Crime -- Great Britain; Criminals -- Great Britain; Executions and executioners; Tyburn gallows (London, England)
=1603.= The xvii. of Februarie, W. Anderson [or Richardson] a Seminary
Priest was drawne to Tyborne and there hanged, bowelled and quartered,
for being found in England contrary to the statute of Anno. 27. (Stow, p.
812).
Anderson was the last of Elizabeth’s victims; she died a few weeks later.
=1604.= Master Robert Dow of London Merchant Taylor, in his most
Christian charitie, pitying the miserable or rather desperate Estate
of the poore condemned prisoners in Newgate, where very often and very
many of them after Judgement of Death, and at their very Execution
remaine most carelesse of their Soules health, Jesting and deriding their
imminent danger and to the Judgement of the world die reprobate.
Upon tender Consideration whereof, and good hope of after reformation
of such poore prisoners there, as through temptation of Sathan are, and
will be too apt to fall into like danger the sayd Master Dow hath giuen
competent Maintainance for ever, vnto Saint Sepulchers parish for the
towling of the great Bell and for some especiall man, by them to bee
appointed to come to the sayd Prison, the midnight before execution, and
then distinctly and solemnly to ring a hand bell: then to pronounce with
a lowd voice at the prison grate, a Godly and Christian remembrance on
exhortation, appoynted by the Lord Bishoppe, beginning thus.
O ye prisoners within condemned, this day to dye, remember your sinnes,
call to God for Grace, whilst yet you have time.
And in the Morning when they are in the Cart, iust against the Church,
the partie aforesayd to put them in minde againe of their former liues,
and present death, saying the great bell of this Church, which I told you
last night should Toll for you from sixe of the clocke vntil ten, now
tolleth to the end to moue good people to pray to God for you whilest
your selues with them may pray for remission of your sinnes, &c. And
at ten a clocke or at such time as knowledge may be truely had of the
Prisoners execution the sayd great Bell shall bee rung out for the space
of a quarter of an houre, (to the end all people may understand the
execution is past) and then cease (Stow, pp. 862).
We are now in the reign of James I. In 1605 was the Gunpowder Plot, the
memory of which is still kept alive by bonfires, and by the farcical
search of the cellars of the Houses of Parliament. Gunpowder Plot does
not come into the Annals of Tyburn, as none of the conspirators suffered
here.
=1607.= _February 26._ Robert Drury, priest, for being in England,
executed at Tyburn (Challoner’s Memoirs, pt. ii., pp. 13-5).
=1608.= The 11. of Aprill, George Ieruis [Gervase or Jarvis] a Seminary
priest, according to his iudgement was executed at Tyborne (Stow, p. 893).
The 23. of June, Thomas Garnet, a Jesuite was executed at Tyborne,
hauing fauor offred him, if he would haue taken the oath of alleageance
aforesayd, but he refused it (Stow, p. 893).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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