| Chapter 1: | The Traditional Story, the Revisionist Story, and the Story |
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glanced up at the words in the center of the arch above them, words that are still there: “Bring Good News and Knock Boldly.”
That afternoon, Earl Ferdinando fell ill upon seeing a tall male apparition in his private chamber while he was alone there with Golborne—who did not see the apparition when the earl pointed to it. Ferdinando then suffered a bad night. The next day, Saturday, he decided to ride back home. Evidently feeling well enough that morning to do without a doctor, he told Case to go on to Chester. He and Golborne returned to Lathom.
But the next day, Sunday, he was much worse. A rider was sent to fetch Case back, and the doctor, riding hard, made it back to Lathom that same day. Upon examining Ferdinando, Case was astonished at the sudden, shocking change in his health. From the perfect physical specimen of only a few days earlier, Case found his friend the earl transformed into a man who might well be dying. He remarked that he had never seen such a sudden change in health with no obvious or apparent cause. The earl’s urine had gone from perfection to putrefaction. He repeatedly vomited a mixture of blood and “rusty matter,” he was jaundiced, and he manifested a wide array of other alarming symptoms. Case advised a blood-letting in order to stop the bleeding or perhaps divert the blood from his patient’s mouth (from which blood seeped sporadically even when the patient was not vomiting), but Ferdinando refused.
On 10 April, a Wednesday, a servant, one Master Halsall, swore under oath that he had found a wax image (some reports say it was an image that was framed in wax) in Ferdinando’s room while he was attending him there. He also swore that he immediately threw the thing into the fire in order to counteract its evil effects upon the earl (as was recommended in such cases by local folklore), and he swore that the flames immediately consumed it. No image, or any part of one, was ever found.
On the next day, Thursday the eleventh, Ferdinando realized he was dying. He summoned lawyers and high-placed local relatives to his bedside in order to revise his will—and to make sure the revision was done right. His obvious purposes for doing so—reasons that have been undisputed from that point up to now—were to make sure that his wife, Countess Alice, and his three young daughters received his entire holdings,