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The following is excerpted from the Diary of Samuel Pepys. The entry is dated June 15th, 1663.

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June 15th. I was forced to go to Thames Street; thence home, but finding my wife gone, I took coach and after her to her inn where I am troubled to see her forced to sit in the back of the coach, though pleased to see her company none but women and one parson, and so kissing her often, and Aswell once, I bid them adieu. To the Trinity House; where, among others, I found my Lords Sandwhich and Craven, and my cousin Roger Pepys, and Sir William Wheeler. Great variety of talk. Mr. Prin, among many, had a pretty talk of one that brought in a bill in parliament for the impowering him to dispose his land to such children as he should have that should bear the name of his wife. It was in Queen Elizabeth's time. One replied, that there are many species of creatures where the male gives the denomination to both sexes, as swan and woodcocke, but not above one where the female do, and that is goose. Both at and after dinner, we had great discourses of the nature and power of spirits, my Lord Sandwhich is very skepticall. He says the greatest warrants that ever he had to believe any, is the present appearing of the Devil in Wiltshire, much of late talked of, who beats a drum up and down. There are books of it, and, they say, very true; but my Lord observes, though he do answer any tune that you will play to him upon another drum, yet one time he tried to play and could not; which makes him suspect the whole; and I think it is a good argument.....(the entry for this day continues on regarding their discussion of handsome women, commenting particularly on the beauty of Samuel Pepy's neighbor's wife.) There is a footnote for this diary entry, as follows:

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"In 1664, there being a generall report all over the kingdom of Mr. Monpesson his house being haunted, which hee himself affirming to the King and Queene to be true, the King sent the Lord Falmouth, and the Queene sent mee, to examine the truth of it; but we could neither see nor heare anything that was extraordinary; and about a year after, his Majesty told me that hee had discovered the cheat, and that Mr. Monpesson, upon his Majesty sending for him, confessed it to him. And yet Mr. Montpesson, in a printed letter, had afterwards the confidence to deny that he had ever made any such confession" - from "Letters of the Second Earl of Chesterfield", p. 24, 1829. Joseph Glanville published a relation of the famous disturbance at the home of Mr. Monpesson at Tedworth, Wilts, occasioned by the beating of an invisible drum every night for a year. This story, which was believed at the time, furnished the plot for Addison's play of "The Drummer, or the Haunted House". In the "Mercurius Publicus", April 16-23, 1663, there is a curious examination of this subject, by which it appears that one William Drury, of Uscut, Wilts, was the invisible drummer.