Westminster (London, England) -- Description and travel
Here John Stubbs, the Puritan, an attorney of Lincoln's Inn, and Robert
Page, his servant (December 3, 1580), had their hands struck off for a
libel on the Queen, called "The Gaping Gulph, in which England will be
swallowed by the French Marriage." What part the unfortunate servant
played that he, too, should deserve a punishment so terrible is
difficult to say. On March 2, 1585, William Parry was drawn from the
Tower and hanged and quartered here. And in January, 1587, one Thomas
Lovelace, sentenced by the Star Chamber for false accusations, was
carried on horseback about Westminster Hall, his face to the tail; he
was then pilloried, and had one of his ears cut off. The execution, in
1612, of Lord Sanquire for the murder of a fencing-master, and of the
Duke of Hamilton, the Earl of Holland and Lord Capel, on March 9, 1649,
for so-called treason, took place in New Palace Yard. Here in 1630
Alexander Leighton was whipped, pilloried and branded for a libel on the
Queen and the Bishops. In May, 1685, Titus Oates was stripped of his
ecclesiastical robes and led round Westminster Hall; afterwards he was
put in the pillory. The printer of the famous "No. 45" of the _North
Briton_ also stood in the pillory in New Palace Yard in 1765.
In the Old Palace Yard, now covered by buildings, were fought out
certain ordeals of battle. Here was held at least one famous tournament,
that in which the two Scottish prisoners, the Earl Douglas and Sir
William Douglas, bore themselves so gallantly that the King restored
them to liberty on their promise not to fight against the English.
One memory of Old Palace Yard must not be forgotten. Geoffrey Chaucer
lived during his last year at a house adjoining the White Rose Tavern
abutting on the Lady Chapel of the Abbey. The house was swept away to
make room for Henry VII.'s chapel. Nor must we forget that Ben Jonson
lived and died in a house over the gate or passage from the churchyard
to the old palace. In the south-east corner of Old Palace Yard stood the
house hired by the Gunpowder Plot conspirators for the conveyance of the
barrels into the vault. And it was in Old Palace Yard that four of them
suffered death.
The whole of the ground now occupied by the Houses of Parliament,
Westminster Hall and New Palace Yard was formerly covered with the
walls, gates, tower, state chambers, private chambers, offices, stables,
gardens, and outhouses, of the King's House, Westminster. Until sixty
years ago, when fire finally destroyed them, still stood on this spot
many of the buildings, altered and reroofed, repaired, and with changed
windows and new decorations, of Edward the Confessor, and perhaps of
Knut. Still under these modern houses the ground is covered with the old
cellars, vaults and crypts, which it was found safer and cheaper to fill
with cement than to break up and carry away.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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