Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/64

 44 [9th S. IV. July 15, '99. NOTES AND QUERIES. essayed to be used, for producing death by strangulation before kindling the fire being distinctly perceptible amid the flames and liberal supply of smoke clouds encircling the sufferer. This plate—to my mind, a more artistic production than the others—is sub- scribed by the author himself "John Seller, execut." an ascription to the artist not alto- gether devoid, perhaps, of liability to illiterate misconstruction. Plate x. portrays drawing a treason con- vict on a hurdle to the place of execution. The designer expressly calls the tractor "a hurdle": but it is represented as a sort of shallow basket or sledge without runners* Plate xi. (and last) is described as "The Manner of Beheading the Peers of England for High Treason," and was more particularly in my mind when I referred last week to a current question from time to time cropping up in these pages.+ The scene is Tower Hill, a locality with which, as I have said, the designer, or, at all events, the author and publisher, was well acquainted. The White Tower and bastions with the battlements of the towers of the outer ward form the back- ground. Among the spectators close to the scaffold stands a Yeoman Warder or Yeoman Porter, probably the former. He is correctly armed with a partisan ; this may be regarded as apparently an insignificant detail, but it is notable as confirming an impression of the essential accuracy of the engraving as a con- temporaneous production. His face is turned towards the scaffold, his back is presented to the inspector of the engraving. On the back of his uniform coat, beneath the conventional Tudor badge of rose and crown, appear the capital letters I.R., incontrovertibly fixing the date of the scene, as I have already con- tended, as subsequent to 1685. The victim, blindfolded, is represented as lying full length prone on his stomach. The block, a squared billet, is apparently about from 7in. to 9in. in diameter; the length cannot be estimated, owing to the position of the figure not allowing of the display of the further end ; suffice it to say that the doomed nobleman's neck is supported at certainly no greater height than 9 in. above the plank flooring of the scaffold. From the fact that only one peer suffered on Tower Hill during the reign of James II., the period denoted by the yeoman's initials and the costumes of the actors and spectators in and of the judicial tragedy, and when the author was living 7"1 S. xi. 502 passim. t 'Decollation of Charles I.' (9th S. iii. 124, 316, 394). and prospering, as a popular and flourishing draughtsman, designer, and tradesman, in the immediate vicinity of the scene depicted, with a branch business almost, if it may not be said to be quite, in view of the gruesome function,* I do not think I am unduly stretching my assumption if I, by induction, ascribe the illustration to a representation of the execution of James, Duke of Monmouth, on Tower Hill, on Wednesday, 15 July, 1685. The sufferer was indubitably a peer of Eng- land, the acknowledged son of the then late and the nephew of the reigning monarch. May we not reasonably assume that to the authorities of the Commonwealth, six-and- thirty years previously, the idea of an inno- vation on the established posture would not have occurred, and that they would not have conceded—it would not have suggested itself to them that they should concede—a more dignified or, at least, a more convenient (!) posture to the grandfather than that assumed without apparent question by the grandson ? If they did, what of the dying king's inter- rogative pathetic protest, as recorded, refer- ring to the altitude of the block, " Must it be no higher 1" Such an inquiry would have been irrelevant, or at least superfluous, had " the kneeling posture " been provided for. Readers interested in the grim subject of position at the block should compare this engraving with a far finer piece of work, a vignette initial in the second volume of Bayley.'s superb imperial quarto (the first) edition of his ' History of the Tower.' The attitude of the moribund is the same in both illustrations, and whoever it was who de- signed the plates for Bayley, the artist was, to my mind, indubitably acquainted with the preceding work, foru/o intervallo, of John Seller. Gnomon. Spenser's Rosalind.—In the very inter- esting note on ' Spenser's Lancashire Home' (9th S. iii. 481) the writer refers to the con- jecture of one of Spenser's biographers that Rosalind belonged to the Dynely family, of Dynely Hill, not far from the Towneley Hall estates, and adds, " But it is conjecture only, nothing more." Few ex- cept specialist students have read all the biographies of Spenser, and one would like to know which biographer is referred to by F., the writer of the note; also whether that same biographer adduces any arguments to support his conjecture. May not some argument, however slight, be based on the name Dynely itself? Ed-
 * Seo my paper subscribed Nemo, 'N. & Q.,'
 * See ante, p. 23.