Late one night a man on horseback, haggard and weary, rode up to the door of the “Anchor Inn” at Kingston-on-Thames and demanded lodgings for the night.  The landlord and his family were just retiring to rest, and the landlady, not liking the wild and haggard appearance of their midnight visitor, at first declined to receive him, but at length agreed to find him a room.  The family were awakened in the night by the lodger crying in his sleep, and the landlady was greatly alarmed as the noise was continued at intervals all through the night.  They had to rise early in the morning, as the landlord had some work to do in his fields, but his wife would not be left in the house with the stranger who had groaned so horribly during the night.  Their footsteps seem to have awakened the man, for suddenly they were terrified to see him rush downstairs with a drawn sword in his hand, throw himself upon a man standing in the yard, and kill him instantly.  It was thought afterwards that he must have mistaken his victim for a constable; but when he came to his senses and found he had killed the groom to whom he had given orders to meet him early in the morning, he turned his sword against himself and fell—­dead!  And such was the tragic end of John Fitze.

[Illustration:  LYDFORD CASTLE.]

There is a saying, “Like father, like son,” which sometimes justifies itself; but in the case of Fitze it applied not to a son, but to a daughter, who seems to have followed his bad example and to have inherited his wild nature, for it was said that she was married four times—­twice before she reached the age of sixteen!  She afterwards married Lord Charles Howard, son of the Duke of Suffolk, and after she had disposed of him—­for the country people believed she murdered all her husbands—­she married Sir Richard Granville, the cruel Governor of Lydford Castle, but preferred to retain the title of Lady Howard.  It was said that she died diseased both in mind and body, and that afterwards she had to do penance for her sins.  Every night on the stroke of twelve a phantom coach made of bones, drawn by four skeleton horses and ornamented with four grinning skulls, supposed to be those of her four husbands, issued from under Fitzford gateway with the shade of Lady Howard inside.  A coal-black hound ran in front as far as Okehampton, and on the return journey carried in its mouth a single blade of grass, which it placed on a stone in the old courtyard of Fitzford; and not until all the grass of Okehampton had been thus transported would Lady Howard’s penance end!  The death-coach glided noiselessly along the lonely moorland roads, and any person who accepted Lady Howard’s invitation to ride therein was never seen again.  One good effect this nocturnal journey had was that every one took care to leave the inns at Tavistock in time to reach home before midnight.

  My Lady hath a sable coach,
    With horses two and four;
  My Lady hath a gaunt bloodhound. 
    That goeth on before: 
  My Lady’s coach hath nodding plumes,
    The driver hath no head;
  My Lady is an ashen white
    As one that long is dead.