“Many thanks to you, Mr. Geoffrey Barbican,” recommenced my visitor, “for this most opportune display of your Heraldical learning: and, in returning to London Bridge, I must observe, that as all history is but a record of the evanescent scenes of human life, it must, of course, be formed of all those strong lights and shades which are so very conspicuous in its original; and hence arises that striking contrast of events, which so frequently fills us with solemnity and awe. We retire, perchance, from a banquet to a prison, or from a triumph to an execution; at least, such is the nature of the next event which I find for our Chronicles, for the Towers of London Bridge usually claimed a portion in most of the victims of the axe and the scaffold. The principles of the Lollards, as they were invidiously called, were then rapidly spreading; and Sir John Oldcastle, commonly called the good Lord Cobham, was one of the most active leaders in the religious reform commenced by Wickliffe: as he was not only at a very considerable cost in collecting and transcribing his works, which he caused to be widely distributed, but he also maintained many of his disciples as itinerant preachers throughout the country. Oldcastle had, however, escaped from the power of the Clergy who had condemned him as a heretic, and confined him in the Tower; when King Henry being persuaded by them that he headed 20,000 Lollards for his destruction, he was attainted, and a large reward offered for his head: in confirmation of which Stow informs us, in his ‘_Annals_,’ page 352, that on the ‘viii day of October’--1416--‘was a Parchment maker of Trill-melle Streete drawne, hanged, and headed, for that he had harboured Sir John Oldcastle:’ and the Harleian Chronicle, No. 565, page 77 a, adds, that his head ‘was set upon London Bridge for tretory.’ Another obscure person, most probably concerned in the same unhappy society, is also recorded as coming to a similar end: for, ‘John Benet, Woolman,’ says Stow, in the place I last cited, ‘who had in London scattered sceduls full of sedition, was drawne, hanged, and beheaded on Michaelmas-day:’ and the Harleian Chronicle adds, that his head was also fixed upon London Bridge.