The White Bird of the Oxenhams

We are all familiar with Conan Doyle’s fictional Baskerville family, who were plagued by the apparition of a ghostly hound. The beast’s first appearance is documented in the ancient tract which Doctor Mortimer reads to Sherlock Holmes during his consultation.

Perhaps Conan Doyle was inspired by the story of the White Bird of the Oxenham family. The phenomenon dates back to the early years of the 17th century, being mentioned in 1618, 1635 and then 1645, when it appeared in Magna Britannica by Daniel and Samuel Lysons. It is an intriguing tale of an omen of death which was attached to the family and followed its members around Devon. 

It is believed that a white, or white-breasted, bird sometimes appears to members of the Oxenham family shortly before their death. It has been variously described as a dove, a thrush or a ring ouzel. The family were from South Zeal, although some stories link them to Zeal Monachorum, including that of John Oxenham, who died in 1635 after being visited by the white bird. Other stories are earlier still; the 1618 example tells of John’s own grandmother Grace seeing the bird above her sick-bed. However, this does not appear to have been documented, so we will begin our exploration with John and his family.

John was in his early twenties, extremely tall, around 6’ 6”, and very pious, a quality often linked to the Oxenhams. John fell ill and two days before his death, “there appeared the likeness of a bird with a white breast, hovering over him,” explains Richard W Cotton in his 1882 study of the phenomenon. It is interesting that he uses the term “likeness”. There is nothing to suggest that the white bird was real; in fact, Cotton quotes Rev. Walter Gregor, writing for the Folklore Society in 1881, who points out that many members of the Oxenham family regarded the bird as being beneficent rather than a threat. Although it was a harbinger of death, it was also interpreted as a message that they would be received into Heaven, there to enjoy eternal happiness.  Yet Mrs Bray, writing in Traditions, Legends, Superstitions and Sketches of Devon (1838), employs negative imagery and similes in her description. She writes of the bird as “fatal to that house” and raising “a cry of augery and evil”, vanishing as soon as its task is done. She uses female pronouns to describe the bird. 

The story was sufficiently curious to inspire a 20-page tract to be published in 1641, and it seems to be this document on which the Lysons based the description in the Magna Britannica. Sadly, the document is anonymous, but two copies remain, one in the British Museum and the other in the Bodleian Library.

Briefly, the details in the tract are given as follows:

At the time of his death, John Oxenham appears to have been in the company of two men, Robert Woodley and Humphry King, who were later questioned by the parish minister as to what had occurred. Mention is made of their good standing and honesty, no doubt to lend weight and substance to their testimony. 

Shortly after John’s death, his sister-in-law Thomazine, wife of his younger brother James, also saw a white bird hovering above her as she lay ill. She is described as a pious, amiable woman, who was charitable and well-liked by her neighbours. Again, there were two witnesses, Elizabeth Frost and Joan Tooker, whose many virtues were emphasised and who were questioned about the appearance of the bird by the minister.

Next to succumb was Thomazine’s eight year-old sister Rebeccah, a gentle, docile, courteous child, who died peacefully after seeing the bird hovering over her. This time, the witnesses were Mary Stephens and Elizabeth Avery, who also witnessed the death of James and Thomazine’s baby daughter, named Thomazine after her mother, who died a few days afterwards. 

The death of baby Thomazine is interesting, as the child was described as “being in a cradle” and was thus unlikely to be able to verbalise what she could see. It is easy to imagine the adults and young Rebeccah describing the bird as it hovered above their beds, with those present later testifying to what was said, but what about baby Thomazine? Were the ladies fabricating the story, and if so, why? Were they themselves also able to see the bird? This seems to be the implication, hence the involvement of the minister. Did people perhaps believe that they were seeing an incarnation of the Holy Spirit? Sadly, the descriptions given by the witnesses are not mentioned, so we do not know if they likened it to a dove; the tract’s lengthy title mentions a white-breasted bird. However, the tract implies that whatever they saw, all of the witnesses gave consistent descriptions, suggesting that they all saw the same thing at different times on different days and in connection with different members of the Oxenham family.

Four other family members were ill at this time, but none of them saw the apparition of the white bird and all of them subsequently recovered. 

This document appears to be the source of the 1618 appearance of the bird, which contemporaneous local writers, such as Thomas Westcote, had not mentioned in their works. This suggests that the story really only gained traction as a “local legend” after the deaths of John, Rebeccah and the two Thomazines. In fact, Cotton goes so far as to state that had the story been widely known while Westcote was writing View of Devonshire in 1630, “it would scarcely have escaped so inveterate a gossip.” 

The story of the white bird has been entwined with the fortunes of the Oxenham family down the centuries. 

There are a number of families in Britain who claim a legend of a ‘fetch’ – an apparition which appears to foretell of a death. These apparitions may be said to appear in many different forms, but they are often the images of animals such as hares or foxes. Black Dogs are very common in this role. Catherine Crowe, in her 1848 book The Night Side of Nature, describes an example from Cornwall:

“…a family in Cornwall who are also warned on an approaching death by the apparition of a black dog, and a very curious example is quoted in which a lady, newly married into the family, and knowing nothing of the tradition, came down from the nursery to request her husband would go up and drive away a black dog that was lying on the child’s bed. He went up and found the child dead.” 

The Oxenham family is a very old one in Devon and probably first settled in South Tawton, where a large estate was established. As we have learned, the apparitions of the white bird have been said to have appeared to the branch of the Oxenham family who settled at Zeal Monachorum, a village about seven miles distant of South Tawton and the same from Crediton. Zeal was originally written as Sale, Sele or Zele and the village name means ‘cell of the monks’. This does not relate to a cell in the prison sense however, rather that the manor here was given to Buckfast Abbey in 1018 by King Cnut, hence the village becoming a cell. But other sources place them at South Zeal, which is in the area of South Tawton. 

There is a lot of confusion here which is very hard to unpick. The registers of Zeal Monachorum do not contain any entries for Oxenham family members. The South Tawton registers do have John and James Oxenham but no record of the baptisms or burials of Thomazine or Rebecca. There is also no trace of James (the younger) in the registers either. 

The appearances of the white bird connected with the deaths of John Oxenham and some of his children obviously had quite an effect on the members of the family who survived, because they took the decision to record them on a monument which, with the approval of the bishop, was to be placed in the church; at least according to the contemporary tract on the subject. The work was said to have been undertaken by a tomb maker in Fleet Street named Edward Marshall. But did any of this take place either?

In 1645, a clerk to the Privy Council in London named James Howell published the book Familiar Letters which detailed his travels around Europe. In this book, Howell tells how he visited the Fleet Street shop (to arrange a tombstone for his father) and whilst there, how he saw a large marble. He wrote the inscription down from memory in the letter:

“Here lies John Oxenham a goodly young man, in whose Chamber, as he was struggling with the pangs of death, a Bird with a White-brest was seen fluttering about his Bed, and so vanish’d.

Here lies also Mary Oxenham the sister of the said John, who died the next day, and the same Apparition was seen in the Room (…)

Here lies hard by James Oxenham, the son of the said John, who died a child in his cradle a little after, and such a Bird was seen fluttering about his head, a little before he expir’d, which vanish’d afterwards.

Here lies Elizabeth Oxenham, the Mother of the said John, who died 16 years since, when such as Bird with a White-Brest was seen about her Bed before her death.”

The names and circumstances in this letter vary from the details recorded in the original tract. So does this mean that this letter is apocryphal? Howell does state that he is recording these details from memory. Maybe memory failed him fairly significantly? Some critics have wholly dismissed this letter because of the variance in details with the people.

The marble, according to Howell’s letter, also contained a whole list of names of worthy people who had borne witness to these events – squires and ladies of the area. 

Many, if not all, of Howell’s letters were written while he was in prison, and were ‘invented letters’ – that is, they were not designed to be sent to the person to whom they were addressed in their openings but were just written to record interesting events. The dates on the letters (which do not tally correctly with the Oxenham events) were most likely also invented. It is probable that Howell never saw the monument, but rather said that he had in order to make for an interesting piece of writing. 

There is no doubt that the story of the marble monument is a curious one, as if it existed, it never reached the church for which it was intended. The witnesses described as being named on the monument don’t seem to be real people – there is no local evidence for them. It was, however, a common practice for the authors of ballads and chapbooks to invent witnesses to give their stories veracity.

In 1791, a collection of writings of Sir William Pole was published. The book was aiming to be a survey of the county of Devon. Pole had died in 1635 and had referred in his work to “Oxenham, the land of Wm. Oxenham”. That was his only entry on the family and he had certainly made no mention of the bird. Pole’s son, Sir John, who could easily have read the tract or Howell’s letters, extended the entry later to read:

“Oxenham, the land of Wm. Oxenham, the father of John, the grandfather of Will, father of another John, grandfather of James, whose tombstone respects a strange wonder of this family, that at their deaths were still seen a bird with a white brest, which fluttering for a while about their beds suddenly vanish away…”

So, was the story of the White Bird of the Oxenhams without any substance? The famous Devon survey writer Tristram Risdon lived near South Tawton and knew nothing of it.  Did the whole legend develop from the original tract? 

Continuing our exploration of the phenomenon of the White Bird of the Oxenhams, let’s discuss about the fabled Oxenham tombstone, described in detail in 1645 by James Howell, a Clerk to the Privy Council, which he had apparently seen in the Fleet Street shop of tomb-maker Edward Marshall. 

Although this tombstone is mentioned in the writings of Sir William Pole (d.1635), it has proven impossible to trace what must have been a sizeable piece of marble. The manner in which it is mentioned in Pole’s ‘Collections’ (pub. 1791) suggests that it had actually been erected, although it is also entirely possible that Pole was simply reading the printed tract detailing the story.

It is interesting that no trace of this imposing memorial has ever been found in Devon, despite numerous enquiries over the years. Richard W. Cotton, writing about the phenomenon in 1882, reasonably points out that if it were to be found anywhere, the two most likely places would be Zeal Monochorum or South Tawton, but there are no records to suggest that either of these parishes ever housed the memorial. Cotton muses at length about the damage done during church restorations, but does note that the memorial was already missing – if, indeed, it ever existed – long before restoration of churches became a regular occurrence. South Tawton’s church underwent a period of restoration in 1881, retaining its early 17th century floor stones. The vicar, to whom Cotton appears to have spoken in person, gave assurances that no trace of the Oxenham marble had been discovered during the works. 

In addition, although some memorials were undoubtedly removed or destroyed during restorations, it seems odd that such a fate would befall the Oxenham marble. Regardless of which parish it might have ended up in, there was sufficient local interest, of an extremely unusual nature, to make its destruction or removal unlikely. Gough, writing addenda to Camden’s “Britannica”, suggests that the marble never reached Devon in the first place. Something may have occurred during the Civil War which prevented its transportation, or perhaps it was lost in the Great Fire of 1666. To this day, the stonemason’s records no longer being in existence, Howell appears to be the only person to record that he physically laid eyes on the memorial, and we have already seen that the inconsistencies in his account make him an unreliable witness.

Unreliable or not, however, Howell’s account stirred up a great deal of interest in the topic. Learned antiquary Dr Plot was fascinated by it, featuring it prominently in his exploration of England’s curiosities. It features in Prince’s ‘Worthies of Devon’, and from there was picked up by many other writers and circulated still more widely. Howell’s ‘Familiar Letters’ was reprinted in numerous editions between 1645 and 1754 and, as a result, the story became well-known, firming up over the years into a classic example of a folk legend. 

The Oxenham family members themselves were not immune to this publicity and dissemination of their family history and it is unsurprising to learn that in 1743, the White Bird made another appearance, having apparently been dormant in the intervening years. It was reported in Magna Britannica, vol 6, that William Oxenham had died after a short illness, having seen the bird enter his room. However, Oxenham, whilst apparently accepting of the omen, stated that he was not yet ill enough to die and would cheat the bird. This happened a couple of days before he succumbed to his ailment, and was reported to topographer William Chapple, the reviewer of Risdon’s printed “Survey of Devon”. The report was made by a Dr Bent, Mr Oxenham’s brother-in-law, who had attended him in his capacity as a physician. Although this does sound rather like the tall tales we hear today which always happened to ‘the friend of a friend’, South Tawton church contains a mural memorial in its south aisle which commemorates William Oxenham, who died, much lamented by his friends, on 10th December 1743, aged 65. It is likely that William was living in Oxenham House at the time of his death.

Interestingly, William’s death was referred to over a century later, in the April 1862 edition of Gentleman’s Magazine. A well-known Tynemouth antiquary, William Sidney Gibson, quoted from a letter regarding Oxenham’s death. Some of the information was reported to have been provided or confirmed by Mrs Oxenham herself. The writer is believed to be J. Short of Middle Temple, writing to George Nares, Jr at Albury in December 1741. The letter was discovered in a book belonging to the principal of Jesus College. 

The bird was first seen outside William’s bedroom window, and later, Mrs Oxenham observed it in the room with them. She mentioned this to her husband and asked him whether he knew what bird it was. He replied that he did: “…it has been upon my face and head, and is recorded in history as always appearing to our family before their deaths; but I shall cheat the Bird.”

It appears that neither he nor his wife took any further notice of the bird after this exchange, and within a day or two, William had succumbed to his illness. 

The writer noted that Mrs Oxenham only spoke of the phenomenon when specifically asked about it, and that the bird was seen by several (sadly unidentified) people at the same time, placing it firmly in the realm of the unexplained rather than a figment of the imagination. 

Gibson suggests that the informant in the letter, a Dr Bertie, is, in fact Dr Bent, William’s brother-in-law. However, Cotton disputes this, postulating that it was the Hon. Charles Bertie LLD, who was, at the time, the Rector of Kenn in Devon. His father was the Earl of Abingdon, and his sister Anne married into the Courtenay family of Powderham. The letter actually notes that Dr Bertie gave his account to the Earl of Abingdon, adding substance to Cotton’s claim. It is likely that Mrs Oxenham, whose father William Longe lived in the nearby parish of Mamhead, was known to the Courtenays and to Dr Bertie, perhaps even relating the story of her husband’s death to them in person.

Dr Bertie and Dr Bent, who had a practice in Crediton, were both intelligent men whose accounts of William Oxenham’s death are consistent with each other. Regardless of what they believed of this strange tale, they both reported it as they heard it, their respective statuses no doubt adding a further layer of credibility to an already credible story.