Loremen Podcast - S1 Ep4: Loremen S1 Ep4 - Bad Lord Soulis and Freeman's Gang

Episode Date: January 11, 2018

James and Alasdair meet a 'Terrible William' and a band of Highwaymen burning the candle at both ends. Loreboys nether say die! Check the sweet, sweet merch here... https://www.teepublic.com/stores/loremen-podcast?ref_id=24631 Support the Loremen here (and get stuff): patreon.com/loremenpod ko-fi.com/loremen @loremenpod www.twitch.tv/loremenpod www.instagram.com/loremenpod www.facebook.com/loremenpod

Welcome to Lawmen, the podcast about local legends and obscure curiosities from days of yore. I'm Alistair Beckett-King. And I'm Alistair's life coach and personal shopper, James Shakeshaft. In every episode, we present a piece of forgotten folklore, and at the end of the tale, apply our entirely arbitrary scoring system. In this first story, we meet an evil, evil man, and say hello to his little friend. Apologies to all Scottish people for the way I mispronounced the surname Bucleuch as Bucleuch. In my defence, that is how it's spelt. Would you like a story?

Yes please My story today comes from the Scottish-English border rather than the border that Scotland has with any other country The sea? It's the sea isn't it? Is it?

It must be So it comes from the Scottish-English border and it takes place in the late 13th, early 14th century. So it's pretty old. That is, yes.

And it is the death of Lord Sulis, a.k.a. Lord de Sulis. Whoa. A.k.a. the bad de Sulis, a.k.a. terrible William. Oh, yes. I'm in. You've got me Well there were several

William There were at least two William de Soules But basically No one knows Which of the de Soules We're talking about The second Lord de Soules

The difficult second de Soules Absolutely Everyone would really like The first one There were a lot of Expectations placed on him And he lived in a place Called Hermitage Castle which is still

there and it's it's not far from Liddersdale which is also near the Parsi Reed story we did oh yes Hermitage Castle is it stands there today and it is a big stony H shaped

castle that sort of goes it's like a really scary looking haunted castle it is one of the creepiest it's like just a block of castle. It's got no turrets or filigree. It's just castle.

And it's called Hermitage Castle because I think it's in the middle of nowhere, so you can't even see it until you sort of have gone all the way into the hills. I'm sorry. What does Hermitage mean, then? A place where a hermit once lived. So I think it's built on the site of a former hermitage. Ah. There is a stone castle

there now. At the time of the story we're telling it was a wooden castle and presumably before that a straw castle. I don't have anything to back that up

but presumably that's the way it worked. And next to Hermitage Castle is a place called Nine Stain Rig or Nine Stone Ridge which is a hill with nine standing stones

on it. That's going to be important for later. So I'll give you an example of some of the bad things that terrible William did. He was not very popular with Robert the Bruce, the king at the time of Scotland. And Robert the Bruce sent him a messenger. Because what he would do, he was always kidnapping villagers and murdering them in dungeons and doing things like that. This terrible guy.

Yeah, the bad de Soules. And Robert the Bruce sent a messenger to him saying, stop all of this terrible behaviour and stop being a traitor andles. And Robert the Bruce sent a messenger to him saying stop all of this terrible behaviour and stop being a traitor and everything. And what he did was he got the messenger to stand on a big trap door and then he opened it and then the messenger and his horse fell down 30 feet into his dungeon and were killed.

Oh. Which is the medieval version of a spam filter, I think. Not even reading the message, just straight into the dungeon. That messenger, though, come on, he must... I mean, the saying is don't shoot the messenger. There's nothing about dropping him into a dungeon, horse and all. He also, in another story, he's kidnapping a young girl from the village

and about to take her up, and then the villagers are saying, don't do this, you know, keep her. And then a local nobleman, Alexander Armstrong, who I've checked because we've been in this situation before, not the host of Pointless,

but a different Alexander Armstrong. Great. He persuades him to leave her in the village and then Desilis goes back to his castle and then invites Armstrong round for,

televisions Alexander Armstrong round for a meal later on. Pims. Stabbed him. Just kills him for no reason. So, that's the kind of guy we're dealing with.

Now, he died eventually. The story is the death of Lord de Soules, and he died in three different ways. Oh. So the first way is he betrayed Robert the Bruce, and for political reasons, Robert the Bruce has been killed because he just disappears. Nobody knows what happens to him.

So the first, and let's be honest, correct version of the story is that he conspired against the king and was killed. The second version of the story is that the villagers got so annoyed with his peasant kidnapping antics that they just rose up and killed him. And the third version of the story

is incredibly convoluted and involves a magical goblin. Which one of the three would you like to hear? Yeah, I want to hear the goblin. All right. Well, so the thing that I haven't told you yet about Terrible William is that he was a warlock. Ah.

Hmm. Everything from this point onwards belongs to a ballad from John Layden's 18th century ballad Lord Sulis and is probably nonsense. Nonetheless. But it rhymes but it rhyming nonsense rhyming is

going to be important later and by important I mean it's going to not actually have any impact on the story but will feature it will be confusing as I think this is one

of the one of the most confusingly plotted stories that we've ever done so I'm gonna I've got it written down in front of me so I'm gonna try and do my best

so De Sulus was a was a warlock and had apparently studied the law of michael scott who is quite famously the wizard of the north so he was a sort of a a great polymath and traveler who from scotland who uh who spoke all the languages and knew all the sciences he was back in it's quite trumpy that he speaks all the languages he knows all the sciences, he knows all the sciences. Nobody understands the hermetic secrets better than me, and the best.

Yeah, that was Michael Scott, the Wizard of the North, very much the Donald Trump of his day. And so de Soules was also assisted by someone called Robin Redcap, and Robin Redcap was a redcap. Are you aware of what a redcap is? Because I wasn't. No, it's a children's story.

Yeah. Billy Blue Hat. So redcaps are like garden gnomes. They're little old men who wear red hats. Oh, yeah, I've seen that. And they exist in lots of mythologies, and they're usually nice. Not in the Cheviots, not in Scotland. They are evil little monsters.

They're tiny little old men. They have red hats. They carry an axe or a pick of some kind, and they can run faster than a human, so you can't outrun them. And according to Relics of Popular Antiquities, 1879, the red hat is red because it's bathed in human blood. And apparently, if the blood on the hat ever dries they die. So they have to kill people

and then catch the blood in their hats on a regular basis. So they're properly nasty little red caps. And the only way to get rid of them is if you quote a Bible verse at them they lose a tooth and then go away. And you get the tooth. So quid pro quo.

I don't know what that means. I don't think any of those then go away. And you get the tooth. Well, yeah. So quid pro quo. Yeah. I don't know what that means. I don't think any of those words are tooth, so I don't think it's... I think it means you get a free tooth in Latin. So Robin Redcap worked for de Sula's, and he kept him in a chest. The rule was he had to knock three times on the chest, and then turn away and never look into the chest. And then Robin Redcap would come out and grant him special powers and enchantments.

I'm going to read the main enchantment that he did now. Is it deleting his internet browsing history, as it sounds like? So Redcap says to him, and I think I'm quoting the ballad here, or some ballad. While thou shalt bear a charmed life, and hold that life of me, gain slants and arrows, sword and knife, I shall thy warrant be. Nor forged steel, nor hempen band, shall e'er thy limbs confine, Hmm. So he can't be injured or bound in any way until someone makes ropes of sifted sand and twines his body with those. That sounds like the kind of thing that is going to be important later in the story.

Yes. But is it? Well. We'll find out. The other thing that he said was that he can't be killed until a forest moves. Oh. Which is the exact plot of Macbeth. But in fairness, Macbeth hadn't been written at this point.

Although it had been written at the time the ballad was written. So, but anyway, it didn't flag up the immediate. That sounds a lot like Macbeth. So he went, oh, I feel pretty confident because forests don't move. So he went around

kidnapping children from the village, murdering them in dungeons with impunity because nobody could wound him or bind him in any way. And then he got into

a fight with a chap called Young Bucleek. And I have no idea if I'm pronouncing that correctly because I didn't have time to check with my Scottish mum. So apologies if that is not how his name is pronounced.

And the Buchlich story is very similar to the Armstrong story. De Soules was trying to kidnap a young girl called May from the village who Buchlich was in love with. And Buchlich said, you can't do that, obviously. And De Soules grabbed him and stowed him in his basement. and Desilis grabbed him and stowed him in his basement. And he says to him, right, well, what would you do if you had me in your dungeon? And Buclick's quite smart. Well, he isn't smart enough to say something like,

lots of cake and send me on my way. What he says is, I'd take you out to the forest and I'd hang you from any tree of your choosing. And he says, well, that's what I'll do to you then. And so he leads him out to the forest. And then young Buchlich just sort of plays for time by going, no, I don't really like that. No, I don't like that tree. No, that one's not for me.

No. And he keeps going, come on, you've got to choose a tree. And he said, yeah, but you said you'd let me choose. Let's keep going. I haven't seen one I like yet. And so this goes on for quite a while because Buchlich is playing for time because he's waiting for his brother, bold Walter Buchlich, to rescue him with his band

of men. Right. And Walter's band of men arrive, all wearing witch hazel in their bonnets to protect them from enchantment.

So as they see them approaching from a distance, it looks like a forest is moving. At this point, nobody says, exactly like in

Macbeth. So what happens is, as quick as a flash, they whip out a bow and arrow and shoot it straight into his face. It specifically says straight into his face. Great. And it bounces straight off to Sulis' face because...

Oh, there's a thing I forgot to say in the story. Oh. No, it's not... The reason I forgot to say it is that it's a plot beat that has no bearing on the rest of the plot, which is that he was never allowed to look at Redcap when he came out of the chest. No, you mentioned that he wasn't allowed to look at Redcap when he came out of the chest.

No, you mentioned that he wasn't allowed to look at it. But the last time, just before this happens, he did look at him. Oh, God. And so the spell was broken, except as the bouncing arrow demonstrates, it wasn't broken. Right. So nobody... It's not quite clear on... It just doesn't make any sense.

Anyway, I'm not trying to undermine my own story. It's still a top, top story. So that's the reason I forgot that. So the arrow bounces off his face. So then they get some hempen bands, or ropes as we call them, and tie him up with rope. And he just busts straight out of the ropes like a wrestler. And then they get some iron ropes, and they bind him with iron ropes.

Chains, we call them. Chains. And he busts out of the chains. And then they think, well, what can we do? And up steps a young man called True Thomas, also known as Thomas the Rhymer. I promised that rhyming would come in. Great.

And Thomas the Rhymer, he was obviously a local aristocrat and freestyle MC, and he appears in other historical accounts and legends from the time. He spent some time in the land of Faerie. He came back with Michael Scott's spellbook or spay book, and so he also knows some of the secrets of Michael Scott's wizardry. And so he leafs through the book to find out how we can break the spell. And he realizes that what they need is ropes of sifted sand. And now I'm reading from the Tales

of the Scottish Ballads by Elizabeth Grierson. He turned over the leaves and at last he found the place where Sir Michael had told how it was possible to bind a charmed man. You cannot bind a wizard with ropes, he read, unless they be ropes of sifted sand. Where can we get some sifted sand, he asked, and everyone looked round in dismay, for there was no sand there under the trees. Come to Nine Stain Rig, cried a man. There's a burn, runs past the bottom of it. We'll find plenty of sand there. So, cried a man there's a burn runs past the bottom of it we'll find plenty of sand there

so I have to point out at this point there is no way that they have of binding or killing De Soulis

and yet somehow they take him with them all the way to to Nine Stone Ridge and he just comes with them to see how they're going to catch him well I think

I was thinking then as I was hearing it I think if I'd have been there it'd have been like fine we'll find some sand. How are we going to make ropes out of sand, guys? That is the absolute next problem. That's the next problem.

So they read the spell for making ropes out of sifted sand. Oh, there is a spell for that. Well, apparently, but it doesn't work. They can't make ropes out of sifted sand because it's really hard to make ropes out of sand. It's hard to make anything out of sifted sand, particularly. Absolutely, yeah.ifted sand particularly yeah packed sand yeah you could maybe make a pillow yeah top tip for beach just on a side note beach holiday rest your hand on the pillow yeah you're when if you think oh i'm a bit uncomfortable

lying on the beach you're on something if you're on a sandy beach you're on something that you can make your perfect chair out of dig a bit out for your bum put that up for a pillow for your head you've got your own little lazy boy there I feel like this is a tip

that you do not need I think this is how True Thomas must have felt when he discovered the spell book of the Wizard of the North and just the wisdom of the ancients

poured into his mind you can make a pillow out of sand can you yeah of course you can so as you correctly intuited it didn't work they couldn't make ropes out of sifted you? Yeah, of course you can. So as you correctly intuited, it didn't work. They couldn't make ropes out of sifted sand. So he flicked through the book to find they had to make ropes out of sifted sand

when there is an invisible red cap demon preventing you from doing it. And it said, what you need is some barley. So they went down to a field to get some barley, and they got some barley, and they came back. So now I would say we're 45 minutes to an hour into the attempt to make ropes out of sifted sand

part of the story. And then they mixed in the barley with the sifted sand and they still couldn't make ropes out of sifted sand. No, because these are all granular items. Yes.

At this point, to my great narrative frustration, they just give up on making ropes out of sifted sand. Guys! That was like Chakov's gun.

It was planted right at the start and they never make ropes out of sifted sand. Guys! That was like Chakov's gun. It was planted right at the start. Yeah. And they never make ropes out of sifted sand. So he leaps through to find what the alternatives are to making ropes out of sifted sand. And they find that the only other way of killing an enchanter, who has just been patiently waiting for up to an hour,

is they wrap him in a sheet of lead. I should read the last passage of how he died. So, they kindled the fire on nine-stained rig in the middle of the old druid stones where they placed a great brass cauldron. They heated it red-hot and some of them hasted to Hermitage Castle and stripped a sheet of lead from the roof

and they wrapped the wicked lord in it and plunged him in and stood round in solemn silence till the contents of that awful pot melted, lead, bones and all, and naught remained but a seething sea of molten metal. So came the sinful man by his end. And to this day the cauldron remains. No, it doesn't.

It's not there anymore. It was brought over to Skelthill, and there it stands, a fearful warning to evildoers. While on the spot where it was boiled, within the circle of stones on the nine-stained rig, the ground lies bare and fallow, and the very grass refuses to grow where such a terrible deed

was done. Wow. The not very grass. Actually, yeah, that's quite the Terminator 2 ending, isn't it? I hope you went down with a thumb up. A thumb down? As if to say, I am annoyed about this. I am wicked. So that's how you kill a warlock.

Now you... Wrap them in lead and eat them until they totally melt. The whole of the last section has the feeling of when you try and cook an overly ambitious meal and you spend ages trying the recipe and then you just sort of give up and wrap a warlock in tinfoil and pop him under the grill. Because that sifted sand thing was never going to work. That's like when you're reading a recipe and you think, I think this is a typo.

I did a recipe for vegan pancakes, which required two tablespoons of baking powder. Whoa. Which is basically baking powder flavoured pancakes. Yeah. It's wrong, it's wrong, but that's the internet. There was one recipe which, this is recipe complaint corner of the podcast,

where you had to cook onions for six to eight minutes. They'd missed out the hyphen, and they wrote in this recipe, cook onions for 68 minutes. That's a real big difference. There is a huge difference there. Your onions will be f***ed if you cook them for an hour, basically an hour and ten minutes. That is probably exactly what happened with Michael Scott's spay book.

Yeah. It's probably just a series of typos. Sifted sand. I mean, yeah. Better rope is what it should have said. Of course, Hermitage Castle is massively haunted now. So he haunts it. All the children haunted that he murdered.

And every seven years, Redcap's door, the door of the lid creaks open and you can find Redcap there, apparently. Don't look at me. I feel a bit sad for Redcap, in a way. Sounds like he had very low self-esteem. But he also has a hat which is covered in blood. Human blood. Okay, so for scores,

my first category for you to score is bad balladry. Oh, yeah. So what was the author of the ballad? I think we should name and shame John Layden. Yeah. So, yeah, he's ripped off Hamlet. Macbeth. Macbeth.

Oh, damn. He's ripped off Macbeth. Yes. His plotting is all over the shop. You get set up at the beginning with a sifted sand rope, which is like, ooh. Right at the start, they say, it's got to be sifted sand rope. There's literally one way, this is Robin Redcap speaking, if you look at me, something terrible, this won't work.

Don't look at me. That's already proven to not be true. Yeah. Doesn't even work. It doesn't. It makes so little sense. I forgot to put it in the story at the right time. I'm doing bad.

I think I feel I'm referencing this bad plotting with my bad sentence construction at the moment. You can only be defeated by sifted sand rope. Well, well, we can't make a rope out of this, can we? Because it's sifted sand. I'm going to push you for a score on bad ballad. Well, it's five out of five. Five out of five. Really glad I didn't go with the category good balladry. Yeah.

Five. I'm going to write five down there. I was really looking forward to how they were going to solve the problem of the sifted sand rope. I genuinely was. I was like, this is going to be a clever little... Like, I thought it was going to go down the glass.

I thought it was going to say glass. Because that's the tricky little thing, like the forest moving. It's like, well, some people have got some twigs. Glass is made of sand, so you could bind him in a glass. No, just boil him in molten lead. I think what happens is you've got John Lennon trying to write a good

ballad, but he's constrained by the various bits of legend, like him getting boiled in a pot. So there's loads and loads of plot, and none of the plot goes anywhere, and he just gets boiled in a pot. The next category is naming, the traditional category of naming. I think I've given you a profusion

of quality names. Terrible William. A.K.A. Bad DeSoulis. The Bad DeSoulis. We've got True Thomas. Michael Scott. That's not... That's a really normal name. That's a real letdown for the...

That's why he has to talk himself up so much, is knowing all the languages, all the spells, all the sciences. You want it, I got it. My name's Michael Scott. So we've also got Hermitage Castle,

we've got Nine Stain Rig, we've got Thomas the Rhymer. Maybe that's why he didn't tell him about the boiling in lead thing, because he was trying to find a rhyme. He was trying to come up with a good rhyme and he couldn't. So he was like, my name is True Thomas and I'm here to say,

you want to kill a warlock? Here's a good way. Get some sifted sand and turn it into rope. I can't think of a rhyme for lead, so that's coming in a bit. But he just got caught into a freestyle about sifted sand. I find it difficult to believe that anybody whose name was Thomas the Rhymer would have used the, and I'm here to say, format of rapping. There's also got Bold Walter Buchlich. That's quite a good name.

Bold Walter. Bold Walter. Bold Walter. And Young Buchlich, who isn't a first name. I don't know. And Robin Redcap, finally. Robin Redcap. That's a good name as well.

Don't look at me, Redcap. Yeah. So that is a whole load of good names. Oh, and Alexander Armstrong. Yeah. Same in Michael Scott. It's kind of a bit annoying because Michael Scott's the American office, isn't he? He's the boss in the American office.

Alexander Armstrong. I am literally picturing them when I... The actual, yeah. The modern. Because he's meant to be the most powerful wizard and we've already talked about his hubris. I'm imagining Steve Carell playing him. So what's your score for names then? I feel like you're trying to negotiate.

Five. Five, good. I'll give you a five. Good. Next category, also a traditional category, Supernatural. It's, yeah. You're pulling a sceptical face.

No, I had to think of it. And I am sceptical about your scepticism. I remind you, there is a tiny magic man who lives in a box in this story. There's a tiny man who lives in a box in this story. There's a tiny man who lives in a box but no one's ever looked at him.

Although they did once and there were no repercussions. So, and that sifted sand thing, that sounds like a big red herring. So people go like,

okay, we'll get some sifted sand and they don't bother trying the normal ways perhaps. Oh no, no, he did break out

of normal ropes. Yeah, yeah, and they shot an arrow in his face. A oh no no he did break out of normal ropes yeah yeah and they shot an arrow in his face they shot an arrow in his face I suppose

that's pretty supernatural also they all Hermitage Castle is now very haunted yes very haunted very haunted

and you've got standing stone circle left by the druids that's just there as a backdrop it's just the background set design but then he's killed by boiling him in lead by the druids. That's just there as a backdrop. It's just the background. Set design. But then he's killed

by boiling him in lead. That isn't just how you kill a warlock. That's pretty much how you kill anything. Yes. Fair enough. But he's got all the spells.

Mm-hmm. There's a spay book. Spay book? That's how they pronounce it. That's how it's written rather than spell book. Oh. Yeah. And you've got

you've got True Thomas who was in the Land of Faerie although admittedly that was in a different story but still so yeah background to this he's visited the Land of Faerie

and you've got Michael Scott the Wizard of the North the Wizard that's a good name that's a good name I think I'm only going to give it I'm going between

three and four you're considering I can't believe you're considering three well it's not it's not I mean there is

a lot of supernatural elements I suppose in reality he was probably just killed for betraying Robert the Bruce and none of this oh no no

I don't want to tarnish that with simple reality. I think the thing is a lot of the supernatural elements are quite annoying. So I don't want to reward them. No, three. Three?

Three. Well, because I've done well so far. All right. I'll have three. I'm sorry, but... All right. Well, that is hard but fair. My final category, evil.

Pure evil. Yeah, there's a lot of that. This guy, wicked, evil, bad to sue list. Bad to sue list or terrible William. Terrible William. Oh, he's awful, isn't he awful? Absolutely dreadful. Oh, he's awful, isn't he awful? Absolutely dreadful.

Oh, what a guy. So he's kidnapping villagers, left, right and centre. He's dropping messengers into trap doors. He's Jabba the Hutt-ing. Yeah, he is Jabba. He is Jabba the Hutt. He's Jabba the Hutt-ing them. He's inviting people for dinner. He invited Alexander Armstrong for dinner.

He's inviting B-list celebrities around for dinner and just straight up killing them. Yep. He's friends with the Wizard of the North. Yeah. Probably a bad guy. He might be good or bad because his spells are used on both sides of this.

Both sides. Well, he knows all of them. He doesn't know all the spells. He doesn't know all the spells. He knows the good ones and the bad ones yeah but he's a warlock

which yeah he's pure evil he's he's and how many times did he pull that messenger trick because I think

surely by the end of his reign it would be the trap doors would open and they'd fall afoot because it's just full dropped in yeah and eventually but also the first message would be you've got would open and they'd fall afoot because it's just full of dropped in. Yeah. And eventually, but also the first message would be,

you've got to stop all this business. And then the next one would just be, hey, William, just checking in whether you got my previous message. So let me know. And the other one will be, so I don't know if there's a problem with the messages, but I'm ready for your call. Just message me back straight away.

Don't need to answer the specifics. Just let me know that you've got it. I'm not angry. I just message me back straight away just don't need to answer the specifics just let me know that you've got it I'm not angry I just want to hear from you and that's a stack that's a horse every time

that's full that's extremely wasteful maybe he got he just got a lot of junk mail and he was like if this is going to be another pizza delivery thing I can't

not for I will kill them I will kill them I will kill them so finally what is my score for evil well you're not going to try

and redeem him now well he evilly he was quite cocky as well cocky with it at the end when towards his death where he

he kind of weirdly drops out of the story he's just hanging around waiting he's very patient for an evil guy because the guy says he lets he lets Where he kind of weirdly drops out of the story. He's just hanging around waiting. He's very patient for an evil guy. Because the guy says, he lets Buclete lead him around the forest picking trees. Well, he, no, oh yeah.

And then he just waits for ages before getting thrown in a cauldron. He thinks he's so powerful now. He's starting to believe his own and Robin Don't Look At Me Redcap's hype that he is unstoppable. He's just taken an arrow to the face and shrugged it off. He's probably enjoying it. He's probably enjoying the sound. So he's just like, yeah, go on, make some rope out of sifted sand. Got any barley?

That doesn't work. So they're rolling me in, making me into a sort of a metal human sausage roll. I was going to say burrito because you sometimes get those in foil, don't you? Yes, yes, that's definitely. But actually, it must have been a rather horrible surprise

for him when he realised I actually am dying. This is quite hard. This is working. This is, yeah, this lead is, this lead and my bones are melting now.

I don't like this. Yeah, evil five out of five. Five out of five. Gotta be. He's a real wrong-un. I'm trying to think of how he could have redeemed himself. Not killing people. Not just drop killing people for literally no reason for turning up at his gap.

And then I imagine there was a little one like in Jabba's Palace Gang. Oh, yeah. Well, that would have been Redcap. Oh, yeah. Stop looking at me. Do you know the name of that character? No. The character that

sits next to Jabba and goes yeah yeah yeah that character is called Salacious Bee Crumb oh is he how much how can that character

have a middle initial when he doesn't speak a single line of dialogue in the entire film and he's just a puppet I like to imagine that there was another Salacious Crumb

inequity at the time so he had to be Salacious bee crumb to distinguish himself. What's the one with the snakes on his end of the sequel? No idea. No. Next up, a wonderful tale of banditry. Next up, a wonderful tale of banditry. I was looking up about highwaymen and rogues from the past, early 19th century.

And in the Cotswolds, there were quite a few highwaymen. In fact, they had a notorious trick that they would do. Apparently, according to my source, this book, The Folklore of the Cotswolds by Dr. Catherine M. Briggs. To you. To you, Sonny. It says, everyone will remember how Robert the Bruce shooed his horse backwards so that you couldn't tell. It looked like his horse was riding in the opposite direction.

Yeah. Everyone remembers that. Yeah remembers that yeah yeah yeah of course um sometimes he would put them on sideways so people would be really confused and he was riding a giant dancing horse um now what they did in the cotswolds is they gave him round horse shoes you couldn't tell whether they were coming or going quite literally that's very very clever't it? Now, there are a lot of highwaymen. What that is an illustration of is there are a lot of highwaymen around. Now, at the time, in Swinbrook, there was a wealthy family called the Fetterplaces. They even got into a little rhyme. They were wealthy and famous. They said, the Laces, the Traces, and the Fetterplaces own all the manors, parks, and chases.

Lovely. But by the late 18th century, the directacey's, the Tracy's and the Fetty Place's own all the manors, parks and chases. Lovely. But by the late 18th century, the direct mail line had died out. And in 1806, the two old Miss Fetty Place's found their Swinbrook manor to be too big for them. So they retired to Fairspear, which is, I guess, a smaller stately home up the road a bit,

and let the manor to a Mr Freeman from London. He came down with a whole retinue of servants. He entertained lavishly, apparently. He was single, handsome, and wealthy, and he had the best parties. He paid all his bills in gold. The people, I find, these servants were rather uncouth and rough, not very well-mannered for butlers and whatnot and

anyone paying a morning call would find the whole place drowsy it says here and this is a story that comes from mr secker who was a stable boy quite an authoritative name for a stable boy it was reported by mr secker and it was his grandfather from his grandfather he was a stable boy at swimbrook he noticed a weird thing no matter how well groomed the horses were of a knight

the next day they'd be splashed with mud and kind of rough and ready that's intriguing yeah

and he was never allowed to set foot in the manor it was strictly forbidden to however one night he snuck his way in and he heard the sound of shots coming from one night he snuck his way in and he heard the sound

of shots coming from upstairs and he snuck his way upstairs and saw all along this really long corridor with doors all off it to rooms all the doors were open and there was a candle in each room and mr freeman and his butler were running full pelt along the corridor shooting out the candles as they went by people started to realize as well that after around the time mr freeman moved to swimbrook manor there seemed to be a lot more robberies going along on the roads these went on for about a year or more until a well-armed coachman shot one of these robbers. He was remanded in custody and they recognised him. He was Mr Freeman's butler. No way.

Way. What? He was arrested and he was discovered that the whole Mr Freeman and all the guys were a notorious London gang. He wasn't a gentry at all and his servants. It was simply a gang and they were hanged in Gloucester. And Mr. Secker, old man Secker, who was a young

man, he managed to get hold of the pistols and his grandson, the Mr. Secker who told the story, still has them. The pistols that were used to shoot the... Shoot down the corridor, yeah. Candle, wow. Yeah. There you go. The intrigue of like also i really want

to imagine what was going on like i think mr freeman might have been getting a bit too big for his but it must have been a bit annoying because they were obviously all equals it wasn't like a like a a rich man gone rogue and then he he convinced his servants to go along with it it's like yes his cover story was being the lord of the manor yeah their cover story was doing everything for him during the day yeah i wonder how much they that could create tension i didn't i mean there's a sitcom right there and i like the visual visual that the boy saw of two men running down a corridor shooting out candles. Which direction were they shooting?

So are they shooting ahead of them or are they shooting to the side? I don't know. Are they running down a long corridor and the doors... I think the doors are off the side. And they're turning left, shoot, right, shoot, left, shoot, right, shoot. Ooh, two cool guys. They're probably, I would guess, if they're like robbers and stuff, they're not from fancy big housing, living in London and what have you.

This might have been the longest corridor they'd ever seen. They might have just been... I first read it and thought, oh, they're like doing some training. But then actually, I think they're just messing around. It's just corridor fun. It's just like... It's just what you would do. Yeah.

Set up a candle. Set up a candle, shoot off the top of the candle. Do you think... I wonder if Mr Freeman made the butler set the candles up. Yes, he would have, though. Because you say, why don't we... We're supposed to be partners. We're supposed to be partners.

And you say, yeah, but it's a cover story. I'm a method criminal. I will say one thing. They are not getting their deposit back. Not after that. Okay. Scoring. Scoring for this mini legend.

Okay. First up, names. Naming. Naming. It's got a lot of names in to the extent that I sort of lost track of who they all were. A bit too many, wasn't it? Almost too many names. What was the...

Is it Fetty Places? Fetty Places? The two old ladies that hired the manor house out were the Fetty Places who were in the rhyme. If your name is good enough to have got into a rhyme, then it's a good name. But they're not really that much part of the story, are they? Yeah, Freeman is probably a pseudonym.

Yeah. An ironic pseudonym. I was going to say ironic I'll give it a three yeah three is reasonable and be glad of it

yeah I am family legend I like this one because yes because it's another one where the

the importance of the story could be vastly exaggerated by the person telling it because their family's involved in it. Yes. So he still has the very guns that were used in the most exciting thing ever described in the English language.

Yeah. Running down a corridor shooting at candles. So, but I'm not trying to talk it down. I think that is five for that. As a family legend goes, owning the guns... Yeah. From that... You've got pistols.

What's the story behind them? Were they just used by some highwaymen? Yes, but also they were used by a highwayman to d*** around with in his mansion, which my grandad saw. Yeah, and if there's one thing we know... Undercover. You can trust undercover historical children's word as if it were gospel.

They are a pair of conversation pieces, those pistols. As well as literal pieces. Except in Scotland where piece means sandwich. Does it? Final. Bromance gone wrong. Is that the final category?

Yeah, I think so. Well, because that's what tore them apart in a way, isn't it? It may well have been. Because if the butler... I know he was recognised. But I have a feeling that he must have sold out his former buddy, Freeman, because of the resentment of him constantly being told to pick up his shoes and get the newspaper.

It's the story that's not told, I think, in this one. It's the implication of what their relationship would have been like. Reading between the lines, it's obvious that they must have had a falling out because he could have kept quiet about everything and then he would have been the only one hanged. But as it was, he took everyone down with him. Yes. Because he was angry at having to pretend to be the butler. So that's another five.

Brilliant. It's a five for Bromance Gone Wrong. I think, I don't know if I actually want to put this on because I think I might do a treatment and see if I can sell this to Hollywood. To actual Hollywood. It's a great story. And the kid comes

through and then get this. A long car and then they're shooting in the corridor. They're running up and down shooting out candles. And this scene... They're not afraid of candles.

No. This scene lasts 40 minutes in the middle of the movie. This is the entire second act of the film. Yeah. Running up and down the corridor shooting candles.

Yeah, it's not even in slow motion. Yeah, and it's done as one take it's actually double speed that's how long they were doing it for they have to light they go

you see them relighting the candles you see all of this you see them missing a lot because they're not that accurate these guns

yeah that's the what are they called the Freeman gang or something probably I've had a lot of references to this but no one actually said

the gang didn't have a name, so... Let's call them Freeman's Boys. Freeman's, yeah. Freeman's Boys. Something like that. What would we call the film? The Heisei. To the Manor Burn.

Ooh, because of the candles. If one of the candles were to roll away. Very dangerous. you have been listening to lawmen the lawmen are james shakeshaft and alistair beckett king if you enjoyed lawmen please rate and subscribe in all the usual places. And if you didn't enjoy Lawmen, we'll arrest your butler.