Crime -- Great Britain; Criminals -- Great Britain; Executions and executioners; Tyburn gallows (London, England)
[101] Shakespeare Socy., 1844, p. 73. This has been repeatedly quoted
(following Cunningham) as from “Tarlton’s Jests,” published in 1611,
twenty-one years later.
[102] Act. IV. sc. 3. The play is allotted to the period 1590-4.
[103] I am indebted to Mr. Herbert Sieveking for knowledge of this map.
He has described it in an article which has not appeared at the time when
this is written.
[104] In Mr. Croker’s translation we find the following: “It really
requires the concurrent testimony of all writers to make us believe that
the queen of England was forced by ‘those meddling priests’ to walk in
penance to Tyburn, and there on her knees, under the gibbet, glorify the
blessed martyrs of the Gunpowder Plot” (pp. 3, 4). The passage contains
several inaccuracies. In the first place, the testimony of all writers
was not concurrent, as is shown in the text; next, it was not charged
that the Queen “glorified” the martyrs, but that she prayed for their
souls; finally, “the blessed martyrs of the Gunpowder Plot” do not come
into the story, as not one of them was executed at Tyburn.
There exists a rare print, often reproduced, of the supposed scene. It is
of much later date and has no value whatever as evidence.
[105] In the _Athenæum_, August 17, 1907.
[106] In Annals under date.
[107] Ibid.
[108] Quoted by Mr. John W. Ford in the _Athenæum_, August 31, 1907.
[109] The testimony of maps is not wholly either in favour of a
triangular gallows, or of the site as indicated by the maps of Mackay and
Rocque. In a few the gallows is shown as consisting of three pieces. In
one map such a gallows is shown at some distance to the west of Edgeware
Road. But the maps are small and unimportant with one exception—John
Seller’s map of the county of Middlesex, 1710 and 1742. In these the
gallows of three pieces is placed just within the angle formed by the
junction of the roads. But the evidence that at these dates, 1710-42, the
gallows was triangular, and that it stood in the centre of the open space
is too clear to be upset by the evidence of this map.
[110] Mr. Alfred Robbins, in _Notes and Queries_, November 9, 1907.
[111] Strype, writing in 1720 about Hanover Square then partly built,
says: “And it is reported that the common Place of Execution of
Malefactors at Tyburn, shall be appointed elsewhere, as somewhere near
Kingsland; for the removing any Inconveniences or Annoyances, that might
thereby be occasioned to that Square, or the Houses thereabouts.”
[112] Middlesex County Records, 4 vols., 1897-1902.
[113] Chrons. of Benedict of Peterborough, ed. Stubbs, i. 155, 56; Roger
of Hoveden, ed. Stubbs, ii. 131.
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