While many of you were enjoying the bank holiday weekend sunshine, and lighting up the BBQ, I was peering at seventeenth- and eighteenth-century texts to try to unravel a Restoration-era ghost story.
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| 'Haunting', Redon. Met Museum, Public Domain. |
The story, told in various sources in the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, concerns a man named Sir Charles Lee. His first wife had died in childbirth, but the newborn lived. A daughter, she was brought up by her mother’s sister the Lady Everard. A marriage was arranged for her with a Sir William Perkins, but until the couple were wed, the young woman lived with her aunt in Waltham in Essex while her father remained at his base in Warwickshire. One night she noticed a glow from her chamber, and called a maid to check whether she had left a lit candle in her room. The maid told her all the candles were out, and so she went to her room and settled to sleep. At 2am she woke, seeing the ‘apparition of a little woman between her curtain and her pillow, who told her she was her mother, that she was happy, and that by twelve of the clock that day she should be with her’.
She got up, went to her closet and wrote a letter, not emerging until 9am, sealing it and giving it to the Lady Everard. She told her aunt that she was convinced that she was going to die that day, and asked her to send the sealed letter to her father once she was dead. Thinking her niece had gone ‘mad’, Everard called for a physician and a surgeon to come from Chelmsford. Neither could figure out what was wrong, and, to be on the safe side, carried out a bloodletting. The young woman then called for the chaplain, and prayers were said for her. She spent the morning listening to music and singing while the bemused household watched over her, and just before twelve midday, the young woman sat down in a chair, ‘presently fetching a strong breathing or two, immediately expired, and was suddenly cold, as much wondered at by the physician and surgeon’. Sir Charles was immediately informed, and was sent the letter his daughter had written. Inside, it stated that she wished to be buried with her mother at Edmonton. It was said that her father was so upset and affected at the news that he didn’t arrive at Waltham until after his daughter had been buried. He had her body removed from its burial place and taken to Edmonton to fulfil the wishes in the letter.
The story was told to the Bishop of Gloucester by Sir Charles himself and was said to have happened in around 1662. But is there any trace of this in the historical record? As it turns out, Sir Charles Lee was a prominent man of administration and local justice during the reign of Charles II.
His father was Sir Robert Lee, from Billesley in Warwickshire. With his wife, Anne Lowe, he had a large family. They had married on 10 November 1600, during the reign of Elizabeth I, at St Peter le Poor church in London, the same year that Robert purchased the manor of Billesley for £5,000. Robert served as Lord Mayor in 1602-3 as well as Alderman of London and the couple had four daughters and four sons, although two of their sons died young. Charles was baptised on 30 June 1620 at the church his parents had married in twenty years before. At the age of 22 he was knighted by Charles I at Oxford on 28 December 1645. In 1637 his father died, and his eldest brother Robert inherited the family estates. However, in 1659 Robert died without issue, and Charles inherited the Lee estates.
Charles married four times. His first wife was Elizabeth Elwes, who died in 1652, the genealogist George Cokayne stating that she left ‘issue’, but doesn’t mention any sister, only a brother named John, who lived at Barton Court in Berkshire. Another wife was Catherine, the daughter of Sir Lionel Tollemache, and widow of Sir Charles Mordaunt, who had died in 1648. Charles was Catherine's second husband and we can assume the marriage took place fairly soon after both partners became widowed, within four years of one another. Charles married again in December 1679, to Sarah, Viscountess Corbet of Edmonton. She died in 1682. Finally, he married Letitia (or Lettice) Fisher, who was born on 20 July 1659. She is mentioned as Charles’ widow on her later marriage to Bishop John Hough in 1702. He was Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry at the time, and Hough referred to her as the ‘dear companion of my life’. She died of an illness which began in 1722, when doctors were called. Her health improved a little and she died at the end of the year, 12 November 1722. Letitia was buried in Worcester Cathedral, the bishop choosing to be buried alongside her after his death. On 28 April 1719 she wrote her will, and remembered Charles. Bequeathing diamond rings, ruby rings, diamond earrings, a diamond buckle and pearl necklace to various relatives, she wrote, ‘and in token of the respect I bear to the memory of my former husband, Sir Charles Lee, I give to his unfortunate grandchild, Mrs R. Bradshaw, one hundred pounds’.
Charles served Charles II after his Restoration to the Crown, primarily as a juror in criminal cases, such as that of Edward Coleman in 1678, who was charged with an attempt on the king’s life. He was part of the jury again at the trial, on charges of treason, of William Ireland, Thomas Pickering and John Grove in December 1678. In 1680 he appears in a list of the king’s justices at Southampton, alongside George, Duke of Buckingham. In 1689 he sold the family manor of Billesley to Bernard Whalley, a Leicestershire man, who subsequently rebuilt the parish church in 1692. Sir Charles died in the autumn of 1700 and was buried on 18 October of that year at Edmonton in Middlesex. It’s believed that one daughter survived him, named Elizabeth, who married James Mundy. They had a daughter called Catherine, who sold Sir Charles’ lands and properties in Edmonton in 1711.
It's not clear which of Sir Charles’ wives was the mother referred to in the ghost story that has become so well associated with him. Considering that the story was said to have happened in 1662, it’s possible that it was Charles’ first wife, Elizabeth, who died in 1652. His marriage to Catherine Tollemache could not have occurred earlier than 1652, and so makes it unlikely that it was her. If her mother was Elizabeth, the young girl - who was not named in the Bishop of Gloucester's account - would have been around the age of ten when she was visited by her mother’s spirit. This is also supported by the account stating that she was living with a relative, being too young to consummate an arranged marriage. It’s also possible that the vision that she experienced wasn’t a spirit at all, but neurological or medical symptoms related to the circumstances of her death, occurring so soon after the sighting. With so much still unknown about Sir Charles, and the lives of his wives and children, it is difficult to pin down the source of the legend further, until more secure evidence arises.
Do you know about the legend of the Lee ghost? Let me know in the comments below...
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Sources consulted
A catalogue of the names of all His Majesties justices ... 1680, archive.org
'Parishes: Billesley', in A History of the County of Warwick: Volume 3, Barlichway Hundred, ed. Philip Styles (London, 1945), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/warks/vol3/pp58-61 [accessed 3 May 2025].
John Eardley-Wilmot, The life of the Rev. John Hough, D.D., successively bishop of Oxford, Lichfield and Coventry, and Worcester: formerly president of St. Mary Magdalen College, Oxford, in the reign of King James II. Containing many of his letters, and biographical notices of several persons with whom he was connected, 1812, archive.org
The tryals of William Ireland, Thomas Pickering,... 1678, archive.org
Augusta Elizabeth Brickdale Corbet, The family of Corbet; its life and times. 1914. Archive.org
William Robinson, The history and antiquities of the parish of Edmonton, in the county of Middlesex. Comprising an account of the manors, the church, and Southgate chapel ... 1819. Via archive.org
Edward Coleman, 1888. The tryal of Edward Coleman, gent., for conspiring the death of the King, and the subversion of the government of England, archive.org
George E. Cokayne, Some account of the Lord Mayors and Sheriffs of the city of London, during the first quarter of the seventeenth century, 1601-1625. 1897, archive.org
Richard Boulton, A compleat history of magick, sorcery, and witchcraft; ... 1715: Vol 1, archive.org
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