Of course so fine a situation as Tothill Fields for the favorite diversions of a sporting people could not be neglected. Hither resorted all the lovers of those old English games, cock-fighting, bear-baiting, bull-baiting, cock-throwing, dog-fighting, and prize-fighting. There were horse races. These sports were continued well into this century. The Earl of Albemarle in his “Recollections” speaks of these sports. The Westminster boys of his time haunted the houses called the Seven Chimneys or the Five Houses,--they were the old pesthouses,--which were the resort of the bullbaiters, the dog-fanciers, and other gentry of cognate pursuits. Among them was the unfortunate Heberfield, commonly known as “Slender Billy,” who seems to have been a good-tempered, easy-going person, without the least tincture of morals. The following is the strange and shameful story of his end: [Illustration: THE WESTMINSTER SNUFFBOX.] He got into trouble for assisting the escape of a certain French general who was on parole; took him probably to the south coast,--Lyme Regis, Rousdon, or Charmouth,--and introduced him to a smuggler who ran him across. He was caught, tried, and sentenced to imprisonment in Newgate. Unhappily for him, the Bank of England was just then suffering heavy losses from forgeries. They badly wanted to hang somebody,--no matter who,--somebody, in order to deter others from forging notes. The story is quite amazing, as Lord Albemarle tells it. Can we conceive the Governing Body of the Bank of England meeting together and resolving to entrap some miserable wretch into passing the forged notes, so that by getting him hanged others would be deterred? This is what Lord Albemarle says they did: “The Solicitors of the Bank accordingly took into their pay a confederate of Heberfield’s named Barry. Through this man’s agency Heberfield was easily inveigled into passing forged notes provided by the Solicitors of the Bank themselves. On the evidence of Barry, Heberfield was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was hanged at Newgate for forgery on January 12, 1812.” The saddest of all the memories connected with Tothill Fields is that of the triumphal entry of Cromwell into London after the “crowning mercy” of Worcester. He brought with him the miserable prisoners he had taken on that field. There were four thousand of them in all. They camped at Mile End Green when Cromwell drove into London; the next day they were marched right through the City and along the Strand to Westminster, and so to Tothill Fields. On the way they received alms, oatmeal, and biscuit from any who were moved of their pity to bestow something upon them. So they lay in the marshy fields, where many died, until they were sold as slaves to the merchants of Guinea. In Mr. J. E. Smith’s “History of the Church of St. John the Evangelist” there is an entry which tells its own story. It is from the Church-wardens’ Accounts of 1652-53: