Derwentwater's coffin was found in the family vault, the head was lying safe with the body. In 1716 there was, however, a traitor's head spiked on the Bar-that of Colonel John Oxburgh, the victim of mistaken fidelity to a bad cause. He was a brave Lancashire gentleman, who had surrendered with his forces at Preston. He displayed signal courage and resignation in prison, forgetting himself to comfort others. The next victim was Mr. Christopher Layer, a young Norfolk man and a Jacobite barrister, living in Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane. He plunged deeply into the Atterbury Plot of 1722, and, with Lords North and Grey, enlisted men, hired officers, and, taking advantage of the universal misery caused by the bursting of the South Sea Bubble, planned a general rising against George I. The scheme was, with four distinct bodies of Jacobites, to seize the Tower and the Bank, to arrest the king and the prince, and capture or kill Lord Cadogan, one of the Ministers. At the trial it was proved that Layer had been over to Rome, and had seen the Pretender, who, by proxy, had stood godfather to his child. Troops were to be sent from France; barricades were to be thrown up all over London. The Jacobites had calculated that the Government had only 14,000 men to meet them 3,000 of these would be wanted to guard London, 3,000 for Scotland, and 2,000 for the garrisons. The original design had been to take advantage of the king's departure for Hanover, and, in the words of one of the conspirators, the Jacobites were fully convinced that "they should walk King George out before Lady-day." Layer was hanged at Tyburn, and his head fixed upon Temple Bar. Years after, one stormy night in 1753, the rebel's skull blew down, and was picked up by a nonjuring attorney, named Pierce, who preserved it as a relic of the Jacobite martyr. It is said that Dr. Richard Rawlinson, an eminent antiquary, obtained what he thought was Layer's head, and desired in his will that it should be placed in his right hand when he was buried. Another version of the story is, that a spurious skull was foisted upon Rawlinson, who died happy in the possession of the doubtful treasure. Rawlinson was bantered by Addison for his pedantry, in one of the Tatlers, and was praised by Dr. Johnson for his learning. The 1745 rebellion brought the heads of fresh victims to the Bar, and this was the last triumph of barbarous justice. Colonel Francis Towneley's was the sixth; that of Fletcher (his fellow-officer), the seventh and last. The Earls of Kilmarnock and Cromarty, Lord Balmerino, and thirty-seven other rebels (thirty-six of them having been captured in Carlisle) were tried the same session. Towneley was a man of about fifty-four years of age, a near relative of Mr. Towneley of Towneley Hall (the collector of the "Towneley Marbles,") who had been tried and acquitted in 1715, though many of his men were found guilty and executed. Towneley had gone over to France in 1727, and obtained a commission from the French king, whom he served for fifteen years, being at the siege of Philipsburg, and close to the Duke of Berwick when that general's head was shot off. About 1740, Towneley stole over to England to see his friends and to plot against the Hanover family; and as soon as the rebels came into England, he met them between Lancaster and Preston, and came with them to Manchester. At the trial Roger M'Donald, an officer's servant, deposed to seeing Towneley on the retreat from Derby, and between Lancaster and Preston riding at the head of the Manchester regiment on a bay horse. He had a white cockade in his hat and wore a plaid sash. George Fletcher, who was tried at the same time as Towneley, was a rash young chapman, who managed his widowed mother's provision shop "at Salford, just over the bridge in Manchester." His mother had begged him on her knees to keep out of the rebellion, even offering him a thousand pounds for his own pocket, if he would stay at home. He bought a captain's commission of Murray, the Pretender's secretary, for fifty pounds; wore the smart white cockade and a Highland plaid sash lined with white silk; and headed the very first captain's guard mounted for the Pretender at Carlisle. A Manchester man deposed to seeing at the Exchange a sergeant, with a drum, beating up for volunteers for the Manchester regiment. Fletcher, Towneley, and seven other unfortunate Jacobites were hanged on Kennington Common. Before the carts drove away, the men flung their prayer-books, written speeches, and gold-laced hats gaily to the crowd. Mr. James (Jemmy) Dawson, the hero of Shenstone's touching ballad, was one of the nine. As soon as they were dead the hangman cut down the bodies, disembowelled, beheaded, and quartered them, throwing the hearts into the fire. A monster-a fighting-man of the day, named Buckhorse-is said to have actually eaten a piece of Towneley's flesh, to show his loyalty. Before the ghastly scene was over, the heart of one unhappy spectator had already broken. The lady to whom James Dawson was engaged to be married followed the rebels to the common, and even came near enough to see, with pallid face, the fire kindling, the axe, the coffins, and all the other dreadful Temple Bar.] THE CITY "GOLGOTHA." 29 preparations. She bore up bravely, until she heard After this, history leaves the heads of the unhappy her lover was no more. Then she drew her head Jacobites-those lips that love had kissed, those back into the coach, and crying out, "My dear, I cheeks children had patted-to moulder on in the follow thee-I follow thee! Lord God, receive our sun and in the rain, till the last day of March, 1772, souls, I pray Thee!" fell on the neck of a companion when one of them (Towneley or Fletcher) fell. The and expired. Mr. Dawson had behaved gallantly in last stormy gust of March threw it down, and a prison, saying, “He did not care if they put a ton short time after a strong wind blew down the other; weight of iron upon him, it would not daunt him." and against the sky no more relics remained of A curious old print of 1746, full of vulgar triumph, a barbarous and unchristian revenge. In April, reproduces a "Temple Bar, the City Golgotha," re- 1773, Boswell, whom we all despise and all like, presenting the Bar with three heads on the top of it, dined at courtly Mr. Beauclerk's with Dr. Johnson, spiked on long iron rods. The devil looks down | Lord Charlemont (Hogarth's friend), Sir Joshua in ribald triumph from above, and waves a rebel | Reynolds, and other members of the literary banner, on which, besides three coffins and a crown, club, in Gerrard Street, Soho, it being the awful is the motto, "A crown or a grave." Underneath evening when Boswell was to be balloted for. are written these patriotic but doggrel lines:- The conversation turned on the new and commendable practice of erecting monuments to great men in St. Paul's. The Doctor observed: "I remember once being with Goldsmith in Westminster Abbey. Whilst we stood at Poet's Corner, I said to him, "Observe the banner which would all enslave, While trembling rebels at the fabric gaze, The heads of Fletcher and Towneley were put on the Bar August 12, 1746. On August 15th Horace Walpole, writing to a friend, says he had just been roaming in the City, and "passed under the new heads on Temple Bar, where people make a trade of letting spy-glasses at a halfpenny a look." According to Mr. J. T. Smith, an old man living in 1825 remembered the last heads on Temple Bar being visible through a telescope across the space between the Bar and Leicester Fields. Between two and three A.M., on the morning of January 20, 1766, a mysterious man was arrested by the watch as he was discharging, by the dim light, musket bullets at the two heads then remaining upon Temple Bar. On being questioned by the puzzled magistrate, he affected a disorder in his senses, and craftily declared that the patriotic reason for his eccentric conduct was his strong attachment to the present Government, and that he thought it not sufficient that a traitor should merely suffer death; that this provoked his indignation, and it had been his constant practice for three nights past to amuse himself in the same manner. "And it is much to be feared," says the past record of the event, "that the man is a near relation to one of the unhappy sufferers." Upon searching this very suspicious marksman, about fifty musket bullets were found on him, wrapped up in a paper on which was written the motto, "Eripuit ille vitam." "Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur illis."—OVID. When we got to Temple Bar he stopped me, and pointing to the heads upon it, slily whispered,— "Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis." This anecdote, so full of clever, arch wit, is sufficient to endear the old gateway to all lovers of Johnson and of Goldsmith. According to John Timbs, in his "London and Westminster," Mrs. Black, the wife of the editor of the Morning Chronicle, when asked if she remembered any heads on Temple Bar, used to reply, in her brusque, hearty way, "Boys, I recollect the scene well! I have seen on that Temple Bar, about which you ask, two human heads-real heads-traitors' heads-spiked on iron poles. There were two; I saw one fall (March 31, 1772). Women shrieked as it fell; men, as I have heard, shrieked. One woman near me fainted. Yes, boys, I recollect seeing human heads upon Temple Bar.” The cruel-looking spikes were removed early in the present century. The panelled oak gates were often renewed, though certainly shutting them too often never wore them out. As early as 1790 Alderman Pickett (who built the St. Clement's arch), with other subversive reformers, tried to pull down Temple Bar. It was pronounced unworthy of form, of no antiquity, an ambuscade for pickpockets, and a record of only the dark and crimson pages of history. A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine, in 1813 chronicling the clearance away of some hovels encroaching upon the building, says: "It will not of this sum £480 for his four stone monarchs. The mason was John Marshall, who carved the pedestal of the statue of Charles I. at Charing Cross and worked on the Monument in Fish Street Hill. In 1636 Inigo Jones had designed a new arch, the plan of which still exists. Wren, it is said, took his design of the Bar from an old temple at Rome. be surprising if certain amateurs, busy in improving the architectural concerns of the City, should at length request of their brethren to allow the Bar or grand gate of entrance into the City of London to stand, after they have so repeatedly sought to obtain its destruction." In 1852 a proposal for its repair and restoration was defeated in the Common Council; and twelve months later, a number of bankers, merchants, and traders set their hands to The old Bar, once a protection, then an ornaa petition for its removal altogether, as serving no ment, became an obstruction-the too narrow neck practical purpose, as it impeded ventilation and of a large decanter-a bone in the throat of Fleet retarded improvements. Since then Mr. Heywood has proposed to make a circus at Temple Bar, leaving the archway in the centre; and Mr. W. Burges, the architect, suggested a new arch in keeping with the new Law Courts. It is a singular fact that the "Parentalia," a chronicle of Wren's works written by Wren's clever son, contains hardly anything about Temple Bar. According to Mr. Noble, the Wren manuscripts in the British Museum, Wren's ledger in the Bodleian, and the Record Office documents, are equally silent; but from a folio at the Guildhall, entitled "Expenses of Public Buildings after the Great Fire," it would appear that the Bar cost altogether £1,397 10s.; Bushnell, the sculptor, receiving out Street. It also became dilapidated and dan gerous, and was eventually removed, as already stated, in 1877-8. Yet to the last we felt a lingering fondness for the old barrier that we had seen draped in black for a dead hero and glittering with gold in honour of a young bride. It is worthy of notice here that the visit of Her Majesty and the Prince of Wales to St. Paul's in February, 1872, was the very last occasion on which Royalty passed in state through its gates. The Bar, after much discussion as to its restingplace, was rebuilt in 1887 as an entrance to Sir H. Meux's park at Cheshunt; its ancient site is marked by a monument of which we shall speak in a later chapter. CHAPTER III. FLEET STREET-GENERAL INTRODUCTION. Frays in Fleet Street-Chaucer and the Friar-The Duchess of Gloucester doing Penance for Witchcraft-Riots between Law Students and Citizens'Prentice Riots-Oates in the Pillory-Entertainments in Fleet Street-Shop Signs-Burning the Boot-Trial of Hardy-Queen Caroline's Funeral. 15s. for these forges, which same rent was given for more than a century after their destruction. ALAS, for the changes of time! The Fleet, that little, quick-flowing stream, once so bright and clear, is now a sewer! but its name remains immortalised by the street called after it. Although, according to a modern antiquary, a Roman amphitheatre stood on the site of the old Fleet Prison, and Roman citizens were probably interred outside Ludgate, we know but little whether Roman buildings ever stood on the west side of the City gates. Stow, however, describes a stone pavement supported on piles being found, in 1595, near the Fleet Street end of Chancery Lane; so that we may presume the soil of the neighbourhood was originally marshy. The first British settlers there must probably have been restless spirits, impatient of the high rents and insufficient room inside the City walls, and willing, for economy, to risk the forays of any Saxon pirates who chose to steal up the river on a dusky night and sack the outlying cabins of London. There were certainly rough doings in Fleet Street in the Middle Ages, for the City chronicles tell us of much blood spilt there and of many deeds of violence. In 1228 (Henry III.) we find, for instance, one Henry de Buke slaying a man named Le Ireis, or Le Tylor, of Fleet Bridge, then fleeing to the church of St. Mary, Southwark, and there claiming sanctuary. In 1311 (Edward II.) five of the king's not very respectable or law-fearing household were arrested in Fleet Street for a burglary; and though the weak king demanded them (they were perhaps servants of his Gascon favourite, Piers Gaveston, whom the barons afterwards killed), the City refused to give them up, and they probably had "short shrift." In the same reign, when the Strand was full of bushes and thickets, Fleet Street could hardly have been continuous. Still, some shops in Fleet Street were, no doubt, even in Edward II.'s reign, of importance, for we find, in 1321, a Fleet Street bootmaker supplying the luxurious king with "six pairs of boots, with tassels of silk and drops of silver-gilt, the price of each pair being 5s." In Richard II.'s reign it is especially mentioned that Wat Tyler's fierce Kentish men sacked the Savoy church, and part of the Temple, and destroyed two forges which had been originally erected on each side of St. Dunstan's Church by the Knight Templars. The Priory of St. John of Jerusalem had paid a rent of The poet Chaucer is said to have beaten a saucy Franciscan friar in Fleet Street, and to have been fined 2s. for the offence by the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple; so at least Speight had heard from one who had seen the entry in the records of the Inn. In King Henry IV.'s reign another crime disturbed Fleet Street. A Fleet Street goldsmith was murdered by ruffians in the Strand, and his body thrown under the Temple Stairs. In 1440 (Henry VI.) a strange procession startled the London citizens. Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester, did penance through Fleet Street for witchcraft practised against the king. She and certain priests and necromancers had, it was said, melted a wax figure of young King Henry before a slow fire, praying that as that figure melted his life might melt also. Of the duchess's confederates, the Witch of Ely was burnt at Smithfield, a canon of Westminster died in the Tower, and a third culprit was hung, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn. The duchess was brought from Westminster, and landed at the Temple Stairs, from whence, with a tall wax taper in her hand, she walked bareheaded to St. Paul's, where she offered at the high altar. Another day she did penance at Christ Church, Aldgate; a third day at St. Michael's, Cornhill, the Lord Mayor, sheriffs, and most of the Corporation following. She was then banished to the Isle of Man, and her ghost, they say, still haunts Peel Castle. And now, in the long panorama of years, there rises in Fleet Street a clash of swords and a clatter of bucklers. In 1441 (Henry VI.) the general effervescence of the times spread beyond Ludgate, and there was a great affray in Fleet Street between the hot-blooded youths of the Inns of Court and the citizens, which lasted two days; the chief man in the riot was one of Clifford's Inn, named Harbottle; and this irrepressible Harbottle and his fellows only the appearance of the mayor and sheriffs could quiet. In 1458 (in the same reign) there was a more serious riot of the same kind; the students were then driven back by archers from the Conduit near Shoe Lane to their several inns, and some slain, including "the Queen's attornie," who certainly ought to have known better and kept closer to his parchments. Even the king's meek |