Cornish Characters and Strange EventsBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
Cornish Characters and Strange Events
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Cornwall (England : County) -- Biography; Cornwall (England : County) -- History; Legends -- England -- Cornwall (County)
Saunders Welsh, gent., High Constable of Holborn, deposed that on
Sunday, July 2nd, he had received information from Stanhope, as to the
wrecking of Owen's house on the previous night, and of his fears for
his own. On returning that same evening through Fleet Street, he
perceived a great fire in the Strand, upon which he proceeded to the
house of Peter Wood, who informed him that the rioters had demolished
the house of Stanhope, burning his furniture and goods, and that they
threatened to deal in the same manner with his house. Whereupon, he,
Mr. Saunders Welsh, applied at the Tilt-yard for a military force,
which he could only obtain with much difficulty, as he could produce
no order from a Justice of the Peace. At length he procured such
order, and then an officer and forty men were sent to the scene of the
riot. On reaching Cecil Street, he ordered that the drum should be
beaten. When he came up to Peter Wood's house, he found that the mob
had already in part demolished it, and had thrown a great part of its
contents into the street, and were debating about burning them. Had
they done so, the deponent said, it would infallibly have set fire to
the houses on both sides of the street, which at that point was very
narrow, and opposite Wood's house was the bank of Messrs. Snow and
Denne. Hearing, however, the rattle of the drum, and the tramp of the
advancing soldiers, the mob retreated, and it was whilst so retreating
that Bosavern Penlez was arrested, carrying off with him some of the
goods of Peter Wood.
Penlez and others were brought before Henry Fielding, J. P. for
Middlesex, and were committed to Newgate. This was on Monday. But the
same evening there was a recrudescence of the riots, and four thousand
sailors assembled on Tower Hill with the resolution to march to
Temple Bar. To obviate all future danger, a larger party of soldiers
was called out, and these, along with the peace officers, patrolled
the Strand all night.
Samuel Marsh, watchman of St. Dunstan's, had apprehended Bosavern
Penlez, as he was making off with a bundle of linen, which he
pretended belonged to his wife. Before he was arrested, the watchman
saw him thrusting divers lace objects into his bosom and pockets, but
he let fall a lace cap. When apprehended, he protested that he was
conveying his wife's property, who had pawned all his clothes, and
that he was retaliating by taking her articles to pawn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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