Enigma of Borley Rectory

by Harry Ludlum

  Apollonia Waldegrave entered the Brussels order in 1623 at the age of 15, and was professed a nun the following year, but before going any further, let us just take a closer look at Arabella Fitzjames. Mary Lycett's theory talks of Arabella, daughter of Henrietta Waldegrave, being taken to France by her parents with the unseated James II, and placed there in a convent to be educated. She would have been just a child then.

  If Arabella Fitzjames was 16 in 1690, born in 1674, and she is the Arabella described by Georgina Dawson and Mary Lycett, then at the time of the Waldegraves' supposed flight to France with the King, she would have been 14 years of age. That would have been in 1688. One wonders whether Arabella of Pontoise, instead of being thrown out of that convent for some misdemeanour, was sent on to Brussels to continue her vocation.

  If so, and assuming that someone had an eye on her as a prospective wife, is it not likely that her parents might well send her elsewhere to try to forestall her suitor's plans? It would not have been beyond the resources of so powerful a family to make certain that if her lover attempted to follow, he might be detained en-route on some pretext. For the moment, however, we move on to another Waldegrave nun.

  Joanna Waldegrave entered the Brussels Benedictines in 1663, at the age of 15, and was professed a nun in 1666. It is here that Joanna Waldegrave was set to become of special interest in connection with Borley Rectory. That date of 1666 is of remarkable interest. The planchette contacts of Borley allege that Marie Lairre was murdered there on May 16 or 17, 1667. Was Joanna our ghost nun? If so, how did she come from Belgium, or more correctly the Spanish Netherlands, to Le Havre - if she did?

  Another curious thing revealed itself here. The planchette and the table tipping experiments produced, among other things, the names of Janen and Jeane Waldegrave. However, was it perhaps the name Joanna that was meant to be conveyed to the sitters at those sessions?

  On top of all this, the Borley nun, or Marie Lairre as the case may be, is supposed to have been 19 years old at the time of her murder, if murder it was. In 1667, Joanna Waldegrave would have been 19 years of age!

  There was something else about the Glanville séances that led the writer to wonder about Joanna Waldegrave, and I would refer the reader to one of the planchette messages reproduced from The End of Borley Rectory. On page 226 of that book, Price illustrated one of the planchette answers from a session, the details of which he received on December 14, 1937.

  The scrawled writing has been accepted as the word or name 'Lairre', but is it? Is the 'L' in fact a badly interpreted 'J'? If one takes 'J' as being the letter, then the rest of the word cannot be Lairre, and what has been taken to be part of the letter 'L' immediately adjoining the first letter, in fact looks more like an 'o' and the rest can most certainly be transcribed as 'Anne'

  Facsimile of planchette script. Received December 14, 1937. From The End of Borley Rectory.

  If the entity was trying to write 'Joanna', then the result could well end up as Joanne, Jeanne or Janen, but against this suggestion we have to put a very pertinent question. If the nun could be Joanna Waldegrave, what has Marie to do with it?

  Could this in fact be a mixing of communication from the 'entity' in which variously her baptismal name was being interconnected with her religious name, e.g. Joanne Waldegrave/Sister Marie, and therefore Joanna Waldegrave-cum-Sister Marie du Lier, rather than Marie Lairre.

  However, where was the mother house of the Brussels Benedictines? What was Joanna Waldegrave's newly acquired religious name, presumably bestowed on her according to monastic tradition on her elevation to the status of a professed nun?

  Further possible clues to a link between Marie Lairre and Lier in Belgium lay in entries in the French monastic directory of Dom. L. H. Cottineau.

  Lier, in what in 1667 would have been the Spanish Netherlands, now known to the modern world as Belgium, possessed three religious houses as is detailed by Dom Cottineau. In his scenario, Canon Pythian Adams was of the opinion that whatever monastery or convent the Borley nun came from, it was very possibly tied up with the mother house of one of the orders of Cambrai. Whatever one thinks of the Canon's theory, his observations about the orders of Cambrai become more attractive than might previously have been thought. One of the religious communities of Lier was under the authority of Cambrai and thus it presents some more interesting possibilities.

  At this stage there have accumulated some important milestones on the trail to the identity of the Borley nun.

  If the planchette details were a pointer to the truth, the Borley nun was supposedly named Marie Lairre.

  Traditionally, there has been reason to suspect that she might either be a member of the Waldegrave family or be connected with it in some way. There were, and had long been, various suggestions that this girl was brought to Borley from the Continent, possibly from France.

  On examining one particular planchette message originally taken to read 'Lairre', it now seems possible that the word was meant to be 'Joanne' or Joanna'.

  Other planchette replies produced 'Janen' and 'Jeanne', also at one stage 'Jeanette'. There now arises the possibility that instead of 'Lairre' the word could be 'Lier', a place not a person. Lier, not far from Brussels, possessed a monastic order related to Cambrai, which attracted the attention of Canon Pythian Adams.

  A Waldegrave daughter, Joanna, became a nun with the Brussels Benedictines. The supposed date of the death of the Borley nun was May 17, 1667, at the age of 19, and in 1667 Joanna Waldegrave would have been 19 years of age. This offers the possibility that for the identity of the Borley nun we have Joanna Waldegrave, latterly Sister Marie of Lier, altered possibly as a result of the difficulties of planchette communication, to Marie Lairre, by which name the ghost has been known ever since.

  However, was it to Lier that Joanna came as a novice? If so did she ever leave? If so, why? What could have happened to her after Lier and was she brought first to France and then to England?

  Contact with the Rijksarchief d'Etat of Brussels revealed further clues.

  To begin with, there was indeed a family link between the Brussels Benedictines and the Waldegraves who were closely involved with a number of religious houses on the Continent. In a standard Belgian volume of reference, Monasticon Belge (Liege, 1890), there is a section by I. Van Meerbeeck concerning the English nuns of Brussels, in which one finds that Theodosia Waldegrave, who died in 1719, was at one time Abbess of Brussels.

  Curiously enough, she became a nun with the Brussels order in 1663, the same year in which Joanna Waldegrave is supposed to have joined the house. The date of her death is, of course, later than the supposed time of Joanna Waldegrave, who would have been 19 years old in 1667, the date the Borley nun is said to have met her death.

  However, if one Waldegrave was involved with Brussels, there is no reason to suppose that the other girls from the family did not follow the same path. Even if the suggestion about Apollonia Waldegrave and Joanna Waldegrave proved to be incorrect, we still have evidence that other Waldegrave girls were involved with the Brussels house.

  According to a volume in the archives of the Carmelite Nuns of Darlington, whose sisters during the period in question maintained a house in Lier, Theodosia introduced one other girl from the family into the Brussels order, her niece Elizabeth, the daughter of another Edward Waldegrave, this time from Staningill in Norfolk.

  The reference to Elizabeth is to be found in Soeurs d'Irlande et de Grande Bretagne by Louis Fournier. Let us look for a moment at the Brussels Benedictines themselves.

  Their foundation could be said to be a result of the suppression of all such orders in England, first under King Henry VIII and then during the reign of Elizabeth I. In 1597/98, the Brussels Benedictine order of English nuns was set up by Lady Percy, daughter of Thomas, Earl of Northumberland.

  It was given the approval of Archduke Albert in 1597, and the blessing of Pope Clement XIII two years later. Lady Joanna Mary Berkeley assisted Lady Percy in establishing the order. I
t is interesting to note that Sister Berkeley bore the two names 'Joanna' and 'Mary', both of which suggest clues to the Borley nun.

  In Archaeologia, Vol. 13, page 261, f9, published in 1815 by the Society of Antiquarians, Abbe Mann tells us:

  'This was the first new convent erected on the continent by religious persons of the English nation. It took place in the year 1598, by the zeal and industry of Lady Mary Berkeley, who was the first Abbess of it, and of Lady Mary Percy, Benedictine nun.

  Besides their religious duties they were occupied in the education of young ladies. On the approach of the French to Brussels, in June 1794, these religious ladies fled out of the Low Countries.'

  In fact, the Brussels sisters reached England via Rotterdam, but the interesting point here is that on escaping the French, these nuns eventually established themselves at East Bergholt in Suffolk, a mere 18 miles from Sudbury. Right on Sudbury's doorstep lay lonely little Borley with the Waldegrave seat and an old rectory.

  When one learns of the nuns' flight, then the French Revolution medallion found at Borley Rectory in 1929 becomes significant and suggests that the whole episode of the Borley nun may date from much later than the planchette messages indicate, and once again that like the name Marie Lairre, the date of 1667 is a misinterpretation.

  If indeed the Borley nun is connected with the French Revolution, then two things become apparent, Harry Price's thoughts and the reporting of the medal would be vindicated, and also some sense could be made of the theories about the black coach and bay horses associated with Borley, because at least by the time of the departure of the nuns from Brussels, carriages more like that reported at Borley would have been commonplace.

  Let us now turn to another interesting point.

  In 1623, 40 years prior to the date of the supposed entry into Brussels order of Joanna Waldegrave, the lady Frances Gavin and two other nuns, all from the Brussels order, set out to found a new cell in Cambrai, France. This house survived until abolished by the French in 1793. It was for all its existence allied to the English Congregation of St Benedict, under Father Rudifind Barlow, president of the congregation.

  Frances Gavin or Gawen's mother was a Waldegrave, Catherine Waldegrave to be exact, but there does not appear to be anything in the archives to suggest that Catherine Waldegrave was ever a nun.

  For the moment, however, let us return to Joanna Waldegrave. In seeking clues to any connection with Lier and the Brussels Benedictines, I wrote to both the Belgian national archives in Brussels and to the Flanders archives in Antwerp.

  From Brother Boniface Hill and from Dame Veronica Buss, of Stratton-on-the-Fosse and Oulton Abbeys respectively, I was able to discover that Joanna Waldegrave did indeed exist. But here the theory of Joanna Waldegrave-cum-Marie of Lier comes unstuck because Joanna Waldegrave was none other than Sister Theodosia, already mentioned, and who died, not in 1667, but in 1719. However, it still seems odd that the planchette writing should look so much like the name 'Joanna' or 'Joanne', and so set the thought about Lier before I learned about the existence of Theodosia and that she was Joanna Waldegrave.

  Research into the archives of the English nuns of Brussels has revealed that a large number of Waldegrave girls, from various branches of the family, were involved with that particular house, and with other foundations originating from Brussels. Each Waldegrave nun that turns out to have been involved with the Brussels Benedictines provides new possibilities as to the identity of the elusive Marie Lairre of Borley Rectory.

  There were also connections between the Brussels nuns and both Cambrai and Pontoise, both of which figure in the existing theories about the Borley nun. It also showed that there was a possible source of confusion about Arabella, for it now seems that there were two girls of this name.

  King James II and Arabella Churchill had a daughter, Henrietta Fitzjames, who in turn married Lord Henry Waldegrave. Henrietta had a sister, whose name was Arabella Fitzjames and she was to be a nun at Pontoise, in which house she bore the name 'Ignatia'. The other Arabella who appears in the Pontoise records was the daughter and not the granddaughter of James II.

  Curiously enough, the archives at Oulton Abbey contained no details of the other Arabella, the King's granddaughter, and it is now apparent that it is this girl of whom all trace has been lost. She also entered the convent of Pontoise, as a child of seven, to be educated some time between 1693 and 1696, which places her in the period of history suggested by Mary Lycett.

  So we have two Arabellas, both of Waldegrave extraction, and both at Pontoise, one as an adult nun and one as a child. The most likely subject for any interest by a young suitor would, of course, be the adult, Arabella Fitzjames, or 'Sister Ignatia' as she was called.

  According to a footnote on Mary Lycett's letter, Arabella Fitzjames became a nun with the English Benedictines on April 16, 1689, being professed on April 30, 1690. It is now obvious that she was a nun not at Brussels, but at Pontoise in France, and yet, if she had gone on to Brussels that would have lent some weight to the theory that she was removed from Pontoise when somebody on the outside became too interested in her. The archives, however, tell us that she was clothed at Pontoise, so that deletes her as a candidate as the Borley nun, at least in relation to Brussels.

  Attention must now switch to the other Waldegrave girl, Arabella, the daughter of Henrietta. The archives about her are indeed very bare but the records suggest that she became a nun with the Paris Benedictines and was professed during the 1700s. Once again, this would be in line with Mary Lycett's idea that from Pontoise she was sent to Paris to be trained as a nun and from where she could also be separated from any possible suitor.

  The Paris Benedictine community later settled in Stafford, and so it is to their archives that we must now turn for further clues as to the fate of Arabella Waldegrave. The writer contacted Dame Cecilia Thorpe, OSB, the archivist of St Mary's Abbey, at Colwich in Staffordshire, and she confirmed what Georgina Dawson had suggested many years ago: that after her early teen years there was no trace of the young Arabella Waldegrave.

  The Colwich community, descendants of the English Paris Benedictines, have no record of such a girl in their chronicles, or of a girl called Arabella Stuart, her alternative name, and neither was there any apparent link with the family of King James II.

  So, from the age of about 15, why does Arabella seem to have vanished?

  Is it possible that somebody among the monastic authorities or within the Waldegrave family decided that for some reason Arabella should 'disappear'? If so, was there a scheme to bury her among the religious communities on the Continent, with no records of her life for prying eyes to find and ask awkward questions about? What better way of removing someone who was a potential obstacle without actually killing them, than to make them into a ghost in the metaphorical sense of the word?

  If that is what happened to Arabella Waldegrave, then there can be two ways of interpreting the 'ghost nun' of Borley Rectory: one her becoming a ghost because she was shut away from the world; the other that her ghost derived from her murder.

  Let us now try to discover where the theory of Joanna of Lier might lead in the light of the foregoing details. We have already discovered that Joanna Waldegrave did exist but was in fact Sister Theodosia. The chronicles of the Brussels order tell us that Joanna/Theodosia died, not in 1667, but in 1719 and that she was Abbess of the Brussels Benedictines at one time.

  The same problem arises with the theory of a connection with Lier, because although there was indeed an order of English nuns in Lier, they were not Benedictine, but Carmelite, and the two houses never communicated with each other.

  Cottineau, in his monastic directory, describes the Monastère du Channoines in Lier as being under the diocese of Cambrai, but according to Sister Lucia of the Darlington Carmel, the English nuns of Lier were under the jurisdiction of Antwerp and not Cambrai. So, was the similarity between the names Lairre and Lier, or as the French call it Lierre, purely a coincidence? There is one v
ery tenuous clue in that when the Brussels Benedictine nuns fled Belgium in 1794, they sheltered at an inn outside Antwerp while on their way to Rotterdam and eventually home to England.

  Yet another query remains over the Lier monastery listed by Cottineau for, in spite of earnest and persistent enquiries to the archive departments of several communities here and in Europe, nothing has been discovered about the Monastère du Channoines at Lier.

  We now have to consider a fresh possibility. All who have delved into the identity and fate of our elusive 'Sister Marie Lairre' have gone along with the belief that whoever she was, she was the victim of murder. But was she? The historical records have shown that girls from the Waldegrave family were in many cases nuns on the Continent with the Brussels order of Benedictines and the English order at Pontoise in France, and at Cambrai which was itself a branch of the Brussels order.

  There were also Waldegrave nuns at Ghent and another member of the family was a nun with the Poor Clare Sisters at Gravelines. We also know now that two of these nuns from the Waldegrave family were directly linked with Borley, being the daughters of Sir Nicholas Waldegrave thereof. One of these two, Lady Barbara Waldegrave, or Mary Apollonia as she is often called, died when only in her thirties. The Brussels chronicles list her as 'happily deceased', which may of course be quite innocent of any suspicious connotations, but on the other hand if she died contented why comment on it in the chronicles?

  Viewed in another light, the entry 'happily deceased' becomes something of a double-edged remark, by concealing the possibility that in somebody's thoughts she was perhaps 'fortunately deceased'!

  In the search for the identity of the nun of Borley Rectory are we dealing not with the ghost of a murder victim, as has been assumed, but rather with a ghost of conscience? So far none of the records have given any solid clue as to the disappearance under odd circumstances of a Waldegrave nun, with the noticeable exception of the young Arabella, and therefore no clear indication of the unnatural death of any Waldegrave nun with the exception of Barbara Apollonia, who died strangely young, even for those times.