Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/349

This page needs to be proofread.

n s. iv. OCT. 28, mi.] NOTES AND QUERIES.


343


and drawn from a precept in a writer of very high authority with the gentleman opposite to him, captain Morris

Solid men of Boston make no long potations. Solid men of Boston make no long orations.

Bow ! wow ! wow !

And this injunction he could the more readily comply with, as he had in fact very little to say upon the subject ....

" Mr. Sheridan felt himself much disappointed in that kind of defence, which he had a right to expect from Mr. Burke, of the conduct of the marquis of Rockingham, and supposed, that the injunction against long orations was not the only moral precept in that system of ethics alluded to, which served to regulate the conduct of that right hon. gentleman. He would remind him of another passage in the same approved writer, in which he says, He went to Daddy Jenky, by Trimmer Hal

attended, In such company, good lack ! how his morals

must be mended.

Bow ! wow ! wow ! "


ALBERT MATTHEWS.


Boston, U.S.


CROMWELLIANA.

(See 11 S. iii. 341 ; iv. 3, 103, 262.)

VII. THE FATE OF CROMWELL'S EFFIGY

AND BODY.

Mercurius Publicus, during the existence of Monck's temporary " Council of State," pending the King's return, was, more or less nominally written by Giles Dury, a connex- ion by marriage of Sir Thos. Clarges and Henry Muddiman's assistant. The number of this newsbook for 24-31 May, 1660, has a graphic account of the frenzied delight of the nation at the King's safe entry into his capital on 29 May, and terminates it as follows :

" The solemnity of the day was concluded by an infinite number of bonfires, it being observable that as if all the houses had turned their chimnies into the streets (the weather being very warm). There were almost as many fires in the streets as houses throughout London and Westminster. And, among the rest, in Westminster a very costly one was made, where the effigies of the old Oliver Cromwell was set up on a high post with the arms of the ' Commonwealth ' ; which, having been exposed there awhile to the publick view, with torches lighted, that every one mighi take better notice of them, were burnt together."

So much for the effigy ; but the outrage of its mock funeral was avenged in a grimmer fashion. I do not think the passages hav ever before been quoted. Henry Muddiman was sole journalist at the end of the year and this is what he has to say on the sub ject :

" This day (Jan. 26), in pursuance of an ordei of Parliament the carcases of those two horric


egicides Oliver Cromwell and Henry Ireton- were digged up out of their graves which (with

hose of John Bradshaw and Thomas Pride) are to be hang'd up at Tyburn and buried under

he gallows." The Kingdomes Intelligencer 21-28

anuary, 1661.

A day or two later he tells his readers : " This day. Jan. 30. (we need say no more >ut name the day of the moneth) was doubly >bserved ; not onely by a solemn fast, sermons, and prayers at every Parish church for the recious blood of our late pious soverain King iharles the First of ever glorious memory ; but ilso by publick dragging those odious carcases of Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton, and John Brad- haw to Tiburn. On Monday night CromWell and Ireton in two severall carts, were drawn

o Holborn from Westminster, after they were

digged up on Saturday last, and the next morning Bradshaw. To-day they were drawn upon sledges

o Tiburn. All the way, as before from West-

minster, the universal outcry of the people went along with them. When these their carcases were at Tiburn they were pull'd out of their coffins and hang'd at the several angles of that

riple tree, where they hung till the sun was set.

After which they were taken down, their heads cut off, and their loathsome trunks thrown into a deep hole under the gallowes."

Muddiman was a Cambridge man, which adds point to his conclusion :

" And now we cannot forget how at Cambridge, when Cromwell first set up for a rebell, he rode under the gallowes, where his horse curvetting threw his cursed ' highness ' out of the saddle (as if he had been turned off the ladder) the spec- tators then observing the place and rather pre- saging the work of this day than the monstrous villainies of this day twelve years. But he is now again thrown under the gallows, never more to be digg'd up, and there we leave him." Mer- curius Publicus, 24-31 January, 1661.

According to the MS. note of the collector, George Thomason on the " 3 rd day after y fc Cromwell, Bradshaw, and Ireton were hanged at Tiburn and their boddies turned into a hole under y e Gallowes," the following poem was printed. It is a broadside with a heavy black border :

On the death of that Grand Impostor, Oliver Crom- well. Who died September the 3. 1658. So let him die. So to his grave be sent And, as his life, his death proved turbulent In such loud tempests let him end his days As witches their accurs'd familiars raise The Devil in a dreadful hurricane Approaches thus the trembling Indian. Those happy storms how should we prize Had they but sooner sung his exequies Ere he had perfected that black design Which to this day brands the first Cataline And stopped those louder cries of blood that calt For curses to attend his funeral. The tracing of those sanguine paths he trod Made Attila be styled the " Scourge of God." Well made this Scarlet Hypocrite his boast Not in the Prince of Peace, but Lord of Host Though to rejoice in numbers of men slain Suits not with David but withJTamberlaine.