Haunted London — Charing Cross Part 1

CHARING CROSS.

On July 20, 1864, was laid the first stone of the great Thames Embankment, which now forms the wall of our river from Blackfriars to Westminster.

A

couple of flags fluttered lazily over the stone as a straggling procession of the members of the Metropolitan Board of Works moved down to the wooden causeway leading to the river.

For two years about a thousand men were at work on it night and day.

Iron caissons were sunk below the mud, deep in the gravel, and within ten feet of the clay which is the real foundation of London, and the Victoria Embankment rose gradually into being.

It was opened by Royalty in the summer of 1870. This scheme, originally sketched out by Wren, was designed by Colonel Trench, M. P.

, and also by Martin the painter; but it was never carried out until the days of Lord Palmerston and the Metropolitan Board of Works.

Its piers, its flights of steps, its broad highway covering a railway, its gardens, its terraces, are complete; and when the buildings along it are finished London may for the first time claim to compare itself in architectural grandeur with Nineveh, Rome, or modern Paris.

Northumberland House, which faced Charing Cross, covering the site of Northumberland Avenue, was a good but dull specimen of Jacobean architecture; it was built by Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, son of the poet Earl of Surrey, about 1605. [349] Walpole attributes the building to Bernard Jansen, a Fleming, and an imitator of Dieterling, and to Gerard Christmas, the designer of Aldersgate.

Jansen probably built the house, which was of brick, and Christmas added the stone frontispiece, which was profusely ornamented with rich carved scrolls, and an open parapet worked into letters and other devices.

John Thorpe is also supposed to have been associated in the work; and plans of both the quadrangles of this enormous palace are preserved among the _Soane MSS.

_[350] Jansen was the architect of Audley End, in Essex, one of the wonders of the age.

Thorpe built Burghley.

The front was originally 162 feet long, the court 82 feet square; as Inigo Jones has noted in a copy of _Palladio_ preserved at Worcester College, Oxford.

The Earl of Northampton left the house by his will, in 1614, to his nephew, Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, who died in 1626. This was the father of the memorable Frances, Countess of Essex and Somerset; and from him the house took the name of Suffolk House, till the marriage in 1642 of Elizabeth, daughter of Theophilus, second Earl of Suffolk, with Algernon Percy, tenth Earl of Northumberland, when it changed its name accordingly.

Dorothy, sister of the rash and ungrateful Earl of Essex, whose violence and follies nothing less than the executioner’s axe could cure, married the “wizard” Earl of Northumberland, as he was called, whom “she led the life of a dog, till he indignantly turned her out of doors.

” He was afterwards engaged in the Gunpowder Plot, being angry with the Government that had overlooked him.

“His name was used and his money spent by the conspirators; one of his servants hired the vault, and procured the lease of Vineyard House.

Thomas Percy, his kinsman and steward, supped with him on the very night of the plot.

His servant, Sir Dudley Carleton, who hired the house, was thrust into the Tower, and the earl joined him there not long after; but Cecil was either unable or unwilling to touch his life.

”[351] Northumberland, with Cobham and Raleigh, had before this engaged in schemes with the French against the Government.

Thomas Percy had been beheaded for plotting with Mary.

Henry Percy had shot himself while in the Tower, on account of the Throckmorton Conspiracy.

Compounding for a fine of £11,000, the earl devoted himself in the Tower to scientific and literary pursuits, and gave annuities to six or seven eminent mathematicians, who ate at his table.

In 1611 he was again examined, and finally released in 1617. The king’s favourite, Hay, afterwards Earl of Carlisle, had married the earl’s daughter Lucy against his will, which so irritated him that he was with difficulty persuaded to accept his own release, because it was obtained through the intercession of Hay.

Joceline Percy, son of Algernon, dying in 1670, without issue male, Northumberland House became the property of his only daughter Elizabeth Percy, the heiress of the Percy estates.

Her first husband was Henry Cavendish, Earl of Ogle; her second, Thomas Thynne, of Longleat, in Wilts, who was shot in his coach in Pall Mall, on Sunday, February 12, 1681-2; her third husband was Charles Seymour, the _proud_ Duke of Somerset, who married her in 1682. This lady was twice a widow and three times a wife before the age of seventeen.

The “proud” duke and duchess lived in great state and magnificence at Northumberland House.

The duchess died in 1722, and the duke followed in 1748. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Algernon, Earl of Hertford, and the seventh Duke of Somerset, who was created Earl of Northumberland in 1749, with remainder, failing issue male, to his son-in-law, Sir Hugh Smithson, who in 1766 was raised to the dukedom.

The lion which country cousins for two centuries remember to have crowned the central gateway of the duke’s house, represented the Percy crest.

It is of this stiff-tailed animal, for the exact angle of the tail is treated by heralds as a matter of the most vital importance, that the old story imputed to Sheridan is told.

Probably some audacious wit did once collect a London crowd by declaring that its tail wagged--but certainly it was not Sheridan.

Tom Thynne, or, as he was called, “Tom of Ten Thousand,” was shot at the east end of Pall Mall, opposite the Opera Arcade, by Borosky, a Polish soldier urged on by Count Königsmark, a Swedish adventurer, son of one of Gustavus’s old generals, and who was enraged with Thynne for having just married the youthful widow of the Earl of Ogle, Lady Elizabeth Percy.

Thynne was a favourite of the Duke of Monmouth.

Shaftesbury had been lately released from the Tower, in spite of Dryden’s onslaught on him as “Achitophel,” on the foolish duke as “Absalom,” and on Thynne as “Issachar,” his wealthy western friend.

The three murderers were hanged in Pall Mall, but their master strangely escaped, partly owing to the influence of Charles II.

The count, who had shown great courage at Tangier against the Moors, and had boarded a Turkish galley at his eminent peril, died in 1686, at the battle of Argos in the Morea.

His younger brother was assassinated at Hanover, on suspicion of an intrigue with Sophia of Zell, the young and beautiful wife of the Elector, afterwards George I. of England.

[352] The Earl of Northampton, Surrey’s son, who built Northumberland House (as Osborne, who loved scandal, says with Spanish gold), seems to have been an unscrupulous time-server, flatterer, and parasite.

In 1596 he wrote to Burleigh, and spoke of his reverend awe at his lordship’s “piercing judgment;” yet a year after he writes a plotting letter to Burleigh’s great enemy, Essex, and says: “Your lordship by your last purchase hath almost enraged the dromedary that would have won the Queen of Sheba’s favour by bringing pearls.

If you could once be so fortunate in dragging old Leviathan (Burghley) and his rich tortuosum colubrum (Sir Robert Cecil), as the prophet termeth them, out of their den of mischievous device, the better part of the world would prefer your virtue to that of Hercules.

” The earl became a toady and creature of the infamous Carr, Earl of Somerset, and is thought to have died just in time to escape prosecution for the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury in the Tower.

[353] It was shortly before Suffolk House changed its name that it became the scene of one of Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s mad Quixotic quarrels.

His chivalrous lordship had had sundry ague fits, which had made him so lean and yellow that scarce any man could recognise him.

Walking towards Whitehall he one day met a Mr. Emerson, who had spoken very disgraceful words of Lord Herbert’s friend, Sir Robert Harley.

Lord Herbert therefore, sensible of the dishonour, took Emerson by his long beard, and then, stepping aside, drew his sword; Captain Thomas Scriven being with Lord Herbert, and divers friends with Mr. Emerson.

All who saw the quarrel wondered at the Welsh nobleman, weak and “consumed” as he was, offering to fight; however, Emerson ran and took shelter in Suffolk House, and afterwards complained to the Lords in Council, who sent for Lord Herbert, the lean, yellow Welsh Quixote, but did not so much reprehend him for defending the honour of his friend as for adventuring to fight, being at the same time in such weak health.

[354] Algernon, the tenth Earl of Northumberland, is called by Clarendon “the proudest man alive.

” He had been Lord High Admiral to King Charles I. , and was appointed general against the Scotch Covenanters, but, being unable to take the command from ill health, gave up his commission.

He gradually fell away from the king’s cause, but nevertheless refused to continue High Admiral against the king’s wish.

He treated the Dukes of York and Gloucester and the Princess Elizabeth with “such consideration” that they were removed from his care, and from that time he turned Royalist again.

Sir John Suckling refers to Suffolk House in his exquisite little poem on the wedding of Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, with Lady Margaret Howard, daughter of the Earl of Suffolk.

The well known poem begins-- “At Charing-cross, hard by the way Where we (thou know’st) do sell our hay, There is a house with stairs.

” And then the gay and graceful poet goes on to sketch Lady Margaret-- “Her lips were red, and one was thin, Compared with that was next her chin.

Some bee had stung it newly.

” And then follows that delightful, fantastic simile, comparing her feet to little mice creeping in and out her petticoat.

[355] Sir John was born in 1609. The oldest part of Northumberland House was the Strand entrance.

This was crowned, as stated above, by a frieze or balustrade of large stone letters, probably including the name and titles of the earl and the glorified name of the architect.

At the funeral of Anne of Denmark, 1619, a young man, named Appleyard, was killed by the fall of the letter S[356] from the house, which was then occupied by the Earl of Strafford, Lord Treasurer.

The house was originally only three sides of a quadrangle, the river side remaining open to the gardens; but traffic and noise increasing, the quadrangle was completed along the river side and the principal apartments.

There is a drawing by Hollar of the house in his time, and another, a century later, by Canaletti.

The new front towards the gardens was spoiled by a clumsy stone staircase, which was attributed to Inigo Jones, but probably incorrectly.

The date, 1746, on the façade referred to the repairs made in that year, and the letters “A. S.

P.

N.

” stood for Algernon Somerset, Princeps Northumbriæ.

The lion over the gateway was said to be a copy of one by Michael Angelo; it is now at Sion House, Isleworth.

The gateway was covered with ornaments and trophies.

Double ranges of grotesque pilasters enclosed eight niches on the sides, and there was a bow window and an open arch above the chief gate.

Between each of the fourteen niches in the front there were trophies of crossed weapons, and the upper stories had twenty-four windows, in two ranges, and pierced battlements.

Each wing terminated in a little cupola, and the angles had rustic quoins.

The quadrangle within the gate was simpler and in better taste, and the house was screened from the river by elm trees.

[357] There used to be a schoolboy tradition, prevalent at King’s College in the author’s time, that one of the niches in the front of Northumberland House was of copper and movable.

So far the story was true; but the tradition went on to relate how, once upon a time, a certain enemy of the house of Percy obtained secret admission by this niche and murdered one of the dukes, his enemy.

History is, however, fortunately, quite silent on this subject.

In February 1762 Horace Walpole and a party of quality set out from Northumberland House to hear the ghost in Cock Lane that Dr. Johnson exposed, and that Hogarth and Churchill ridiculed with pen and pencil.

The Duke of York, Lady Northumberland, Lady Mary Coke, and Lord Hertford, all returned from the Opera with Horace Walpole, then changed their dress, and set out in a hackney coach.

It rained hard, and the lane and house were “full of mob.

” The room of the haunted house, small and miserable, was stuffed with eighty persons, and there was no light but one tallow candle.

As clothes-lines hung from the ceiling, Walpole asked drily if there was going to be rope-dancing between the acts.

They said the ghost would not come till 7 A. M.

, when only ’prentices and old women remained.

The party stayed till half-past one.

The Methodists had promised contributions, provisions were sent in like forage, and the neighbouring taverns and ale-houses were making their fortunes.

[358] On May 14, 1770, poor Chatterton, who suffered so terribly for the deceptions of his ambitious boyhood, writes from the King’s Bench (for the present) that a gentleman who knew him at the Chapter coffee-house, in Paternoster Row--frequented by authors and publishers--would have introduced him to the young Duke of Northumberland as a companion in his intended general tour, “but, alas!

I spake no tongue but my own.

”[359] But this is taken from a most questionable work, full of fictions and forgeries.

Its author was a Bristol man, who afterwards fled to America.

He also wrote a series of Conversations with the poets of the Lake school, many of which are too obviously imaginary.

On March 18, 1780, the Strand front of Northumberland House was totally destroyed by fire.

The apartments of Dr. Percy, the Duke’s kinsman and chaplain, afterwards Bishop of Dromore and editor of the _Reliques of Ancient Poetry_ were consumed; but great part of his library escaped.

Goldsmith’s simple-hearted ballad of _Edwin and Angelina_ was originally “printed for the amusement of the Countess of Northumberland.

” Two years after, Kenrick accused him in the papers of plagiarising it from Percy’s pasticcio from Shakspere in the _Reliques_, which was probably written in 1765. [360] It is probable that Goldsmith often visited Percy, when acting as chaplain at Northumberland House.

Sir John Hawkins, indeed, describes meeting the poet waiting for an audience in an outer room.

At his own audience Hawkins mentioned that the doctor was waiting.

On their way home together, Goldsmith told Hawkins that his lordship said that he had read the _Traveller_ with delight, that he was going as Lord Lieutenant to Ireland, and should be glad, as Goldsmith was an Irishman, to do him any kindness.

Hawkins was enraptured at the rich man’s graciousness.

But Goldsmith had mentioned only his brother, a clergyman there, who needed help.

“As for myself,” he added, bitterly, “I have no dependence on the promises of great men.

I look to the booksellers for support; they are my best friends, and I am not inclined to forsake them for others.

” “Thus,” says Hawkins, “did this idiot in the affairs of the world trifle with his fortunes and put back the hand that was held out to assist him.

” The earl told Percy, after Goldsmith’s death, that had he known how to help the poet he would have done so, or he would have procured him a salary on the Irish establishment that would have allowed him to travel.

Let men of the world remember that the poet a few days before had been forced to borrow 15s.

6d.

to meet his own wants.

This conversation took place in 1765. In 1771, when Goldsmith was stopping at Bath with his good-natured friend Lord Clare, he blundered by mistake at breakfast time into the next door on the same Parade, where the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland were staying.

As he took no notice of them, but threw himself carelessly on a sofa, they supposed there was some mistake, and therefore entered into conversation with him, and when breakfast was served up, invited him to stay and partake of it.

The poet, hot, stammering, and irrecoverably confused, withdrew with profuse apologies for his mistake, but not till he had accepted an invitation to dinner.

This story, a parallel to the laughable blunder in _She Stoops to Conquer_, was told by the duchess herself to Dr. Percy.

It was probably of the first of these interviews that Goldsmith used to give the following account:-- “I dressed myself in the best manner I could, and, after studying some compliments I thought necessary on such an occasion, proceeded to Northumberland House, and acquainted the servants that I had particular business with the duke.

They showed me into an ante-chamber, where, after waiting some time, a gentleman, very elegantly dressed, made his appearance.

Taking him for the duke, I delivered all the fine things I had composed, in order to compliment him on the honour he had done me; when to my fear and astonishment, he told me I had mistaken him for his master, who would see me immediately.

At that instant the duke came into the apartment, and I was so confounded on the occasion that I wanted words barely sufficient to express the sense I entertained of the duke’s politeness, and went away exceedingly chagrined at the blunder I had committed.

”[361] Dr. Waagen, the picture critic, seems to have been rather dazzled at the splendour of Northumberland House.

He praises the magnificent staircase, lighted from above and reaching up through three stories, the white marble floors, the balustrades and chandeliers of gilt bronze, the cabinets of Florentine mosaic, and the arabesques of the drawing-room.

[362] The great picture of the duke’s collection was the Cornaro family, by Titian; I believe from the Duke of Buckingham’s collection.

It is a splendid specimen of the painter’s middle period and golden tone.

The faces of the kneeling Cornari are grand, simple, senatorial, and devout.

There was also a Saint Sebastian, by Guercino, “clear and careful,” and large as life; a fine Snyders and Vandyke; many copies by Mengs (particularly “The School of Athens”); and a good Schalcken, with his usual candlelight effect.

The gem of all the English pictures was one by Dobson, Vandyke’s noble pupil.

It contained the portrait of the painter and those of Sir Balthasar Gerbier, the architect, and Sir Charles Cotterell.

The colour is as rich and juicy as Titian’s, the drapery learned and graceful, the faces are full of fire and spirit.

Dobson died at the age of thirty-six.

Sir Charles was his patron.

[363] Vandyke is said to have disinterred Dobson from a garret, and recommended him to the king.

Gerbier was a native of Antwerp, a painter, architect, and ambassador.

This picture of Dobson was bought at Betterton’s sale for £44. [364] The gallery of the Duke of Northumberland was removed in 1875, when the house was demolished, to Sion House.

Northumberland House was connected with, at all events, one period of English history.

In the year 1660, when General Monk was in quarters at Whitehall, the Earl of Northumberland, in the name of the nobility and gentry of England, invited him here to the first conference in which the restoration of the Stuarts was publicly talked of.

Algernon Percy, the tenth earl, had been Lord High Admiral under Charles I. That staunch, brave, crotchety man, Sir Harry Vane the younger (the son of Lord Strafford’s enemy), lived next door to Northumberland House, eastwards, in the Strand.

The house in Charles II.

’s time became the official residence of the Secretary of State, and Mr. Secretary Nicholas dwelt there, when meetings were held to found a commonwealth and put down that foolish, good-natured, incompetent Richard Cromwell.

To the great Protector, Vane was a thorn in the flesh, for he wanted a republic when the nation required a stronger and more compact government.

Oliver’s exclamation, “Oh, Sir Harry Vane!

Sir Harry Vane!

--The Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!

” expresses infinite vexation with an impracticable person.

Vane was a “Fifth-monarchy man,” and believed in universal salvation.

He must have been a good man, or Milton would never have addressed the sonnet to him in which he says-- “Therefore, on thy firm hand Religion leans In peace, and reckons thee her eldest son.

” Sir Harry left behind him some very tough and dark treatises on prophecy, and other profound matters that few but angels or fools dare to meddle with.

There is a foolish tradition that Charing Cross was so named originally by Edward I. in memory of his _chère reine_.

Peele, one of the glorious band of Elizabethan dramatists, helped to spread this tradition.

He makes King Edward say-- “Erect a rich and stately carved cross, Whereon her statue shall with glory shine;

And henceforth see you call it Charing Cross.

For why?

--the _chariest_ and the choicest queen That ever did delight my royal eyes There dwells in darkness.

”[365] The inconsolable widower, however, in spite of his costly grief, soon married again.

The truth is, there are in England one or two Charings; one of them is a village thirteen miles from Maidstone.

“_Ing_” means meadow in Saxon.

[366] The meaning of “_Char_” is uncertain; it may be the contraction of the name of some long-forgotten landowner, “rich in the possession of dirt.

”[367] The Anglo-Saxon word _cerre_--a turn (says Mr. Robert Ferguson, an excellent authority), is retained in the name given in Carlisle and other northern towns to the chares, or _wynds_--small streets.

In King Edward’s time Charing was bounded by fields, both north and west.

There has been a good deal of nonsense, however, written about “the pleasant village of Charing.

” In Aggas’s map, published under Elizabeth, Hedge Lane (now Whitcombe Street) is a country lane bordered with fields; so is the Haymarket, and all behind the Mews up to St. Martin’s Lane is equally rural.

Horne Tooke[368] derives the word Charing from the Saxon verb _charan_--to turn; but the etymology is still doubtful, however much the river may bend on its way to Westminster.

However, doubtless, the place was named Charing as far back as the Saxon times.

It was Peele also who kept alive the old tradition of Queen Eleanor sinking at Charing Cross and rising again at Queenhithe.

When falsely accused of _her crimes_, his heroine replies in the words of a rude old ballad well known in Elizabeth’s time-- “If that upon so vile a thing Her heart did ever think, She wished the ground might open wide, And therein she might sink.

With that at Charing Cross she sank Into the ground alive, And after rose with life again, In London at Queenhithe.

”[369] The Eleanor crosses were erected at Lincoln, Geddington, Northampton, Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, St. Albans, Waltham, Cheap, and Charing.

Three only now remain,--Northampton, Geddington, and Waltham.

Charing Cross was probably the most costly; it was octagonal, and was adorned with statues in tiers of niches, which were crowned with pinnacles.

It was begun by Master Richard de Crundale, “cementarius,” but he died about 1293, before it was finished, and the work went on under the supervision of Roger de Crundale.

Richard received about £500 for his work, exclusive of materials furnished him, and Roger £90: 7: 5. The stone was brought from Caen, and the marble steps from Corfe in Dorsetshire.

Only one foreigner was employed on all the crosses, and he was a Frenchman.

The Abbot Ware brought mosaics, porphyry, and perhaps designs from Italy, but there is no proof that he brought over Cavallini.

A

replica of the original cross, designed by Mr. Barry, has been erected at the west end of the Strand, opposite the Charing Cross Railway Station and Hotel.

The cluster of houses at Charing acquired the name of Cross from the monument set up by Edward I. to the memory of his gentle, pious, and brave wife Eleanor, the sister of Alphonso, King of Castille.

This good woman was the daughter of Ferdinand III.

, and after the death of her mother, heiress of Ponthieu.

She bore to her fond husband four sons and eleven daughters, of whom only three are supposed to have survived their father.

Queen Eleanor died at Hardley, near Lincoln, in 1290. The king followed the funeral to Westminster, and afterwards erected a cross to his wife’s memory at every place where the corpse rested for the night.

In the circular which the king sent on the occasion to his prelates and nobles, he trusts that prayers may be offered for her soul at these crosses, so that any stains not purged from her, either from forgetfulness or other causes, may through the plenitude of the Divine grace be removed.

[370] It was Queen Eleanor who, when Edward was stabbed at Acre, by an emissary of the Emir of Joppa, according to a Spanish historian,[371] sucked the poison from the wounds at the risk of her own life.

This warlike king, who subdued Wales and Scotland, who expelled the Jews from England, who hunted Bruce, hanged Wallace, and who finally died on his march to crush Scotland, had a deep affection for his wife, and strove by all that art could do to preserve her memory.

Old Charing Cross was long supposed to have been built from the designs of Pietro Cavallini, a contemporary of Giotto.

He is said to have assisted that painter in the great mosaic picture over the chief entrance of St. Peter’s. But there is little ground for accepting the tradition as true, though asserted by Vertue, as we learn from Horace Walpole’s ‘Anecdotes.

’ Cavallini was born in 1279, and died in 1364. The monument to Henry III.

at the Abbey, and the old paintings round the chapel of St. Edward are also attributed to this patriarch of art by Vertue.

[372] Queen Eleanor had three tombs--one in Lincoln Cathedral, over her viscera;

another in the church of the Blackfriars in London, over her heart; a third in Westminster Abbey, over the rest of her body.

The first was destroyed by the Parliamentarians; the second probably perished at the dissolution of the monasteries; the third has escaped.

It is a valuable example of the thirteenth century beau-ideal.

The tomb was the work of William Torel, a London goldsmith.

The statue is not a portrait statue any more than the statue of Henry III.

by the same artist.

Torel seems to have received for his whole work about £1700 of our money.

[373] The beautiful cross, with its pinnacles and statues, was demolished in 1647 under an order of the House of Commons, which had remained dormant for three years; and at the same time fell its brother cross in Cheapside.

The Royalist ballad-mongers, eager to catch the Puritans tripping, produced a lively street song on the occasion, beginning-- “Undone, undone the lawyers are, They wander about the town, Nor can find the way to Westminster, Now Charing Cross is down.

At the end of the Strand they make a stand, Swearing they are at a loss, And chaffing say that’s not the way, They must go by Charing Cross.

” The ballad-writer goes on to deny that the Cross ever spoke a word against the Parliament, though he confesses it might have inclined to Popery; for certain it was that it “never went to church.

” The workmen were engaged for three months in pulling down the Cross.

[374] Some of the stones went to form the pavement before Whitehall; others were polished to look like marble, and were sold to antiquaries for knife-handles.

The site remained vacant for thirty-one years.

After the Restoration Charing Cross was turned into a place of execution.

Here Hugh Peters, Cromwell’s chaplain, and Major-General Harrison, the sturdy Anabaptist, Colonel Jones, and Colonel Scrope were executed.

They all died bravely, without a doubt or a fear.

Harrison was the son of a Staffordshire farmer, and had fought bravely at the siege of Basing; he had been major-general in Scotland; had helped Cromwell at the disbanding of the Rump; had served in the Council of State; and finally having expressed honest Anabaptist scruples about the Protectorate, had been imprisoned to prevent rebellion.

Cromwell’s son Oliver had been captain in Harrison’s regiment.

[375] As he was led to the scaffold some base scullion called out to the brave old Ironside, “Where is your good _old_ cause now?

” Harrison replied with a cheerful smile, clapping his hand on his breast, “Here it is, and I am going to seal it with my blood.

” When he came in sight of the gallows he was transported with joy; 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 prepared for you.

”[376] “Yes,” replied 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 he gave him all the money he had; and so parting with his servant, hugging him in his arms, he went up the ladder with an undaunted countenance.

The cruel rabble observing him tremble in his hands and legs, he took notice of it, and 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 God.

He hath carried me above the fear of death, and I value not my life, because I go to my Father, and I am assured I shall take it again.

Gentlemen, take notice, that for being an instrument in that cause (an instrument of the Son of God) which hath been pleaded amongst us, and which God hath witnessed to by many 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.

” Then he prayed to himself with tears, and having ended, the hangman pulled down his cap, but he thrust it up and said, “I have one word more to the Lord’s people.

Let them not think hardly of any of the good ways of God for all this, for I have found the way of God to be a perfect way, and He hath covered my head many times in the day of battle.

By my God I have leaped over a wall, by my God I have run through a troop, and by my God I will go through this death, and He will make it easy to me.

Now, into thy hands, O Lord Jesus, I commit my spirit.

” After he was hanged they cut down this true martyr, and stripping him, slashed him open in order to disembowel him.

In the last rigour of his agony this staunch soldier is said to have risen up and struck the executioner.

Three days after, Carew and Cook were hanged at the same place, rejoicing and praying cheerfully to the last.

As Cook parted from his wife he said to her, “I am going to be married in glory this day.

Why weepest thou?

--let them weep who part and shall never meet again.

”