With a Great Cry of Scalding and Burning: The True Story Behind the Great Thunderstorm of 1638 When Fact Met Folklore in the English Moors


 It is Sunday October 21, 1638 and approximately 300 worshippers are packed into St. Pancras church in the English village of Widecombe-in the-moor during the early afternoon.  

The worshippers represent almost the entire able-bodied population of Widecombe.  Only a few idle church dodgers, whose souls are sure to go to Hell anyway, everyone in St. Pancras’ church believes, choose to spend their Sabbath day drinking and gambling at a tavern just a few miles outside the village.   

The faithful are there in church, as they are every Sunday, to listen to the sermon of  their Anglican minister, George Lyde and to hear the Word of the Lord.  Lyde stands at the altar, as he does each week, with his faithful wife sitting attentively in the first pew only a few feet away at the very front of the church.  Little does he, or anyone else in St. Pancras that fateful afternoon know, but many there that day have only moments left to live.

St. Pancras Anglican Church Today

Suddenly, right in the middle of Minister Lyde’s sermon it’s as if day becomes night and dark clouds blot out all of the sunlight outside  and the congregation inside the church is bathed in darkness.  

A contemporary report said that there was a “Strange darkness, increasing more and more so that the people there assembled could not see to read in any book.” (1)

Then, in another instant, powerful thunder shook the church and the enormous stone bell tower of St. Pancras swayed from side to side.  The same report from 1638 went on to say, “Then there was the sound of thunder…the rattling whereof did answer like unto the sound and report of many cannons.” (1)

  Dust fell from the ceiling and coated the parishioners in fine gray powder as the rumbling of thunder continued to rock the building.

Just as the worshippers were adjusting to the darkness and straining to hear the words of their minister through the booming thunder, “[A] great ball of fire ripped through the window.” (1)  The flaming orb flew around the church and burned part of the roof as it incinerated some inside and knocked others to the ground and flung still more against the stone walls of the building.

The minister George Lyde, though terrified by this vision of Hell itself just like everyone else, was unhurt but his wife at the very front of the congregation had, “Her clothes and her body burnt in a very pitiful manner.” (1)

It was said that during the storm, as the orb of fire ricocheted around the inside of the church that one Robert Mead, a local warrener or sort of exterminator had his head bashed against a pillar that supported the ceiling, leaving an indentation that can be seen to this very day!  His brains were splattered across the floor.

  A dog was picked up by the vortex of flame, whirled around in the air as if caught in a tornado, and flung out the door where it died. Some parishioners' bodies were incinerated in a flash, with their flesh burnt to flakes of ash, while mysteriously, their clothes are said to have remained untouched.


17th Century Engraving of the Great Thunderstorm


An eyewitness account reported that, “The extraordinary lighting came into the church so flaming that the whole church was presently filled with fire and smoke…the smell whereof was very loathsome much like unto the scent of brimstone.” (1)

These words, written in the immediate aftermath of the Great Thunderstorm of 1638 sum up the death and destruction, the horror, caused by the event:


“Some say at first that they saw a great fiery ball come through the window and pass through the church, which so affrighted the whole congregation that the most part of them fell down in their seats, and some upon their knees, some on their faces, and some one upon another with a great cry of scalding and burning…”


In the immediate aftermath of the Great Thunderstorm of 1638 in England written accounts of what happened that day in Widecombe almost immediately began to circulate in the form of early 17th century broadsheets and were eagerly devoured by a newly largely literate public clamoring to hear news about this strange, and some would say cursed, event.

All of the quotes used thus far in this article are taken from a work entitled: A True Relation of those Strange and Lamentable Accidents Happening in the Parish Church of Widecombe in Devonshire on Sunday the 21st of October 1638 etc…”  This contemporary report was published in London less than one month after the Great Thunderstorm and is considered, even to this very day by many historians and folklorists, to be an accurate eyewitness representation of what happened in St. Pancras Church in the English village of Widecombe on the afternoon of what has been dubbed The Great Thunderstorm of 1638.

In total, out of the 300 or so worshippers gathered in St. Pancras Church that day as many as sixty were severely injured and perhaps as many as fifteen, though no less than six, were killed as a direct result of the Great Thunderstorm.  The large mostly stone church of St. Pancras sustained substantial damage with the roof of the building having been completely destroyed.

Today, many believe that  the worshippers inside the walls of St. Pancras church were the victims of a phenomenon known as “Ball Lighting”.


Ball lightning is a rare, and to this day, a largely unexplained phenomena that is associated with thunderstorms in flatland areas of the United Kingdom.  There is no largely agreed upon theory in the scientific community for what causes, or what exactly constitutes “Ball Lightning” although much of the science behind what it may be is quite complex and beyond the scope of this article or the knowledge of this author to fully get into.  Suffice it to say that “Ball Lightning” is said to be a large flaming orb of energy that lasts much longer than typical, ordinary lightning which strikes spots on the earth both prior to and during severe thunderstorms but then vanishes in a flash.  Ball lightning tends to linger and fly around and those who have seen it, say that ball lightning explodes after it has spent many moments hovering through the air (both indoors and outdoors!) and leaves behind a sulfurous smell once it dissipates.  All of these characteristics are in line with the contemporary accounts of the Great Thunderstorm of 1638 as described by eyewitnesses.

And a natural explanation for the death and destruction wrought by the Great Thunderstorm of 1638 upon the unsuspecting parishioners of St. Pancras Church of Widecombe village in the English countryside is definitely quite probable, after all, Widecombe and the moorland that surrounds it is known throughout England as being in, “The Valley of the Thunderstorms.”  If a historically destructive and “Great” Thunderstorm were to happen anywhere in Great Britain, perhaps anywhere in the world, it would most probably be in Widecombe.

But the moorland of the English countryside with its vast seemingly endless mossy rolling hills has been known throughout history for its eerie, almost supernatural, qualities.  Ball lightning is said to have been the inspiration for the creation of jack-o-lanterns, and even today, many who travel in the moorland insist they see specters and spirits that are not of this world.  

The somewhat rural and desolate village of Widecombe and its stone church of St. Pancras in particular is located at the very epicenter of this eerie and unsettling landscape.  The English moorland known for its gothic setting has been immortalized in English Literature by such luminaries as Arthur Conan Doyle who used it as the setting for his classic Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles and even by none other than Charles Dickens himself who has an escaped convict in his seminal work Great Expectations rise up out of the moors as if he had been conjured by some witches’ black magic.

Widecombe and Surrounding Moors

It’s no wonder then that a legend, which some believe to be true, surrounds The Great Thunderstorm of 1638 and the destruction of St. Pancras Church in Widecombe.

As legend would have it in the Fall of 1638 a local gambler named Jan Reynolds (or Bob Reade by some accounts!) made a deal with the devil that caused the Great Thunderstorm of 1638.  Jan Reynolds (or Bob Reade whatever you want to call him) was usually one of those Sunday church dodgers that wouldn’t normally have been in attendance during a Sunday service at St. Pancras.

However, after a losing streak at the card table, Jan Reynolds said that he would go to church every week if only he could start to win at gambling to support his family, which he promptly started to do.  But, since gambling isn’t the way of the Lord, in return for his good fortune Jan Reynolds made a pact with the devil and said that if Satan ever caught him asleep during a church service then he could come and take his soul.

Well, apparently, on the afternoon of October 21, 1638 Jan Reynolds fell asleep in church and the devil set out to take his soul.  After stopping at a local tavern to ask directions, where a local barmaid reported she had seen a man with cloven hooves for feet, the devil set off accompanied by the Great Thunderstorm to fetch Jan Reynolds.  It was reported that Satan entered the church in the form of what many might call ball lightning and that he snatched up Jan Reynolds and rode away on a flaming, flying horse, up into the cloudy sky of the Great Thunderstorm of 1638!

Wallboards at the base of St. Pancras' Tower

Today, at the foot of the large stone tower that’s part of St. Pancras Church in Widecombe, which still rises above the rolling flatland of the moors, are four panels, wallboards that were placed there way back in the 17th century that tell in detail the story of The Great Thunderstorm of 1638.

These commemorative plaques, a memorial to all of the victims of the Great Thunderstorm begin with a verse from The Bible, Lamentations III 2.2:


It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed because his compassions fail not…


Perhaps, the Great Thunderstorm of 1638 was just a freak historical weather event, a one in a million occurrence involving something as rare as ball lightning, or some other even more readily explainable natural phenomena, or maybe, it was the result of something more sinister, something unnatural and not of this world that may have, for a brief moment, caused the Lord’s mercies to fail…


Works Consulted

https://hohttps://www.legendarydartmoor.co.uk/2016/03/25/jan_reynolds/lidayindartmoor.co.uk/widecombe-in-the-moor/1638-thunderstorm-36276.html


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Thunderstorm

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