declaring hereby that upon such your resolution signified to the ministers of justice, our warrant for their reprieve is determined, and the law to have its course.’ These also were suffered to linger out their lives in Newgate. 48
In the Thomasson collection of Tracts in the British Museum is one bearing the following title: ‘A true and perfect Relation of the Tryall, Condemning, and executing of the 24 Prisoners, who suffered for severall Robberies and Burglaries at Tyburn on Fryday last, which was the 29 of this instant June, 1649.’ The names of the criminals are given, twenty-three men and one woman. The prisoners were tied in eight carts, the sexton of St Sepulchre’s made his official speech to the culprits, ‘which being ended the carts were drave unto Tiburne the Fatall place of execution, where William Lowen the new Hangman fastned eight of them unto each Triangle’. It would seem that there was nothing unusual, nothing to attract attention, in the number executed.
1654 John Southworth, a priest, was sent on the English mission in 1619. He escaped imprisonment till 1627, when he was tried at Lancaster, condemned, reprieved in 1630, and given over to the French ambassador for transportation beyond seas. If he was sent abroad, which seems uncertain, he was soon back, and after a long interval was again arrested, and once more released. He was finally apprehended in 1654. On his arraignment he pleaded that he was not guilty of treason, but in spite of persuasion acknowledged that he was a priest. The court, with, it is said, great reluctance, passed the inevitable sentence. On 28 June five coiners were drawn, hanged, and quartered with Father Southworth. Father Southworth was an old man of 72; nothing was alleged against him but that he was a priest, that he was ‘a dangerous seducer’. The guilt of this judicial murder rests wholly with Cromwell. The life of Southworth was in his hands; he was deaf to the suit of the French and Spanish ambassadors for Southworth’s life. 49 No more Catholics were executed in England till the Popish Plot broke out in 1678.
Cromwell died in 1658 and despite promises of leniency from the restored Charles II, terrible vengeance followed:
1660 Between 13 and 17 October eight of the Regicides were executed ‘at the Round or railed Place neer Charing Crosse’. ‘And now the stench of their burnt bowels had so putrified the air, as the inhabitants thereabout petitioned His Majesty there might be no more executed in that place. Therefore on Friday [October 19], Francis Hacker, without remorse, and Daniell Axtell, who dissolved himself into tears and prayers for the King and his own soul, were executed at Tyburn, where Hacker was only hanged, and his brother Rowland Hacker had his body entire, which he begged, and Axtell was quartered.’ To finish with the story of the regicides: Colonel Okey, Colonel Barkstead, and Miles Corbet were basely betrayed by Downing, who had been chaplain in Okey’s regiment; the States General, in violation of their fundamental maxim to receive and protect those who took refuge in their territory, basely surrendered them. They were executed at Tyburn on April 16, 1662.
A miserable vengeance was wreaked on the dead on the ‘carcases’ of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw: December 4. A resolution was passed in the House of Commons; the Lords made an addition, and finally the Resolution stood thus: ‘December 8 Resolved, by the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament, That the carcases of Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton, John Bradshaw, Thomas Pride, whether buried in Westminster Abbey or elsewhere, be, with all expedition, taken up and drawn upon a hurdle to Tyburn, and there hanged up in their coffins for some time: and after that buried under the said gallows: and that James Norfolke Esquire, Serjeant at Arms attending the House of Commons, do take care, that this order be put in effectual execution by the common executioner for the County of
In the Thomasson collection of Tracts in the British Museum is one bearing the following title: ‘A true and perfect Relation of the Tryall, Condemning, and executing of the 24 Prisoners, who suffered for severall Robberies and Burglaries at Tyburn on Fryday last, which was the 29 of this instant June, 1649.’ The names of the criminals are given, twenty-three men and one woman. The prisoners were tied in eight carts, the sexton of St Sepulchre’s made his official speech to the culprits, ‘which being ended the carts were drave unto Tiburne the Fatall place of execution, where William Lowen the new Hangman fastned eight of them unto each Triangle’. It would seem that there was nothing unusual, nothing to attract attention, in the number executed.
1654 John Southworth, a priest, was sent on the English mission in 1619. He escaped imprisonment till 1627, when he was tried at Lancaster, condemned, reprieved in 1630, and given over to the French ambassador for transportation beyond seas. If he was sent abroad, which seems uncertain, he was soon back, and after a long interval was again arrested, and once more released. He was finally apprehended in 1654. On his arraignment he pleaded that he was not guilty of treason, but in spite of persuasion acknowledged that he was a priest. The court, with, it is said, great reluctance, passed the inevitable sentence. On 28 June five coiners were drawn, hanged, and quartered with Father Southworth. Father Southworth was an old man of 72; nothing was alleged against him but that he was a priest, that he was ‘a dangerous seducer’. The guilt of this judicial murder rests wholly with Cromwell. The life of Southworth was in his hands; he was deaf to the suit of the French and Spanish ambassadors for Southworth’s life. 49 No more Catholics were executed in England till the Popish Plot broke out in 1678.
Cromwell died in 1658 and despite promises of leniency from the restored Charles II, terrible vengeance followed:
1660 Between 13 and 17 October eight of the Regicides were executed ‘at the Round or railed Place neer Charing Crosse’. ‘And now the stench of their burnt bowels had so putrified the air, as the inhabitants thereabout petitioned His Majesty there might be no more executed in that place. Therefore on Friday [October 19], Francis Hacker, without remorse, and Daniell Axtell, who dissolved himself into tears and prayers for the King and his own soul, were executed at Tyburn, where Hacker was only hanged, and his brother Rowland Hacker had his body entire, which he begged, and Axtell was quartered.’ To finish with the story of the regicides: Colonel Okey, Colonel Barkstead, and Miles Corbet were basely betrayed by Downing, who had been chaplain in Okey’s regiment; the States General, in violation of their fundamental maxim to receive and protect those who took refuge in their territory, basely surrendered them. They were executed at Tyburn on April 16, 1662.
A miserable vengeance was wreaked on the dead on the ‘carcases’ of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw: December 4. A resolution was passed in the House of Commons; the Lords made an addition, and finally the Resolution stood thus: ‘December 8 Resolved, by the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament, That the carcases of Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton, John Bradshaw, Thomas Pride, whether buried in Westminster Abbey or elsewhere, be, with all expedition, taken up and drawn upon a hurdle to Tyburn, and there hanged up in their coffins for some time: and after that buried under the said gallows: and that James Norfolke Esquire, Serjeant at Arms attending the House of Commons, do take care, that this order be put in effectual execution by the common executioner for the County of
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