MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXVIII, Issue 8285, 27 September 1887, Page 6

MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCES.

Mysterious disappearances have been far more numerous than hasty readers imagine —some permanent, some temporary. I do not allude to modern ones within living men’s memories, but to some past ones of thrilling interest, and about which very many people do not know much, except those who study old ephemeral literature. The story of the Man with the Iron Mask most have heard of, hut what is not so well known is that, though a general notion exists that this individual was Mattheole, Minister of Parma, there is very strong evidence that he was really tho

DOC DE BEAUFORT, with whose mysterious disappearance, in the latter half of the seventeenth century, we will commence our list. Ho was the grandson of Henry IV. of Prance and the Fair Gabnelle, Duchess of Beaufort. Ho was a most adventurous man, and ever keeping Louis XlV.’s ministers in “ hot water.” He was the favourite of the fiery Paris mob, always an important factor in French Government. Kidnapping political enemies was a common stratagem then on the Continent. Beaufort went to Candia with the French troops sent there on an expedition, and was never seen publicly again, having been, it was said, killed. But a rumour grew stronger and stronger that he was the mysterious captive who was at the He St Marguerite, where he flung the silver dish out, which was picked up by the fisherman who owed his life to never hawing been taught to read. What made these rumours stronger was the knowledge that the prisoner was treated ■with all the honours and deference shown to Royalty. Louis XIV. took great interest in the veiled captive, whoever he was, and who died in the Bastile just twelve years earlier than tho Grand Monarch. But the brilliant Due de Beaufort, though sought for by troops of friends, disappeared from all public gaze from the time he reached Candia: Next we will consider a very different and much humbler person, who mysteriously disappeared, and about whose disappearance as little is known now, after immense investigation, as there was 134 years ago. This was ELIZABETH CANNING, whose case set all England by the ears pro and con. On New' Tear’s Day, 1753,5 he disappeared in Bishops gate street, on her way to her mother’s shop in Aldermanbury, then a street of small old-fashioned houses. Rewards were offered, inquiries made, but the ill-lit streets, full of ruffians, and the absence of police, made any outrage possible. Nearly a month passed, when one night a spectral figure tottered into the Aldertnanbury shop,in whoaeemachited face and form her mother hardly recognised Elizabeth Canning. She said she had been imprisoned in a lonely house afc Enfieid. TwOt women were tried, convicted, and, under the then Draconian laws, sentenced to death. A re-action came. England was divided into friends and foes of the girl. The women were pardoned, and the girl was tried for perjury, convicted, and transported for seven years, but it was a nominal sentence, for she married in the convict settlement, throve, returned home and died early. Very many considered her a martyr; her principles and demeanour were uniformly religious, modest, and quiet, and her character excellent. Many controversies have been held, but of that mysterious disappearance we know just as much, and just as little, as did our ancestors in the reign of George 11., who, by the way. took a personal interest in the inquiries. Next there is a case little known to general readers, though probably familiar by tradition to Somersetshire people. It is as great a puzzle as ever was put before a printer. Indeed, the Somerset people in the last century came to the conclusion that the man was carried off by the evil one! For in Sheptoa Mallet lived, in June, 1768, one OWEN PAEFITT, who, be it remarked, was seventy, and a helpless cripple. He was a tailor, but, in his youth, had led, which helped tho popular conclusion, a very wild life as a soldier and as one of the crew of a slaver. On this June day, 1768, as was customary, his sister and another woman set him in a chair, covered with a great coat, at his cottage door, while his bed was being made; he was unable to rise from tbe chair by himself. In fifteen minutes the sister came bapk for him. The coat was there, so was the chair, but the old man, helpless cripple as he was, was gone! And he was never seen again. All the inhabitants—some 5000 people, for the news spread like wild-firo—turned out. Most were out, for the mowing was going on. They scoured the country, dragging all the streams and ponds, but no trace of Owen Parfitfc ever camo to light. The cottage was on a turnpike road close to others; the country was full of people, so that someone must have seen him. Nobody did. The affair created enormous excitement. In 1814 tho woman who helped Parfitfc’s sister gave a detailed account of tho facts to Bishop Butler of Lichfield, and numerous Shcpton Mallet old inhabitants remembered and corroborated them. But this mysterious disappearance was never in any way explained, and probably is the most extraordinary on record. From a tailor we turn te a queen of tho last century. This was the sister of our Queen Caroline of Brunswick. "When a young girl she married a Prince, who afterwards became King, and she became tjUEBN OF WURTEJfBDRO. Living unhappily in Russia with her husband, she one day vanished. For several years utter obscurity hid her from every surmise and inquiry. Then she was found in an old fortress near Ravel, and shortly afterwards died. But the veil of her years of disappearance was never lifted, though tho facts were probably known to the despotic Czarina of all tho Russias, Catherine and her confidants. Of romantic adventures no disappearanca is perhaps fuller than that which happened in the year 1788 to FLETCHER CHRISTIAN, leader and master’s mate of the Bounty mutineers. From 1788 to ISI4 they all vanished, when in the latter year a warship found Pitcairn Island, and John Adams, tho sole survivor, as chief of the mutineer’s descendants. He said Christian had fallen over the cliff. But hia statements varied. Still he said the man was dead. But in 1808 it transpired that a Captain Heywood, formerly an officer of the Bounty, saw in Plymouth a man who, he was certain, was the leading mutineer, though twenty years had gone. This man saw him and Van down some side streets, and was never again seen in public. Rumours then floated that before this he had visited an aunt in the Lake district. Adams was certain one way, Heywood another; but Fletcher Christian's disappearance was never explained. Just 402 years ago last August, after Richard lll.’a death, came the flight to Colchester Abbey, of

LORD LOVEL. Hence his disappearance. Tradition, from alender beginning, took more definite form. Many years later, in James the First’s reign, when an old castle of the family on the Welsh border waa being pulled down for alterations, a secret chamber was discovered. In it was a seat close to a table. Here was seated a skeleton, which was thought to bo that of Richard’s favourite, who had hidden himself here, and from the lock of the door closing had probably died from starvation, when he was supposed to have escaped across the sea.