“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Saturday, Feb. 1, while doing some other art work, I had a vision. This was of my present younger brother Dick during his life in England in 1671. I saw very clearly the front upstairs bedroom in which he slept, and the bed in which he died as a boy of 9. I made a very quick sketch of this mental picture with a ballpoint pen. Jane and I both liked it, so I matted it. When this session began I had the drawing propped up on the bookcase so Jane could see it easily as she paced back and forth.

The drawing is very good. There were three beds in that room. Dick slept in one, the bed that you have pictured. His eldest sister slept in another, and a young brother in the third. There was also a smaller bed in which a maid slept. The family was not rich by any means. The maid was a relative of Throckmorton’s. In the beginning she worked for the family to save a decent dowry. However she was no beauty, and Throckmorton never really managed to pay her much above food and lodging.

These windows were not open however, except in periods of stifling heat which came seldom in England. This room was the front room and not as spacious as your sketch would make it appear. The mattress was straw but the bed itself was the best bed in the family, handed down from Throckmorton’s father. Throckmorton and his wife, Lessie, usually slept in it. It was given over to Dick because of his illness.

The top coverlet was an heirloom from Lessie’s family. Outside of the room there was a rickety staircase. On the other side of the staircase was a much smaller room where Throckmorton and Lessie slept during Dick’s illness, with a younger boy who was 3 at the time. The stairs led downward to the shop.

Behind the shop was another room that served as a kitchen and, you might say, parlor. In any case it was the family’s social room. Behind this was a storeroom with earthen floor, and a shed. An imbecilic boy sometimes did errands for Throckmorton about the shop. He slept in the shed. Lessie had already had and lost 4 children. One actually lived to be 18 and was born when Lessie was very young. The others died in childbirth or in the first year. Throckmorton had wanted a son to carry on his shop. The child who died at 18 would have been such a boy, and Throckmorton never really recovered from the lad’s death. He died incidentally of pneumonia: took sick and died within three days.