Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/329

 9*s.VLOcT.6,i9oo.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 271 ber, 1715, a considerable time subsequent to Defoe's penal triumph. But I am nevertheless disposed to feel very grateful to E. L. G. for having afforded me the opportunity of correcting the nonsensical perversions of fact which careless writers publish from time to time with respect to that hackneyed subject" the heads on Temple Bar." Even that careful historian Mr. E. L. Inderwick, Q.C., in his ' Side-Lights on the Stuarts,' is betrayed into a loose statement of Temple Bar groaning under, or surmounted by, the number of heads exposed there during the reigns of the last two sovereigns of that dynasty. As a fact no head was ever spiked on that golgotha during the Stuart or any preceding period, though I grant there was one solitary instance of posthumous exposure in the last year of the second Charles, when one of the quarters of Sir Thomas Armstrong (executed on an outlawry — trial and con- viction for high treason being dispensed with—for imputed participation in the Rye House Plot) was so exhibited, the other three "quarters being similarly disposed of on Aldgate, Aldersgate, and on one of the gates of Stafford, the borough Sir Thomas had represented in Parliament, but his head was sot up upon Westminster Hall between those of Cromwell and Bradshaw. _An instance of this indifference to strict historical verity has irritatingly cropped up > to time with our old friends the from time "sea serpent," the "gigantic gooseberry," and the enormous shower of frogs." This variant of a hackneyed tradition, the origin of which I think I can supply, runs usually—"somewhat, or somewhat to that effect, as certain old folks say—thus. The citizens of London having hesitated to comply with Henry VIlI.'s demand for what the municipality regarded as an ex- orbitant subsidy, the king sent for the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, and, as those function- aries knelt in a tremor at the foot of the throne, addressed them thus, " Look ye, Mr. Mayor, see that my request be promptly com- plied with, or within eight-and-forty hours the heads of you and your brethren shall be stuck up on Temple Bar !" This absurd anecdote, occasionally produced as an "up- to-date " bit of " copy " by the hand-to-mouth journalist, is a free rendering of a scrap of the conversation of the " illustrious " Dr. Samuel Johnson:— " He observed, ' The House of Commons was originally not a privilege of the people, but a check for the Crown on the House of Lords. 1 remember Henry VIII. wanted them to do something; they hesitated in the morning, but did it in the afternoon. He told them," It is well you did, or half your heads should have been upon Temple Bar." But the House of Commons is now no longer under the iwer of the Crown, and therefore must be He added, "I have no delight in talking of public affairs,"* a satisfactory assurance to those of his hearers whose historical know- ledge was comprehensive enough to enable them to appraise the value of the learned Doctor's illustration. The story is preposterous. No idea prompt- ing such a remark could have o_riginated in the monarch's mind. It is not cited as if the king had proposed an innovation, yet _ an innovation was involved in the expression. The wooden penthouse-roofed structure that in Tudor and early Stuart times bridged Fleet Street, indicating the western limit of the City's privileges, was of comparatively low pitch. It had been erected about the middle of the reign of the unhappy Anne Boleyn's imperious lord to receive the un- fortunate queen on her first visit to the sovereign city, superseding a still lower- pitchetf toll-house with ancillaries of dwarf posts and a chain, and neither the new structure nor the one that it had superseded was of sufficient elevation from the road- way to suggest its application to penal posthumous exposure. Severed heads and the mangled limbs—" quarters "—of traitors were invariably perched above the actual gates of cities or on the roofs of lofty buildings. Such dwarf edifices as marked the ancillary entrances to a town or city (iugresses colloquially called "bars")—when such in- significant symbols of obstruction were de- noted by any roofed building whatever, which, so far from being invariably the case, was, in fact, only presented in London by the barrier at the Temple, which, be it remem- bered, down to 1672 never bore any resem- blance to the dignified appearance of a gate —were never utilized for this revolting purpose. The idea had never occurred to the administrators of our penal code that they were fitted for such a purpose, and therefore could not have been present in the mind of Henry. Substitute the words "or half your heads should have been on the bridge gate,"f Tuesday, 12 October, 1779. t See Shakespeare's 'Richard III.,'Act III. sc. 11. lines 71, 72:- Catesby. The princes both [Dukes of Gloucester and Buckingham] make high account of you [Lord Hastings] [Aside J For they account his head upon the bridge- that is to say, spiked on the turrets of the bridge gate—Traitors Gate spanning London Bridge —
 * Boswell's ' Life,' chapter xliii., under date