Richard Cabell - Evil Squire of Buckfastleigh

I have chosen to research the man who inspired Arthur Conan Doyle's 'Hound of the Baskervilles', Richard Cabell. Having died 5th July, 1677, there are various versions of this man's life and how he gained his evil reputation. For example, some of the versions suggest that he was an evil man and keen huntsman who sold his soul to the devil, or that he killed his wife, though other versions say that his wife outlived him by 14 years at least. Another version of the tale says that Richard Cabell beat his wife and accused her of infidelity, and chased her over the moor, catching her and stabbing her to death in a fit of rage, which is a version closely related to Doyle's Hugo Baskerville. It is said that her faithful hound tore out his throat in revenge, and that both fell to their deaths. Another version tells how on the night of his burial a pack of phantom hounds bayed across the moor and sat howling at his tomb. Some say he leads the hounds on hunts across the moors, sometimes with a headless horse and coach.

With so many different versions of Cabell's life it may be difficult for me to reconstruct the past with a certain degree of accuracy, however there are other elements of writing I can attempt to help reconstruct this man's life. In week 4 of our Telling True Stories lectures, we discussed effective ways in which to reconstruct the past, such as, recreating the atmosphere/experience, Dialogue, Emotion, Accuracy, having credibility, consistency and corroboration when using information from a source, and, of course, when quoting, every quote must have a source as it would not be true otherwise. This is something Kate Summerscale does extremely well in The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, which is shown by her extensive bibliography of sources. Some of these will be difficult, others I will be excited to research and discover which ways I can tell the story of Richard Cabell.