Ralegh Oct. 29, 1618. 6 clergy, and for Roman Catholic recusants,' the other acquired a fatal celebrity as the public prison of Westminster. Here Ralegh was confined on the night before his execution. imprisoned, After the sentence pronounced upon him in the King's Bench he was 'putt into a very uneasy 2 and unconvenient lodging in the Gatehouse.' He was conveyed thither from Westminster Hall by the Sheriff of Middlesex. The carriage which conveyed him wound its way slowly through the crowds that thronged St. Margaret's Churchyard to see him pass: amongst them he noticed his old friend Sir Hugh Burton, and invited him to come to Palace Yard on the morrow to see him die. Weekes, the Governor of the Gatehouse, received him kindly. Tounson, the Dean of Westminster, came and prayed with him a while.3 The Dean was somewhat startled at Ralegh's high spirits, and almost tried to persuade him out of them. But Ralegh persevered, and answered that he was 'persuaded that no man that knew God and feared Him could 'die with cheerfulness and courage, except he was assured of the love and favour of God towards him; that other men 'might make show, but they felt no joy within.' Later in the evening his wife came to him, and it was then that, on hearing how she was to take charge of his body, he replied, It is well, Bess, that thou shouldest have the disposal of the dead, which thou hadst not always the disposing of, living.' Shortly after midnight he parted from her, and then, as is thought, wrote on the blank leaf in his Bible his farewell of life Ev'n such is Time, that takes on trust 1 The Spanish Ambassador Gondomar had it cleared of these by order of James I. One of them was afterwards canonised. (Edwards's Life of Ralegh, i. 693) 2 Public Record Office, State Papers (Domestic), James I., vol. ciii. No. 74. St. John's Life of Ralegh, ii. 343–369. Tounson's letter in Edwards's Life of Ralegh, ii. 489. Verses said to have been found in his Bible in the Gatehouse at 'Westminster'-'given to one of his 'friends the night before his suffer'ing.' (Ralegh's Poems, p. 729.) Another short poem is also said to be 'the 'night before he died :' Cowards fear to die; but courage stout, After a short sleep, about four in the morning, 'a cousin of his, Mr. Charles Thynne, coming to see him, Sir Walter, 'finding him sad, began to be very pleasant with him; whereupon Mr. Thynne counselled him: Sir, take heed you goe 'not too muche upon the brave hande; for your enemies 'will take exceptions at that. Good Charles (quoth he) 'give me leave to be mery, for this is the last merriment 'that ever I shall have in this worlde: but when I come to the last parte, thou shalte see I will looke on it like a man;and so he was as good as his worde.' At five Dean Tounson After he had received the Communion he was very cheerful and merry, ate his breakfast heartily,' and took a last whiff of his beloved 'tobacco, and made no more of his death than if he had been 'to take a journey.' Just before he left the Gatehouse a cup of sack was given him. Is it to your liking?' 'I will answer 'you,' he said, as did the fellow who drank of St. Giles' bowl as he went to Tyburn, "It is good drink if a man might "but tarry by it."2 The Dean accompanied him to the scaffold. The remaining scenes belong to Old Palace Yard, and to St. Margaret's Church, where he lies buried. returned, and again prayed with him. 6 1 6 Sir John Elliot, who certainly, and Hampden probably, had in boyhood witnessed Ralegh's execution, with deep Hampden emotion, were themselves his successors in the Gate- and Elliot. house, for the cause of constitutional freedom.3 To it, from the other side, came the royalist Lovelace, and there wrote his lines- Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; That for an hermitage. If I have freedom in my love, And in my soul am free, Angels alone, that soar above, Lovelace. In it, Lilly the astrologer found himself imprisoned immediately after the Restoration, upstairs where there 'was on one side a company of rude swearing persons, Farewell,' also ascribed to this night, had already appeared in 1596. (Ibid. 727-729.) Edwards's Ralegh, ii. 489. He said on the scaffold 'I have taken the Lilly. Hudson. on the other side many Quakers, who lovingly entertained him.' In it Sir Geoffrey Hudson, the dwarf, died, at the age of sixty-three, under suspicion of complicity in the Popish Plot.2 In it the indefatigable Pepys,3 Collier, the nonjuring divine, and Savage the poet, made their experience of prison life." In it, according to his own story, Pepys. Collier. Savage. Captain Bell was incarcerated, and translated Luther's Capt. Bell. Table Talk,' having many times begun to translate the same, but always was hindered through being called upon ' about other businesses. Thus,' he writes, 'about six weeks after I 'had received the same book, it fell out that one night, between 'twelve and one of the clock there appeared unto me an ancient man, standing at my bedside, arrayed all in white, having a long and broad white beard hanging down to his 'girdle, who, taking me by my right ear, spoke these words following to me: Sirrah, will you not take time to translate that book which is sent you out of Germany? I will shortly provide for you both place and time to do it. And 'then he vanished away out of my sight. . . . . Then, about a fortnight after I had seen that vision, I went to Whitehall to 'hear the sermon, after which ended, I returned to my lodging, which was then in King Street, Westminster; and sitting 'down to dinner with my wife, two messengers were sent from the Privy Council Board, with a warrant to carry me to the 'Keeper of the Gatehouse, Westminster, there to be safely kept until further order from the hands of the Council-which was done, without showing me any cause at all wherefore I was committed. Upon which said warrant I was kept there 'ten whole years close prisoner; where I spent five years thereof in translating the said book, insomuch that I found the words very true which the old man in the foresaid vision did say "unto me, "I will shortly provide for you both place and time "to translate it." The Gatehouse remained standing down to the middle of the last century. The neighbourhood was familiar with the cries of the keeper to the publican opposite, 'Jackass, Jackass,' for gin for the prisoners. It was pulled down in 1777, a victim to the indignation of Dr. Johnson. One of its arches, however, was still continued in a house which was 6 5 Life of Lilly, p. 91. Edwards's Ralegh, i. 699-715. In Pereril of the Peak, the Gatehouse is confounded with Newgate. Evelyn, iii. 297. Johnson's Poets, iii. 309. as late as 1839 celebrated as having been the abode of Edmund Burke.' the Gate Pickering, The office of Keeper of the Gatehouse was in the gift of the Dean and Chapter. Perhaps the most remarkable 'Keeper' was Maurice Pickering, who, in a paper addressed to Keeper of the Lord Treasurer Burleigh, in 1580, says: 'My house. ' predecessor and my wief and I have kept this offis of the Gate'house this XXIII. yeres and upwards.' He was considered a great man in Westminster, and in official documents he was styled Maurice Pickering, gentleman.' At one Maurice time he and his wife are mentioned as dining at a 1580. marriage-feast at His Grace the Lord Bishop of Rochester's, in Westminster Close,' and at another as supping with Sir George Peckham, Justice of the Peace. On another occasion, when supping with Sir George he foolishly let out some of the secrets of his office in chatting with Lady Peckham (the Gatehouse at that time was full of needy prisoners for religion's sake, whose poverty had become notorious). 'He told her Ladyship, in answer to a question she asked him, Yea, I have many poor people for that cause (meaning religion), and for restrainte (poverty) of their friends I fear they will starve, as I have no allowance for them. For this Master Pickering was summoned before the Lord Chancellor, examined by the Judges, and severely reprimanded;' upon which he sent a most humble and sorrowful petition to Lord Burleigh, 'praying the comfort of his good Lord's mercy' in the matter, and protesting that he had ever prayed for the prosperous reign of the Queene, who hath defended us from the tearinge ' of the Devill, the Poope, and all his ravening wollves.' The Privy Council appears to have taken no further notice of the matter, except to require an occasional return of the prisoners in the Gatehouse to the Justices of the Peace assembled at Quarter Sessions.2 In the year of the Armada, Pickering presented to the Burgesses of Westminster a fine silver-gilt 'standing-cup,' which is still used at their feasts, the cover (the gift of his wife) being held over the heads of those who drink. It has the quaint inscription— 6 The Giver to his Brother wisheth peace, With Peace he wisheth Brother's love on earth, 1 Westminster Improvements, 55. The order for its removal is in the Chapter-Book, July 10, 1776. 1588. 2 I owe this information to the kindness of Mr. Trollope, Town-Clerk of Westminster. Which Love to seal, I as a pledge am given, The gift of Maurice Pickering and Joan his wife, 1588. The Sanc Passing the Gatehouse and returning from this anticipation of distant times, we approach the Sanctuary. The right of Sanctuary' was shared by the Abbey with at least tuary. thirty other great English monasteries; but probably in none did the building occupy so prominent a position, and in none did it play so important a part. The grim old Norman fortress, which was still standing in the seventeenth century, is itself a proof that the right reached back, if not to the time of the Confessor, at least to the period when additional sanctity was imparted to the whole Abbey by his canonisation in 1198. The right professed to be founded on charters of King Lucius,3 and continued, it was believed, till the time of the ungodly 'King Vortigern.' It was then, as was alleged, revived by Sebert, and sanctioned by the special consecration by St. Peter, whose cope was exhibited as the very one which he had left behind him on the night of his interview with Edric, and as a pledge (like St. Martin's cope in Tours) of the inviolable sanctity of his monastery. Again, it was supposed to have been dissolved by the cursed Danes,' and revived by the holy 'king St. Edward,' who had procured the Pope to call a synod for the establishing thereof, wherein the breakers thereof are doomed to perpetual fire with the betrayer Judas.' Close by was a Belfry Tower, built by Edward III., in which hung the Abbey Bells, which remained there till Wren had completed the Western Towers, and which rang for coronations and tolled for royal funerals. Their ringings, men said, 'soured all the drink in the town.' The building, properly so called, included two churches, an upper and a lower, which the inmates were expected, as a kind of penance, to frequent. But the right of asylum rendered the whole precinct a vast 6 cave of Adullam' for all the distressed and discontented of the metropolis who desired, according to the phrase of the time, 1 Arch. viii. 41. 2 Described in Archæolog. i. 35; Maitland's Lond. (Entinck), ii. 134; Gleanings, p. 228; Walcott, p. 81. 3 Eulog. iii. 346; More's Life of Richard III., p. 40; Kennet, i. 491. ✦ Neale, i. 55; Dart (App.), p. 17. See Chapter I. 6 5 Where now stands the Guildhall, built 1805. (Widmore, p. 11; Gleanings, p. 228; Walcott, p. 82.) 6 It is also said that one object of St. Margaret's Church was to relieve the south aisle of the Abbey from this dangerous addition to the worshippers. (Westminster Improvements, 10.) |