Crime -- Great Britain; Criminals -- Great Britain; Executions and executioners; Tyburn gallows (London, England)
Forthwith an order was drawn up, enjoining the immediate
execution of Constantine’s project. A blind multitude, a mad populace,
entrusted Constantine with this civil war, flung itself in a tumult on
the possessions of the abbat, demolished several houses, and did great
damage. In the midst of this scene was Constantine, continually reciting
the order, and crying with all his might, “Montjoie! Montjoie! God and
our lord Louis be our help!”
This cry, more than anything else, provoked the king’s friends, and
made them determine to exact punishment for this sedition, as we will
now tell. The facts soon got about, and came to the ear of Hubert de
Burgh, the justiciar, who, having got together a number of knights, put
himself at their head and went to the Tower of London, from which he sent
a message to the elders to come to him without delay. When they were
before him he asked who were the principal movers in the sedition; who
were they who had dared to trouble the royal city, and break the king’s
peace? Then Constantine, constant in his presumption and pride, answered
otherwise than was either becoming or prudent. “It is I,” he said, “what
wilt thou?” He declared that he was protected by treaty, that he could
justify what he had done, which was even less than he ought to have done.
He trusted to the oath taken by the king as well as by Prince Louis, by
the terms of which the friends and partisans of one or the other were to
be left in peace.
The justiciar, hearing this avowal of Constantine, detained him and two
of his abettors, without exciting any disturbance. The next morning he
sent Fawkes de Bréauté (known to him as a man ready for any cruelty) with
an armed force to carry Constantine by way of the Thames to be hanged
at The Elms. Quickly and secretly they carried him thither, and when
Constantine had the rope round his neck, he offered fifteen thousand
marks of silver if his life might be spared. To whom answer was made that
never more should he get up a riot in the king’s city. Hanged therefore
he was, together with Constantine, his nephew, and a certain Geoffrey,
who had proclaimed the order in the City.
Thus was the sentence on Constantine carried out unknown to the citizens,
and without disorder. That done, the justiciar made his entry into
London, with Fawkes and the armed men who had gone with him. He arrested
all known to have taken part in the riot, threw them into prison, and
let them out only when he had caused their feet or hands to be lopped
off. Numbers fled and never returned. The king took sixty citizens as
hostages, and deposed the magistrates and put others in their room.
Moreover, he ordered that a great gallows should be set up.[114]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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