the murdered newborn appeared to him, causing his horse to shy and throw him. Darrell is said to haunt the site of his death, known as Darrell's stile (or Style, as well as the church at Ramsbury, two miles away), although one famed clairvoyant, Tom Corbett, detected nothing of the sort. But he reported to the author Peter Underwood that he did see "a ghost in the garden, a beautiful woman whom he later recognised from a portrait in the house as Mrs Leyborne Popham", and another ghost in the Chinese bedroom he termed a "busybody", a word Mrs. Wills, wife of the then owner Major George Wills, agreed described the presence in that room. Another possible ghost is that of a past tenant, Gerard Lee Bevan, who lived at Littlecote after World War I and later served time for embezzlement. His presence has been felt in the Long Gallery. John Aubrey tells that Littlecote was a bribe to Popham as his judge in a criminal case, which is impossible: Darrell was not charged or tried, and Popham was not yet a judge. Nevertheless, this story was borrowed by Sir Walter Scott, in Rokeby, and by Charles Dickens, in A Tale of Two Cities. The present house Sir John Popham bought the reversion of Littlecote, and succeeded to it on Darrell's death in 1589; he then built the present Elizabethan brick mansion, which was completed in 1592. James I, Charles II, and William of Orange stayed there, the latter on his march from Torbay to London in the so-called "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 in which he superseded the Catholic King James II. A unique room that can still be seen today is the so-called "Dutch Parlour". A plaque in the corridor outside states that this was decorated with paintings by Dutch seamen who were captured in about 1666 in a war between England and the Dutch; these paintings cover the walls and the ceiling. The Popham family owned the estate until 1805. In the mid-1600s the family played a role in the history of deaf education in which John Wallis and William Holder taught Sir John's great-grandson, Alexander Popham (born 1648), to overcome his disability and be able to speak. Sir John (1531–1600) was Speaker of the House of Commons, and five of his descendants were also Members of Parliament: Sir Francis (1573–1644; elected on nine occasions), John (1603–c.1638), Alexander