Viktor Wynd Museum Of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History

The Country's only Curiosity Museum - 11 Mare Street London E8 4RP

thelasttuesdaysociety.org

Grant Museum, Rockefeller Building, 21 University St, London WC1E 6DE

Grant Museum of Zoology

www.ucl.ac.uk

The John Soane Museum, 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3BP

Homepage | Sir John Soane's Museum

www.soane.org

British Museum, Great Russell St, London WC1B 3DG

https://www.britishmuseum.org/

The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Rd, South Kensington, London SW7 5BD

Home | Natural History Museum

Book tickets. Explore our galleries, science, news, videos and amazing images. South Kensington Tube. London, UK.

www.nhm.ac.uk

The Victoria and Albert Museum, Cromwell Rd, London SW7 2RL

The family of art, design and performance museums · V&A

Welcome to the V&A – the family of art, design and performance museums

www.vam.ac.uk

Tipu Sultan's Tiger (Wikimedia Commons)

And just down the road from me in the Bedfordshire market town of Leighton Buzzard, the ‘Ravens Folly’ museum of oddities:

Author’s own

Stephen Arnell’s book THE GREAT ONE is available now on Amazon Kindle:

The Great One : The Secret Memoirs of Pompey the Great eBook : Arnell, Stephen: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

The Great One : The Secret Memoirs of Pompey the Great eBook : Arnell, Stephen: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

www.amazon.co.uk

The Old Curiosity Shop (1995)

References

John Dee Biography https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Dee/

Tower of London Mystery: Hew Draper, the Vanishing Sorcerer

Hew Draper's Zodiac (Wikimedia Common)

The Salt Tower is part of the Tower of London, typically used as a prison for both noble personages (the comfortable upper levels) and the lower runs of society (the dungeons). Many carved images and religious tracts into the walls protesting their innocence or indulging in more esoteric practices. One such captive was Hew Draper, a 16th-century Bristol innkeeper (‘vintner’) who got sent to the Tower in 1560 for attempted sorcery. Specifically: cursing Lady Elizabeth St. Loe, better known as ‘Bess of Hardwick’ and husband William St. Loe; Bess being one of the most powerful and wealthy figures of Elizabethan England. The couple held sizeable estates at Tormarton near Bristol, disputes over which may have been the reason for the Draper’s alleged malediction.

Tower of London - The Salt Tower

The Salt Tower, one of the 21 towers which make up the Tower of London complex, was built in the late 1230's and is part of King Henry III's curtain wall which surrounds the fortress

www.englishmonarchs.co.uk

Graffiti At The Tower Of London | Spitalfields Life

spitalfieldslife.com

H

Tower of London walls adorned 300 surviving examples of prisoners’ graffiti

Hew claimed he had once been interested in magic, but had since rid himself of his spell books (burned), but his engravings point to an educated man with a deep knowledge of the mystic arts.

On one wall, he carved a detailed astrological sphere with Zodiacal signs, demonstrating Draper's deep belief in the power of the stars, on which he wrote: "Hew Draper of Brystow made this spheere the 30 day of Maye anno 1561."

Close to Draper’s Zodiac is an even more adeptly crafted craving, that of a bronze astrological globe. These are probably the most proficient of the 300 surviving examples of prisoners’ graffiti at The Tower of London. Certain scholars believe the position of the inscriptions - both of which were made very low to the ground in his cell - suggest he was seriously ill when he made them.

Others suspect he drew the inscriptions there simply to hide them from the Tower Guard’s cursory probes.

Sir Benjamin Stone (1838-1914) - Carving by Hew Draper on the wall of his cell in the Salt Tower

Photograph of a carving on the wall of the Salt Tower at the Tower of London. The carving was made by Hew Draper, an innkeeper from Bristol accused of practising sorcery and imprisoned in the Salt Tower in 1561. Draper claimed that, although he had been interested in magic, he had destroyed all his magical books. During his imprisonment he carved a huge astrological sphere with Zodiacal signs on the wall of his cell, alongside the inscription: Hew Draper of Brystow made this...

www.rct.uk

Did Hew Draper Magic himself away from the Tower of London?

Draper was no scholar, priest, or a gentleman, but a freethinking, educated everyman from Tudor, Bristol who attempted to achieve a measure of earthly power through arcane means, in the manner of Queen Elizabeth I’s Welsh-descended court astronomer Doctor John Dee, also a famed occultist, and alchemist.

But what happened to Draper?

There is no record of his death in the detailed annals of the Towers nor any mention of an escape. Draper simply disappears from the archives. Perhaps, like the Marvel comic character Doctor Strange, Hew somehow either fashioned or acquired a kind of interdimensional ‘Sling Ring’ and magicked himself from the confines of the dreaded Salt Tower?

Whatever became of Hew Draper, his supposed enemy Bess of Hardwick continued to thrive, so maybe he didn’t hold a grudge. Or, recognizing Draper’s sorcerous skills, she helped free him, then used the mage as a confederate in her schemes, aping the relationship between Elizabeth and Dee?

Bess went on to live to 87, a VERY great age, even today. Almost supernaturally so, some might say.

THE SALT TOWER

The Salt Tower (Wikimedia Commons)

DRAPER’S GLOBE

Wikimedia Commons

Doctor John Dee

Briefly, Dr John Dee was the court astronomer for, and advisor to Elizabeth I, and as an antiquarian, he had one of the largest libraries in England at the time. Dee left Elizabeth's service to seek deeper, dark knowledge in the realms of the occult and supernatural. He enjoyed (if that’s the right word) many adventures on the continent, acquiring the reputation as both a sorcerer and spy of his ‘former’ employer. Upon his return to England and the Queen’s official service, he found his home ransacked, the library stolen and ‘scientific’ instruments missing.

After the Queen’s death in 1603, Dee was shunned; he died in poverty aged 81 in 1608/09, his grave unknown. In 2013 a memorial plaque to Dee was placed on the south wall of the present church of St Mary’s in Mortlake, where he resided in later years.

John Dee of Mortlake Society-Home

web.archive.org

John Dee performing an experiment before Queen Elizabeth I (Wikimedia Commons)

Dee’s astrological chart - in his own hand

Wikimedia Commons

John Dee and Edward Kelly evoking a spirit (Wikimedia Commons)

And turning to ‘fiction’, the virtually contemporary figure of Doctor Faustus...

Faust, the protagonist of a Teutonic legend, was supposedly based on the real-life magician/physician/Doctor of Philosophy/sodomite/alchemist/astrologer and trickster, Johann Georg Faust (c. 1480–1540). Grimoires or magical texts later attributed to Faust are artificially dated to his lifetime, either to "1540", or to "1501", "1510", etc., some even to unreasonably early dates, such as "1405" and "1469".

An educated but deeply dissatisfied man, the fictional Faust makes a pact with Satan, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and all the pleasures the world can offer.

Dr Faustus by Cristopher Marlowe (1616 - Wikimedia Commons)

The Faust timeline:

Notizen zum Faust

Faust - Fakten und Variationen

web.archive.org

Faust - Marlowe

Faust - Goethe

And this from Doctor Who - The Masque of Mandragora (S14, 1976); in Renaissance Italy, astrologer Hieronymous (Norman Jones) seeks to summon the power of an intelligence called the Mandragora Helix to rule the Earth.

My own explorations in the area:

The University of Hull

More reading:

Magic and Witchcraft

www.tudorplace.com.ar

Renaissance Natural Philosophy Criticism: Astrology: Its Practice and Extent - Keith Thomas - eNotes.com

Renaissance Natural Philosophy Criticism - Astrology: Its Practice and Extent - Keith Thomas

www.enotes.com

Treating Wounds With Magic - JSTOR Daily

Spoiler alert: It doesn't work.

daily.jstor.org

Stephen Arnell’s novel THE GREAT ONE is available on Amazon Kindle. His second book, THE FORTUNATE ONE will be published sometime later this year.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-One-Secret-Memoirs-Pompey-ebook/dp/B0BNLTB2G7