London and Its Celebrities

ILLUSTRIOUS PERSONAGES EXECUTED ON TOWER HILL.-MELANCHOLY DEATH OF OTWAY.-ANECDOTE OF ROCHESTER.-PETER THE GREAT. CHURCH OF ALLHALLOWS BARKING. SEETHING LANE.-THE MINORIES. -MISERABLE DEATH OF LORD COBHAM.- GOODMAN'S FIELDS THEATRE.-ST. KATHERINE CHURCH.-RATCLIFFE HIGHWAY.-MURDERS OF THE MARRS AND WILLIAMSONS. -EXECUTION DOCK.-JUDGE JEFFERYS.-STEPNEY.

WHO is there, whose heart is so dead to every generous impulse, as to have stood, without feelings of deep emotion, upon that famous hill, where so many of the gallant and the powerful have perished by a bloody and untimely death? Here fell the wise and witty Sir Thomas More; the great Protector Duke of Somerset; and the young and accomplished Earl of Surrey! Here died the lofty Strafford, and the venerable Laud; the unbending

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patriot, Algernon Sidney, and the gay and graceful Duke of Monmouth! Who is there who has not sought to fix, in his mind's eye, the identical spot where they fell,-the exact site of the fatal stage and its terrible paraphernalia? Who is there who has not endeavoured to identify the old edifice,* from which the gallant Derwentwater and the virtuous Kenmure were led through avenues of soldiers to the block? or who has not sought for the house 66 adjoining the scaffold," where the gentle Kilmarnock breathed his last sigh, and where the intrepid Balmerino grasped affectionately, and for the last time, the hand of the friend who had so often dashed with him through the ranks of the foe on the field of battle.

Among a host of scarcely less illustrious personages who perished by the hand of the executioner on Tower Hill, may be mentioned Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, son of the false and perjured Clarence; the handsome and accomplished adventurer, Perkin Warbeck; the gallant Sir William Stanley, who placed the crown on the head of Henry the Seventh, on the field of Bosworth; the powerful Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham; Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, the successor of Wolsey in the favour of Henry the Eighth; George Lord Rochford, brother of Anne Boleyn; Margaret Countess of Salisbury, mother of Cardinal Pole; the ambitious Lord Seymour of Sudeley, uncle to Edward the Sixth, and brother to the Protector So

* The old Transport Office.

merset; the turbulent John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland; Sir Thomas Wyatt; Lord Guildford Dudley, the husband of Lady Jane Grey; her father, Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk; Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, the ambitious lover of Mary Queen of Scots; the crafty visionary, Sir Henry Vane; William Howard, Earl of Stafford, condemned on the false evidence of Titus Oates; Sir John Fenwick; the gallant Charles Radcliffe, brother of the Earl of Derwentwater; and lastly, the infamous Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat.

But it is not entirely from the illustrious blood with which it has been drenched, that Tower Hill derives its interest. Here, at a cutler's stall, the assassin Felton purchased the knife which cut short the life of the mighty Buckingham; and here, at the sign of "the Bull," died, in extreme poverty, the unfortunate dramatic poet, Thomas Otway! Dennis tells us that his death took place at an "alehouse;" but, according to Oldys, in his MS. notes to Langbaine, it was in a sponging-house. "He died," says Dr. Johnson, "in a manner I am unwilling to mention. Having been compelled by his necessities to contract debts, and hunted, as is supposed, by the terriers of the law, he retired to a public-house on Tower Hill, where he is said to have died of want; or, as it is related by one of his biographers, by swallowing, after a long fast, a piece of bread which charity had supplied. He went out, as is reported, almost naked, in the rage of hunger, and finding a gentleman in a neigh

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London and Its Celebrities: A Second Series of Literary and ..., Volume 1