by good Bishop Horne, towards the close of the eighteenth century, that it was no uncommon thing to see scores of felons executed here. Taylor, the Water Poet, in "The Praise and Virtue of a Jayle and Jaylers" (1623), gives these lines :— "I have heard sundry men ofttimes dispute, Of trees that in one yeare will twice beare fruit; cart, riding up Holborn in a two-wheeled chariot, with a guard of halberdiers. 'There goes a proper fellow,' says one; 'Good people, pray for me.' Now I'm at the three wooden stilts. Hey! now I feel my toes hang i' the cart; now 'tis drawn away; now, now, now!-I'm gone!" At Tyburn, upon the restoration of monarchy, was performed the farce of dragging Sir Henry Mildmay, Wallop, and some other members of the Again, in Dr. Johnson's "London" (a poem), regicide party, to the fatal tree, with halters round. we read: "Scarce can our fields-such crowds at Tyburn dieWith hemp the gallows and the fleet supply." their necks. Miles Corbet, the regicide also, having been arrested on the Continent, was brought to London, dragged through the streets hither, and Then there is a parody on Gray's "Elegy," in executed. which we read "Yet e'en these humble vices to correct, Old Tyburn lifts his triple front on high." In Shirley's play of The Wedding, published in 1629, an execution at Tyburn is thus depicted: -"Rawbone: I do imagine myself apprehended already; now the constable is carrying me to Newgate; now, now, I'm in the Sessions House, in the dock; now I'm called; 'Not guilty, my lord.' The jury has found the indictment, billa vera. Now, now, comes my sentence. Now I'm in the Evelyn, in his "Diary," under date January 30, 1661, the first anniversary of the murder of Charles I. since the Restoration, writes:-"The carcases of those rebels, Cromwell, Bradshaw, the judge who condemned his Majesty, and Ireton (son-in-law to the Usurper), were dragged out of their superb tombs in Westminster among the kings to Tyburn, and hanged on the gallows there from nine in the morning till six at night, and then buried under that fatal and ignominious monument in a deep pit, thousands who had seen them in all their pride being spectators." How far this "deep pit" can be regarded as really the last resting-place of Cromwell's body may be inferred from what we have already written on the subject, in our account of Red Lion Square, Holborn.* In the "New View of London," published in 1708, no mention is made of either Oxford or Uxbridge Road, but the thoroughfare is entered as Tyburn Road. It is thus described as lying "between St. Giles' Pound, east, and the lane leading to the Gallows, west, 350 yards in length." The writer adds:-"This street has its name as being the next street to Tyburn, the place for execution of all such malefactors, generally speaking, as have committed acts worthy of death within the City and Liberties of London and County of Middlesex. I have known, he continues, "nineteen executed at one sessions, though these are held about eight times a year; but this is near twenty years ago." He then congratulates the nation on the decrease in the number of executions of late, which he ascribes to improvements in the law, and to the efforts of societies for the reformation of manners; and ends by telling a story of a man who revived, after being cut down off the gallows, in 1705. Tyburn, it need scarcely be added, figures constantly in the caricatures of Hogarth. Thus, in his "Industry and Idleness," "Tom Idle" goes to Tyburn in a cart with a coffin in it, whilst the other apprentice, Francis Goodchild, drives to the Mansion House, as Lord Mayor of London, with footmen and sword-bearer, the King and the Court looking on from a balcony in St. Paul's Churchyard, and smiling approval. In Hogarth's print of Tyburn Tree, the hangman is represented coolly smoking his pipe, as he reclines by the gibbet, in full view of the hills of Hampstead and Highgate. "Could Tom Idle's ghost have made its appearance in 1847," asks Thackeray, in his "Humourists," ," "what changes would have been remarked by that astonished escaped criminal! Over that road which the hangman used to travel constantly, and the Oxford stage twice a week, go ten thousand carriages every day; over yonder road, by which Dick Turpin fled to Windsor, and Squire Western journeyed into town, when he came to take up his quarters at the Hercules Pillars on the outskirts of London, what a rush of civilisation and order flows now! What armies of gentlemen with umbrellas march to banks, and chambers, and countinghouses! What regiments of nursery-maids and pretty infantry; what peaceful processions of * See Vol. IV., p. 546. policemen; what light broughams and what gay carriages; what swarms of busy apprentices and artificers, riding on omnibus-roofs, pass daily and hourly! Tom Idle's times are quite changed; many of the institutions are gone into disuse which were admired in his day. There's more pity and kindness, and a better chance for poor Tom's successors now than at that simpler period, when Fielding hanged him and Hogarth drew him." Tyburn also figures in one of Hogarth's pictures of "Marriage à la Mode," where Counsellor Silvertongue pays the last penalty of the law for sending a certain noble earl out of the world before his time. In Hogarth's hands, no doubt, Tyburn was usefully employed, both "To point a moral and adorn a tale." But Tyburn has witnessed other scenes besides those of which we have spoken above. The story of Queen Henrietta Maria doing penance here is thus told by Mr. S. W. Gardiner, in his "History of England under the Duke of Buckingham and Charles I.: "-"It was after a long day spent in attendance on the devotions of her Church at the Chapel at St. James's that the young queen of Charles I. strolled out, with her ladies, to breathe the fresh evening air in St. James's Park. Byand-by she found her way into Hyde Park, and by accident or design directed her steps towards Tyburn. In her position it was quite natural that she should bethink herself of those who had suffered there as martyrs for the faith which she had come to England to support. What wonder if her heart beat more quickly, and if some prayer for strength to bear her weary lot rose to her lips? A week or two probably passed away before the tale reached Charles, exaggerated in its passage through the mouths of men. .. The Queen of England, he was told, had been conducted on a pilgrimage to offer prayer to dead traitors, who had suffered the just reward of their crimes. The cup of his displeasure was now full; . . . those who had brought her to this should no longer remain in England. .. On July 31 the king and queen dined together at Whitehall. After dinner he conducted her to his private apartments, locked the door on her attendants, and told her that her servants must go." Meanwhile, Conway was taking measures for the removal of her ladies to Somerset House. "As soon as the young queen perceived what was being done she flew to the window and dashed to pieces the glass, that her voice might be heard by those who were bidding her adieu for the last time; and Charles, it is said, dragged her back into the room, with her hands Tyburn.] PENANCE OF QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA. bleeding from the energy with which she clung to the bars." As we have already stated, in our account of Somerset House,* no time was lost in sending off the queen's French attendants to their native country. It is more probable that the act on the part of her Majesty was a voluntary one; for, although pious and devout, the queen was not at all a person to be led blindly at the will of any confessor. However, in the illustrated edition of Pennant's "London," in the British Museum, there is to be seen a copy of a rare German print, purporting to be a representation of the scene. At a short distance off is the confessor's carriage, drawn by six horses; in the coach is seated the confessor himself, and a page, with a lighted candle or torch, is standing at the door. The fact is certainly recorded in a cotemporary document published in the first series of "Original Letters," edited by Sir Henry Ellis; but as the language used is of the most rabid and foul-mouthed kind—the confessor being styled "Luciferian," and the details of the affair styled "ridiculous," "absurd," "beggarly"—we may reasonably entertain a doubt whether it was not a "mare's-nest." In all probability the story was concocted by some Titus Oates of the day. The letter in question, which purports to be "from Mr. Pory to Mr. Joseph Mead," contains the following expressions :-"No longer agone then upon St. James his day last, those hypocritical dogges made the pore Queen to walke a foot (some add bare. foot) from her house at St. James to the gallowes at Tyborne, thereby to honour the Saint of the day in visiting that holy place where so many martyrs (forsooth) had shed their bloud in defense of the Catholique cause. .. Yea, they have made her to go barefoot, to spin, to eat her meat out of tryne (wooden) dishes, to waite at the table and serve her servants, with many other ridiculous and absurd penances. It was, certainly, 'high time' that this French train should be dismissed; and packed off they were ('contumaciously refusing to go') in coaches, carts, and barges, to Gravesend." If it be true that old George III. took such an interest in the welfare of those condemned to die upon the gallows as he is represented to have done in an anecdote which was at one time freely circulated, his time must have been pretty well occupied by devotional exercises. The anecdote in question, albeit highly honourable to his sense of public duty, is mentioned on the authority of Stevenson, the American envoy in London. Some extraordinary occurrence having called a French See Vol. III., p. 91. 201. statesman to the palace as late as two o'clock in the morning, he found the king in his cabinet, examining the case of a prisoner condemned to execution. The envoy afterwards ascertained that the king keeps a register, recording the name of every person capitally condemned, the decision, and its reasons. Frequently, in the still hours of the night, he performs the task of investigating those cases, and adds to the record the circumstances which had influenced his decision. The envoy probably did not know that the great and good George III. had pursued nearly the same practice fifty years before, weighed the evidence with the deepest anxiety, and generally shut himself up in his cabinet at Windsor (it was presumed in prayer) during the hour appointed for the execution in London. The exact spot on which the fatal Tyburn Tree was erected has been often discussed by antiquaries. It would appear, however, to be identified with the site of the house in the south-east corner of Connaught Square, formerly numbered 49; for in the lease granted by the Bishop of London, to whom the property belongs, this fact is particularly mentioned. A writer in The Antiquary, in October, 1873, says, with reference to this subject :-"I was born within 100 yards of the exact spot on which the gallows stood, and my uncle took up the stones on which the uprights were placed. The following is his statement to me, and the circumstance of his telling it :-In 1810, when Connaught Place was being built, he was employed on the works, and for many years lived at the corner of Bryanston Street and the Edgware Road, nearly opposite Connaught Mews. My father, a master carpenter, worked for several years in Connaught Place, and on one occasion he employed his brother, I think in the year 1834; at all events, we had just left No. 6, the residence of Sir Charles Coote. It was at this time I said to my uncle, 'Now you are here, tell me where the gallows stood;' to which he replied, 'Opposite here, where the staves are.' I thereupon crossed over, and drove a brass-headed nail into the exact spot he indicated. On reaching home, I told my mother of the occurrence, and asked if it were correct. She said it was so, for she remembered the posts standing when she was a child. This might be about the year 1800; and, as she was born in Bryanston Street, I believe she stated. what she knew to be a fact. I well remember Connaught Square being built, and I also recollect a low house standing at the corner of the Uxbridge Road, close to No. 1, Connaught Place (Arklow House), and that, on the removal of this house, quantities of human bones were found. I saw mother, Audrey, Lady Townshend, who so long them carted away by Mr. Nicholls, contractor, of "entertained" at her house in Whitehall, was one Adams' Mews. He removed Tyburn toll-house in day rallied by her friends on taking a short lease 1829. From what I have been told by old inhabi- of "a villa at Tyburn." "Oh," replied the witty tants that were born in the neighbourhood, pro- woman, "you see it is a neighbourhood of which bably about 1750, I have every reason to believe I could never tire, for my neighbours are being that the space from the toll-house to Frederick hanged every week; so we are always changing! Mews was used as a place of execution, and the It was this same lady who, on being asked if it was bodies buried adjacent, for I have seen the remains true that Whitfield had recanted, answered, “No, disinterred when the square and adjoining streets madam; but I know he has canted;" and who were being built." sarcastically remarked of the royal family, who took a fancy to go to all public shows and suppers, that it was "the cheapest family to see, and the dearest to keep, of any that had ever been seen." Smith, in his " History of St. Marylebone," states that "the gallows were for many years a standing fixture on a small eminence at the corner of the Edgware Road, near the turnpike, on the identical spot where a toll-house was subsequently erected by the Uxbridge Road Trust. Beneath this place are supposed to lie the bones of Bradshaw, Ireton, and other regicides, which were taken from their graves after the Restoration, and buried under the gallows. The gallows itself subsequently consisted of two uprights and a cross-beam, erected on the morning of execution across the Edgware Road, opposite the house at the corner of Upper Bryanston Street and the Edgware Road, wherein the gallows was deposited after being used; this house had curious iron balconies to the windows of the first and second floors, where the sheriffs sat to witness the executions. After the place of execution was changed to Newgate, in 1783, the gallows was bought by a carpenter, and made into stands for beer-butts in the cellars of the 'Carpenters' Arms' public-house, hard by." Mr. G. A. Sala hits the right nail on the head, in his "Gaslight and Daylight," when he remarks that while the region of the Grosvenors is the place for the "swells of the peerage, those of blue blood and the strawberry-leaves," Tyburnia suits admirably "the nobility of yesterday, your mushroom aristocrats, millionaires, ex-lord mayors, and people of that sort;" and he also pithily adds, “Tyburn is gone: I am not such an old fogey as to remember that, nor so staunch a conservative as to regret it now that it is gone." "Tyburnia" proper, as we may call the city which sprang up between the Edgware Road and Westbourne Terrace, in the reign of William IV., consists of squares, terraces, and rows of stately mansions, which now rival in elegance her more southern sister, "Belgravia." Oxford and Cambridge Terraces, which run from the Edgware Road to the southern end of Westbourne Terrace, "Around the gibbet," says Mr. Timbs, in his with Oxford and Cambridge Squares to the south "Curiosities of London," were erected open of them, will long keep in remembrance the munigalleries, like a race-course stand, wherein seats ficence of Lady Margaret, Countess of Richmond, were let to spectators at executions: the key of as the founder of divinity professorships in our two one of them was kept by Mammy Douglas, the great and ancient universities. Tyburn pew-opener.' In 1758, when Dr. Henesey was to have been executed for treason, the prices of seats rose to 25. and 2s. 6d. ; but the doctor being 'most provokingly reprieved,' a riot ensued, and most of the seats were destroyed." The name of "Tyburn," thus mixed up with the saddest portions of our national history, and associated with ideas of villany and crime, very naturally smelt anything but sweet in the nose of the metropolis; and it was not until the city grew in bulk so tremendously that it threatened to burst its swathing bands, that the region around the old gallows, now known as "Tyburnia," came to be built upon, and inhabited by the upper classes of society. It is recorded by Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, in his sketch of Charles Townshend, that his eccentric The Rev. J. Richardson, referring to the days of the Regency, writes thus in his "Recollections,” published in 1856:-" The northern boundary of the old metropolis, then called Oxford Road, terminated abruptly at the entrance of the Park, where now stands the triumphal arch lately removed from Buckingham Palace. The now fashionable district which forms one side of the Bayswater Road, and occupies the angle between that road and Paddington, was, in the eyes of all respectable people, a locality to be avoided. Ragged fields stretched over scores of acres of ground; and the ominous name of Tyburn frightened, not, indeed, those whom it ought to have deterred, but those who either assumed a character for decency, or really possessed one. In fact, this part was a blank in the improvements of London |