The Town Part 39

The origin of the word Charing is unknown. The cross was destroyed during the Reformation. The spot where it stood is occupied by the statue of Charles I. originally the property of the Earl of Arundel, for whom it was cast by Le Soeur in 1633. It was not placed in its present situation till the decline of the reign of Charles II. The pedestal is the work of Grinling Gibbons. The statue had been condemned by Parliament to be sold and broken in pieces; "but John River, the brazier, who purchased it," says Pennant, "having more taste or more loyalty than his masters, buried it unmutilated and showed to them some broken pieces of bra.s.s in token of his obedience.

M. D'Archenholz gives a diverting anecdote of this brazier, and says that he cast a vast number of handles of knives and forks in bra.s.s, which he sold as made of the broken statue. They were bought with great eagerness by the royalists, from affection to their monarch; by the rebels as a mark of triumph over the murdered sovereign."[320] The sovereign now faces Whitehall as if in triumph: yet behind the Banquetting house lurks a statue of another of this unfortunate race, who lost his throne for attempting to renew the dictatorial spirit which cost his ancestor his head. The omission of the horse's girth in this statue has been thought a singular instance of forgetfulness in the artist. But it is hardly possible he could have forgotten it. Most likely he took a poetical license, and rejected what might have hurt the symmetry of his outline.

Charles's memory, like his life, was destined to be connected with tragedies. On this spot, before the statue was erected, a number of the regicides were executed with tortures; and, till of late years, it was a place for the pillory. Harrison died there, Scrope, Colonel Jones, Hugh Peters, and others of those extraordinary men, who, in welcoming a b.l.o.o.d.y death, gave the last undoubted proofs that they were real patriots as well as bigots. The spirit in which they died (bold and invincible, though in the very glow and loquacity evincing that lingering love of life which is so affecting to one's own mortality,) had such an effect on the public, that the king was advised not to have any more such executions near the court, and the scaffold was accordingly removed to Tyburn. A ghastly story is related of Harrison;--that after he was cut down alive (according to his sentence), and had his bowels removed and burnt before his face by the executioner, he rose up and gave the man a box on the ear. He had behaved with great patience before this half-death; so that there appears to have been something of delirium in this action,--the action, perhaps, of a being feeling himself to be no longer under the ordinary condition of his species.

The particular sort of religious enthusiasm evinced by these men is now as obsolete as some of the absurdities which they fought against, and as others which they would have upheld; but there are pa.s.sages of lasting interest in the account of their last moments, which the reader will perhaps expect to see.

As Harrison was going to suffer, "one in derision called to him and said, 'Where is your Good Old Cause?' He with a cheerful smile clapt his hand on his breast, and said 'Here it is, and I am going to seal it with my blood?' And when he came to the sight of the gallows, he was transported with joy, and his servant asked him how he did; he answered 'Never better in my life.' His servant told him, 'Sir, there is a crown of glory ready prepared for you.' 'O yes,' said he, 'I see.' When he was taken off the sledge, the hangman desired him to forgive him. 'I do forgive thee,' said he, 'with all my heart, as it is a sin against me;' and told him he wished him all happiness. And further said, 'Alas, poor man, thou dost it ignorantly; the Lord grant that this sin may not be laid to thy charge!' And putting his hand into his pocket gave him all the money he had, and so parting with his servant, hugging of him in his arms, he went up the ladder with an undaunted countenance.

"The people observing him to tremble in his hands and legs, he, taking notice of it, said:--

"'Gentlemen, by reason of some scoffing that I do hear, I judge that some do think I am afraid to die, by the shaking I have in my hands and knees; I tell you no, but it is by reason of much blood I have lost in the wars, and many wounds I have received in my body, which caused this shaking and weakness in my nerves; I have had it this twelve years: I speak this to the praise and glory of G.o.d; he hath carried me above the fear of death; and I value not my life, because I go to my Father, and am a.s.sured I shall take it again.

"'Gentlemen, take notice, that for being instrumental in that cause and interest of the Son of G.o.d, which hath been pleaded amongst us, and which G.o.d hath witnessed to my appeals and wonderful victories I am brought to this place to suffer death this day, and if I had ten thousand lives, I could freely and cheerfully lay them down all, to witness to this matter.'"[321]

The time of Colonel Jones's departure being come "this aged gentleman," says the account, "was drawn in one sledge with his aged companion Scroope, whose grave and graceful countenances, accompanied with courage and cheerfulness, caused great admiration and compa.s.sion in the spectators, as they pa.s.sed along the streets to Charing Cross, the place of their execution; and, after the executioner had done his part upon three others that day he was so drunk with blood, that, like one surfeited, he grew sick at stomach; and not being able himself, he set his boy to finish the tragedy upon Col. Jones." The night before he died he "told a friend he had no other temptation but this, lest he should be too much transported, and carried out to neglect and slight his life, so greatly was he satisfied to die in that cause."

"The day he suffered, he grasped a friend in his arms, and said to him with some expressions of endearment, 'Farewell: I could wish thee in the same condition with myself, that thou mightest share with me in my joys.'"[322]

The famous Hugh Peters, the commonwealth preacher, whom Burnet speaks of as an "enthusiastical buffoon," and a very "vicious man," is thought by a greater loyalist (Burke) to have had "hard measures dealt him at the Restoration." He calls him a "poor good man." Peters was afraid at first he should not behave himself with the proper courage, but rallied his spirits afterwards, and, according to the account published by his friends (and all the accounts, it should be observed, emanate from that side), no man appears to have behaved better. Burnet says otherwise, and that he was observed all the while to be drinking cordials to keep him from fainting, and Burnet's testimony is not to be slighted, though he seems too readily to have taken upon trust some evil reports of Peters' life and manners, which the "poor man,"

expressly contradicted in prison. Be this as it may, "Being carried,"

says the account, "upon the sledge to execution, and made to sit thereon within the rails at Charing Cross to behold the execution of Mr. Cook, one comes to him and upbraided him with the death of the King, bidding him (with opprobrious language) to repent; he replied, 'Friend, you do not well to trample upon a dying man; you are greatly mistaken, I had nothing to do in the death of the King.'"

"When Mr. Cook was cut down and brought to be quartered, one they called Colonel Turner called to the Sheriff's men to bring Mr. Peters near that he might see him; and by and by the hangman came to him all besmeared in blood, and rubbing his b.l.o.o.d.y hands together, he tauntingly asked, 'Come, how do you like this, how do you like this work?' To whom he replied, 'I am not, I thank G.o.d, terrified at it; you may do your worst.'

"When he was going to his execution, he looked about and espied a man, to whom he gave a piece of gold (having bowed it first), and desired him to go to the place where his daughter lodged, and to carry that to her as a token from him, and to let her know that his heart was as full of comfort as it could be, and that before that piece should come into her hands he should be with G.o.d in glory.

"Being upon the ladder, he spake to the Sheriff, saying, 'Sir, you have here slain one of the servants of G.o.d before mine eyes, and have made me to behold it on purpose to terrify and discourage me; but G.o.d hath made it an ordinance to me for my strengthening and encouragement.'

"When he was going to die, he said, 'What! flesh, art thou unwilling to go to G.o.d through the fire and jaws of death? Oh'

(said he), 'this is a good day; he is come that I have long looked for, and I shall be with him in glory;' and so smiled when he went away.

"What Mr. Peters said farther at his execution, either in his speech or prayer, it could not be taken, in regard his voice was low at that time, and the people uncivil."[323]

Ben Jonson is supposed to have been born in Hartshorn Lane, Charing Cross, where he lived when a little child. "Though I cannot," says Fuller, "with all my industrious inquiry, find him in his cradle, I can fetch him from his long coats. When a little child he lived in Hartshorn Lane, Charing Cross, when his mother married a bricklayer for her second husband. He was first bred in a private school in St.

Martin's Court; then in Westminster school." But we shall have other occasions of speaking of him.

The famous reprobate Duke of Buckingham, Villiers, the second of that name, was born in Wallingford House, which stood on the site of the present Admiralty. "The Admiralty Office," says Pennant "stood originally in Duke Street, Westminster: but in the reign of King William was removed to the present spot, to the house then called Wallingford, I believe, from its having been inhabited by the Knollys, Viscounts Wallingford. From the roof the pious Usher, Archbishop of Armagh, then living here with the Countess of Peterborough, was prevailed on to take the last sight of his beloved master Charles I., when brought on the scaffold before Whitehall. He sank at the horror of the sight, and was carried in a swoon to his apartment."

Wallingford House was often used by Cromwell and others in their consultations.

"The present Admiralty Office," continues Pennant, "was rebuilt in the late reign, by Ripley; it is a clumsy pile, but properly veiled from the street by Mr. Adam's handsome screen." Where the poor Archbishop sank in horror at the sight of the misguided Charles, telegraphs have since plied their dumb and far-seen discourses, like spirit in the guise of mechanism, telling news of the spread of liberty and knowledge all over the world. Of the Villierses, Dukes of Buckingham, who have not heard? The first one was a favourite not unworthy of his fortune, open, generous, and magnificent; the second, perhaps because he lost his father so soon, a spoiled child from his cradle, wilful, debauched, unprincipled, but witty and entertaining. Here, and at York House in the Strand, he turned night into day, and pursued his intrigues, his concerts, his dabblings in chemistry and the philosopher's stone, and his designs on the Crown: for Charles's character, and the devices of Buckingham's fellow quacks and astrologers, persuaded him that he had a chance of being king. When a youth, he compounded with Cromwell, and married Fairfax's daughter;--he was afterwards all for the king, when he was not "all for rhyming" or ousting him;--when an old man, or near it (for these prodigious possessors of animal spirits have a trick of lasting a long while), he was still a youth in improvidence and dissipation, and his whole life was a dream of uneasy pleasure. He is now best known from Dryden's masterly portrait of him in the "Absalom and Achitophel."

"A man so various, that he seemed to be, Not one, but all mankind's epitome; Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts, and nothing long; But in the course of one revolving moon, Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon; Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.

Blest madman! who could every hour employ With something new to wish or to enjoy.

Railing and praising were his usual themes; And both, to show his judgment, in extremes, So very violent, or over civil, That every man with him was G.o.d or devil.

In squandering wealth was his peculiar art; Nothing went unrewarded but desert.

Beggar'd by fools, whom still he found too late, He had his jest, and they had his estate.

He laugh'd himself from court; then sought relief By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief; For spite of him, the weight of business fell On Absalom, or wise Achitophel; Thus wicked but in will, of means bereft, He left not faction, but of that was left."

"This inimitable description," observes Sir Walter Scott, in a note on the subject, "refers, as is well known, to the famous George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, son of the favourite of Charles I., who was murdered by Felton. The Restoration put into the hands of the most lively, mercurial, ambitious, and licentious genius who ever lived, an estate of 20,000_l._ a year, to be squandered in every wild scheme which the l.u.s.t of power, of pleasure, of license, or of whim, could dictate to an unrestrained imagination. Being refused the situation of President of the North, he was suspected of having favoured the disaffected in that part of England, and was disgraced accordingly. But in 1666 he regained the favour of the King, and became a member of the famous Administration called the Cabal, which first led Charles into unpopular and arbitrary measures, and laid the foundation for the troubles of his future reign. Buckingham changed sides about 1675, and becoming attached to the country party, made a most active figure in all proceedings which had relation to the Popish plot; intrigued deeply with Shaftesbury, and distinguished himself as a promoter of the bill of exclusion. Hence, he stood an eminent mark for Dryden's satire; which we may believe was not the less poignant, that the poet had sustained a personal affront, from being depicted by his grace under the character of Bayes in the "Rehearsal." As Dryden owed the Duke no favour, he has shown him none. Yet even here the ridiculous rather than the infamous part of his character is touched upon; and the unprincipled libertine, who slew the Earl of Shrewsbury while his adulterous countess held his horse in the disguise of a page, and who boasted of caressing her before he changed the b.l.o.o.d.y clothes in which he had murdered her husband, is not exposed to hatred, whilst the spendthrift and castle builder are held up to contempt. So just, however, is the picture drawn by Dryden, that it differs little from the following sober historical account.

"'The Duke of Buckingham was a man of great parts, and an infinite deal of wit and humour; but wanted judgment, and had no virtue, or principle of any kind. These essential defects made his whole life one train of inconsistencies. He was ambitious beyond measure, and implacable in his resentments; these qualities were the effects or different faces of his pride; which, whenever he pleased to lay aside, no man living could be more entertaining in conversation. He had a wonderful talent in turning all things into ridicule; but, by his own conduct, made a more ridiculous figure in the world than any which he could, with all his vivacity of wit and turn of imagination, draw of others. Frolic and pleasure took up the greatest part of his life: and in these he had neither any taste nor set himself any bounds: running into the wildest extravagances and pus.h.i.+ng his debaucheries to a height, which even a libertine age could not help censuring as downright madness. He inherited the best estate which any subject had at that time in England; yet his profuseness made him always necessitous, as that necessity made him grasp at every thing that would help to support his expenses. He was lavish without generosity, and proud without magnanimity; and though he did not want some bright talents, yet no good one ever made part of his composition; for there was nothing so mean that he would not stoop to, nor anything so flagrantly impious but he was capable of undertaking.'"

"Buckingham's death," concludes the commentator, "was as awful a beacon as his life. He had dissipated a princely fortune, and lost both the means of procuring and the power of enjoying the pleasures to which he was devoted. He had fallen from the highest pinnacle of ambition into the last degree of contempt and disregard." His dying scene, in a paltry inn, in Yorks.h.i.+re, has been immortalized by Pope's beautiful lines:--

"In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half hung; The floors of plaister and the walls of dung; On once a flock bed, but repaired with straw, With tape-tied curtains never meant to draw, The George and Garter, dangling from that bed, Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red, Great Villiers lies! Alas! how changed from him!

That life of pleasure and that soul of whim; Gallant and gay in Cliefden's proud alcove, The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love; Or just as gay at council, in a ring Of mimicked statesmen and a merry king; No wit to flatter left of all his store, No fool to laugh at, which he valued more; There victor of his health, of fortune, friends, And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends!"[324]

"The worst inn's worst room," however, is a poetical fiction.

Buckingham died at the house of one of his tenants at Kirby Mallory, where he was overtaken with illness. He had wasted his fortune to a comparative nothing; but was not reduced to such necessity as the poet would imply.[325]

Andrew Marvel makes the statue of Charing Cross the speaker in one of his witty libels on Charles and his brother. There was an equestrian statue of Charles II. at Woolchurch, the horse of which is made to hold a dialogue with this other. The poet fancies that the riders, "weary of sitting all day," stole off one evening, and the two horses came together. The readers at Will's must have been a little astonished at the boldness of such pa.s.sages as the following:--

"Quoth the marble horse, It would make a stone speak, To see a Lord Mayor and a Lombard Street beak, Thy founder and mine, to cheat one another, When both knaves agreed to be each other's brother.

Here Charing broke forth, and thus he went on-- My bra.s.s is provoked as much as thy stone To see church and state bow down to a ---- And the King's chief ministers holding the door, The money of widows and orphans employed, And the bankers quite broke to maintain the ----'s pride.

WOOLCHURCH. To see _Dei Gratia_ writ on the throne.

And the King's wicked life says G.o.d there is none.

CHARING. That he should be styled Defender of the Faith, Who believes not a word what the Word of G.o.d saith.

WOOLCHURCH. That the Duke should turn Papist, and that church defy, For which his own father a Martyr did die.

CHARING. Tho' he changed his religion, I hope he's so civil, Not to think his own father has gone to the Devil.

CHARING. Pause, brother, awhile, and calmly consider What thou hast to say against my royal rider.

WOOLCHURCH. Thy priest-ridden King turned desperate fighter For the surplice, lawn-sleeves, the cross, and the mitre; Till at last on the scaffold he was left in the lurch, By knaves, who cried themselves up for the church, Archbishops and bishops, archdeacons and deans.

CHARING. Thy King will ne'er fight unless for his Queens.

WOOLCHURCH. He that dys for ceremonys, dys like a fool.

CHARING. The King on thy back is a lamentable tool.

WOOLCHURCH. the Goat and the Lion I Equally Hate, And Freemen alike value life and estate: Tho' the father and son be different rods, Between the two scourgers we find little odds; Both infamous stand in three kingdoms' votes, This for picking our pockets, that for cutting our throats.

What is thy opinion of James Duke of York?

CHARING. The same that the frogs had of Jupiter's stork.

With the Turk in his head, and the Pope in his heart, Father Patrick's disciples will make England smart.

If e'er he be king, I know Britain's doom, We must all to a stake, or be converts to Rome.

Ah! Tudor, ah! Tudor, of Stuarts enough; None ever reigned like old Bess in the ruff.