Tyburn Tree. Alfred Marks
word in his great sermons.
The gallows was known as “Deadly Never-green,” the “Three-legged Mare,” the “Three-legged Stool.”
AFTER TYBURN.
What became of the bodies of those done to death at Tyburn? Some were quartered, parboiled, and stuck up on the gates of the city or elsewhere, as the king might direct. These would be but few out of the great total. For two centuries there was regular provision for the decent burial of executed persons, in the circumstances mentioned by Stow.
Stow tells how, in 1348, Ralph Stratford, Bishop of London, bought a piece of ground, called “No Man’s Land,” which he enclosed with a wall of brick, and dedicated for burial of the dead: this was Pardon churchyard. In the following year Sir Walter Manny bought thirteen acres of land adjoining, and here were buried more than fifty thousand persons who died of the frightful pestilence then raging, known as the Black Death. In 1371 Sir Walter founded here the Charterhouse, giving to the monastery the thirteen acres, and also the three acres adjoining, which “remained till our time by the name of Pardon churchyard, and served for burying of such as desperately ended their lives, or were executed for felonies, who were fetched thither usually in a close cart, bailed over and covered with black, having a plain white cross thwarting, and at the fore end a St. John’s cross without, and within a bell ringing by shaking of the cart, whereby the same might be heard when it passed: and this was called the friary cart, which belonged to St. John’s, and had the privilege of sanctuary.”[74]
“It remained till our time,” says Stow, and this is one of those passages telling what Stow had seen—passages that give so vivid an interest to his story of London.
In the Grey Friars’ Chronicle we find an instance of the burial in Pardon churchyard of persons executed at Tyburn:—
“1537. Also this yere the xxv day of Marche the Lyncolnechere men that was with bishoppe Makerelle was browte owte of Newgate vn-to the yelde-halle [Guildhall] in roppys, and there had their jugment to be drawne, hongyd, and heddyd, and qwarterd, and soo was the xxix of Marche after, the wyche was on Maundy Thursdaye, and alle their qwarteres with their heddes was burryd at Pardone churche-yerde in the frary.”[75]
From Stow’s account of the execution, quoted in the Annals, we learn that the number of Lincolnshire men executed on this occasion was twelve.
The priory of St. John’s was dissolved in 1540, and with it went the friary cart.
After this, and also before the suppression of the friary cart, bodies were brought back by friends for interment in the parish churchyard. Here is a case in which a body so brought back was refused burial:—
One Awfield had been condemned and executed at Tyburn for “sparcing abrood certen lewed, sedicious, and traytorous bookes. His body was brought into St. Pulchers to be buryed, but the parishioners would not suffer a Traytor’s corpes to be layed in the earthe where theire parents, wyeffs, chyldren, kynred, maisters, and old neighbors did rest: and so his carcase was retourned to the buryall grounde neere Tyborne, and there I leave yt.”[76]
But many of the poor wretches hanged had no friends who would be at the charge of interment. The demands of the surgeons would be soon satisfied; with how little ceremony the residue would be treated we may learn from the narrative of Richardson, given in the Annals (1741).
We read of two priests and sixteen felons executed at the same time, in 1610, being all thrown together into a pit. The stories of bones found in the neighbourhood of the gallows may probably be referred to forgotten burial places or to pits into which, after a busy day’s work, a score of bodies would be tumbled.[77]
Strype, in his edition of Stow’s “Survey,” has a weird story of the finding of four embalmed heads in Blackfriars, in clearing away rubbish after the Great Fire of 1666:—
“They came to an old Wall in a Cellar, of great thickness, where appeared a kind of Cupboard. Which being opened, there were found in it four Pots or Cases of fine Pewter, thick, with Covers of the same, and Rings fastened on the top to take up or put down at pleasure. The Cases were flat before, and rounding behind. And in each of them were reposited four humane Heads [he means one in each case; the margin has “Four Heads”], unconsumed, reserved as it seems, by Art; with their Teeth and Hair, the Flesh of a tawny Colour, wrap’d up in black Silk, almost consumed. And a certain Substance, of a blackish Colour, crumbled into Dust, lying at the bottom of the Pots.
“One of these Pots, with the Head in it, I saw in October, 1703, being in the Custody of Mr. Presbury, then Sope-maker in Smithfield. Which Pot had inscribed in the inside of the Cover, in a scrawling Character (which might be used in the times of Henry VIII) J. Cornelius. This Head was without any Neck, having short red Hair upon it, thick, and that would not be pulled off; and yellow Hair upon the Temples; a little bald on the top (perhaps a Tonsure) the forepart of the Nose sunk, the Mouth gaping, ten sound Teeth, others had been plucked out; the skin like tanned Leather, the Features of the Face visible. There was one Body found near it buried, and without an Head; but no other Bodies found. The other three Heads had some of the Necks joined to them, and had a broader and plainer Razure: which shewed them Priests. These three Heads are now dispersed. One was given to an Apothecary; Another was intrusted with the Parish Clerk; who it is thought got Money by shewing of it. It is probable they were at last privately procured, and conveyed abroad; and now become Holy Relicks.
“Who these were, there is no Record, as I know of; nor had any of them Names inscribed but one. To me they seem to have been some zealous Priests or Friers, executed for Treason; whereof there were many in the Rebellion in Lincolnshire, An. 1538, or for denying the King’s Supremacy, And here privately deposited by these Black Friers” (book iii. p. 191).
Through the later researches of Dr. Challoner, we now know the story relating to one of these heads. John Cornelius, or Mohun, was born of Irish parents in Bodmin. He studied at Oxford, but not adopting the new religion, went afterwards to Rheims, and later to Rome. He was sent upon the English mission, in which he laboured for about ten years. He was apprehended in April, 1594, in the house of the widow of Sir John Arundel, on the information of a servant of the house. Mr. Bosgrave, a kinsman of Sir John Arundel, seeing him hurried away without a hat, put his own hat on the priest’s head; for this he was arrested. Two servants of the family, Terence Carey and Patrick Salmon, were also arrested. Cornelius was sent to London, and there racked to make him give up the names of Catholics who had harboured him. Refusing to make any discovery, he was sent back into the country, tried, and, with his three companions, executed at Dorchester on July 2, 1594. The three were simply hanged: Cornelius, as guilty of high treason, was drawn, hanged, and quartered. His head was nailed to the gallows, but afterwards removed at the instance of the town. His quarters were buried together with the bodies of his companions. Dr. Challoner does not tell how the head of Cornelius was recovered by friends, nor does he say anything more of the others. It is probable that the three other heads of Strype’s account were those of the companions of Cornelius (“Memoirs of Missionary Priests,” part i., pp. 157–60).
The Times of May 9, 1860, contained a letter from Mr. A. J. Beresford Hope, living in the house at the south-west corner of Edgware Road, stating that in the course of excavations made close to the foot-pavement along the garden of his house, “numerous human bones” were discovered. He says: “These are obviously the relics of the unhappy persons buried under the gallows.” If this was so, they must have been the bones of Cromwell, Ireton, or Bradshaw, buried under the gallows.
ORIGIN AND SITE OF THE TYBURN GALLOWS
As has already been said, the earliest mention of Tyburn