CHAPTER II.
TEMPLE BAR.
Temple Bar—The Golgotha of English Traitors—When Temple Bar was made of Wood—Historical Pageants at Temple Bar—The Associations of
Temple Bar—Mischievous Processions through Temple Bar—The First grim Trophy—Rye-House Plot Conspirators.
Temple Bar was rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren,
in 1670–72, soon after the Great Fire had swept away
eighty-nine London churches, four out of the seven
City gates, 460 streets, and 13,200 houses, and had
destroyed fifteen of the twenty-six wards, and laid
waste 436 acres of buildings, from the Tower eastward to the Inner Temple westward.
The old black gateway, once the dreaded Golgotha of English traitors, separates, it should be
remembered, the Strand from Fleet Street, the city
from the shire, and the Freedom of the City of
London from the Liberty of the City of Westminster.
As Hatton (1708—Queen Anne) says,—"This gate
opens not immediately into the City itself, but into
the Liberty or Freedom thereof." We need hardly
say that nothing can be more erroneous than the
ordinary London supposition that Temple Bar ever
formed part of the City fortifications. Mr. Gilbert
à Beckett, laughing at this tradition, once said in
Punch: "Temple Bar has always seemed to me
a weak point in the fortifications of London. Bless
you, the besieging army would never stay to bombard it—they would dash through the barber's."
The Great Fire never reached nearer Temple
Bar than the Inner Temple, on the south side of
Fleet Steet, and St. Dunstan's Church, on the
north.
The Bar is of Portland stone, which London
smoke alternately blackens and calcines; and each
façade has four Corinthian pilasters, an entablature,
and an arched pediment. On the west (Strand)
side, in two niches, stand, as eternal sentries,
Charles I. and Charles II., in Roman costume.
Charles I. has long ago lost his bâton, as he once
deliberately lost his head. Over the keystone of
the central arch there used to be the royal arms. On
the east side are James I. and Elizabeth (by many
able writers supposed to be Anne of Denmark,
James I.'s queen). She is pointing her white
finger at Child's; while he, looking down on the
passing cabs, seems to say, "I am nearly tired of
standing; suppose we go to Whitehall, and sit
down a bit?"
The slab over the eastern side of the arch bears
the following inscription, now all but smoothed
down by time:—
"Erected in the year 1670, Sir Samuel Starling, Mayor;
continued in the year 1671, Sir Richard Ford, Lord Mayor;
and finished in the year, 1672, Sir George Waterman, Lord
Mayor."
All these persons were friends of Pepys.
The upper part of the Bar is flanked by scrolls,
but the fruit and flowers once sculptured on the
pediment, and the supporters of the royal arms
over the posterns, have crumbled away. In the
centre of each façade is a semicircular-headed,
ecclesiastical-looking window, that casts a dim
horny light into a room above the gate, held of the
City, at an annual rent of some £50, by Messrs.
Childs, the bankers, as a sort of muniment-room
for their old account-books. There is here preserved, among other costlier treasures of Mammon,
the private account-book of Charles II. The
original Child was a friend of Pepys, and is mentioned by him as quarrelling with the Duke of
York on Admiralty matters. The Child who
succeeded him was a friend of Pope, and all but
led him into the South-Sea Bubble speculation.
Those affected, mean statues, with the crinkly
drapery, were the work of a vain, half-crazed
sculptor named John Bushnell, who died mad in
1701. Bushnell, who had visited Rome and
Venice, executed Cowley's monument in Westminster Abbey, and the statues of Charles I.,
Charles II., and Gresham, in the Old Exchange.
There is no extant historical account of Temple
Bar in which the following passage from Strype
(George I.) is not to be found embedded like a
fossil; it is, in fact, nearly all we London topographers know of the early history of the Bar:—
"Anciently," says Strype, "there were only posts,
rails, and a chain, such as are now in Holborn,
Smithfield, and Whitechapel bars. Afterwards there
was a house of timber erected across the street,
with a narrow gateway and an entry on the south
side of it under the house." This structure is to
be seen in the bird's-eye view of London, 1601
(Elizabeth), and in Hollar's seven-sheet map of
London (Charles II.)
The date of the erection of the "wooden house"
is not to be ascertained; but there is the house
plain enough in a view of London to which Maitland affixes the date about 1560 (the second year
of Elizabeth), so we may perhaps safely put it
down as early as Edward VI. or Henry VIII.
Indeed, if a certain scrap of history is correct—i.e.,
that bluff King Hal once threatened, if a certain
Bill did not pass the Commons a little quicker, to
fix the heads of several refractory M.P.s on
the top of Temple Bar—we must suppose the
old City toll-gate to be as old as the early Tudors.
After Simon de Montfort's death, at the battle
of Evesham, 1265, Prince Edward, afterwards
Edward I., punished the rebellious Londoners,
who had befriended Montfort, by taking away all
their street chains and bars, and locking them up
in the Tower.
The earliest known documentary and historical
notice of Temple Bar is in 1327, the first year of
Edward III.; and in the thirty-fourth year of the
same reign we find, at an inquisition before the
mayor, twelve witnesses deposing that the commonalty of the City had, time out of mind, had
free ingress and egress from the City to Thames
and from Thames to the City, through the great
gate of the Templars situate within Temple Bar.
This referred to some dispute about the right of
way through the Temple, built in the reign of
Henry I. In 1384 Richard II. granted a licence
for paving Strand Street from Temple Bar to the
Savoy, and collecting tolls to cover such charges.
The historical pageants that have taken place at
Temple Bar deserve a notice, however short. On
the 5th of November, 1422, the corpse of that
brave and chivalrous king, the hero of Agincourt,
Henry V., was borne to its rest at Westminster
Abbey by the chief citizens and nobles, and every
doorway from Southwark to Temple Bar had its
mournful torch-bearer. In 1502–3 the hearse of
Elizabeth of York, queen of Henry VII., halted at
Temple Bar, on its way from the Tower to Westminster, and at the Bar the Abbots of Westminster
and Bermondsey blessed the corpse, and the Earl
of Derby and a large company of nobles joined
the sable funeral throng. After sorrow came joy,
and after joy sorrow—Ita vita. In the next reign
poor Anne Boleyn, radiant with happiness and
triumph, came through the Bar (May 31, 1534), on
her way to the Tower, to be welcomed by the
clamorous citizens, the day before her ill-starred
coronation. Temple Bar on that occasion was
new painted and repaired, and near it stood singing
men and children—the Fleet Street conduit all
the time running claret. The old gate figures
more conspicuously the day before the coronation
of that wondrous child, Edward VI. Two hogsheads of wine were then ladled out to the thirsty
mob, and the gate at Temple Bar was painted with
battlements and buttresses, richly hung with cloth
of Arras, and all in a flutter with "fourteen
standard flags." There were eight French trumpeters blowing their best, besides "a pair of
regals," with children singing to the same. In
September, 1553, when Edward's cold-hearted
half-sister, Mary Tudor, came through the City,
according to ancient English custom, the day
before her coronation, she did not ride on horseback, as Edward had done, but sat in a chariot
covered with cloth of tissue and drawn by six
horses draped with the same. Minstrels piped
and trumpeted at Ludgate, and Temple Bar was
newly painted and hung.
Proclamation of Charles II. at Temple Bar (see page 26).
Old Temple Bar, the background to many
historical scenes, figures in the rash rebellion of
Sir Thomas Wyatt. When he had fought his way
down Piccadilly to the Strand, Temple Bar was
thrown open to him, or forced open by him;
but when he had been repulsed at Ludgate he
was hemmed in by cavalry at Temple Bar, where
he surrendered. This foolish revolt led to the
death of innocent Lady Jane Grey, and brought
sixty brave gentlemen to the scaffold and the
gallows.
Penance of the Duchess of Gloucester (see page 32).
On Elizabeth's procession from the Tower before her coronation, January, 1559, Gogmagog the
Albion, and Corineus the Briton, the two Guildhall
giants, stood on the Bar; and on the south side
there were chorister lads, one of whom, richly
attired as a page, bade the queen farewell in the
name of the whole City. In 1588, the glorious year
that the Armada was defeated, Elizabeth passed
through the Bar on her way to return thanks to
God solemnly at St. Paul's. The City waits stood
in triumph on the roof of the gate. The Lord
Mayor and Aldermen, in scarlet gowns, welcomed
the queen and delivered up the City sword, then
on her return they took horse and rode before her.
The City Companies lined the north side of the
street, the lawyers and gentlemen of the Inns
of Court the south. Among the latter stood a
person afterwards not altogether unknown, one
Francis Bacon, who displayed his wit by saying
to a friend, "Mark the courtiers! Those who
bow first to the citizens are in debt; those who
bow first to us are at law!"
In 1601, when the Earl of Essex made his insane
attempt to rouse the City to rebellion, Temple Bar,
we are told, was thrown open to him; but Ludgate
being closed against him on his retreat from Cheapside, he came back by boat to Essex House, where
he surrendered after a short and useless resistance.
King James made his first public entry into his
royal City of London, with his consort and son
Henry, upon the 15th of March, 1603–4. The
king was mounted upon a white genet, ambling
through the crowded streets under a canopy held
by eight gentlemen of the Privy Chamber, as representatives of the Barons of the Cinque Ports,
and passed under six arches of triumph, to take
his leave at the Temple of Janus, erected for the
occasion at Temple Bar. This edifice was fiftyseven feet high, proportioned in every respect like
a temple.
In June, 1649 (the year of the execution of
Charles), Cromwell and the Parliament dined at
Guildhall in state, and the mayor, says Whitelocke,
delivered up the sword to the Speaker, at Temple
Bar, as he had before done to King Charles.
Philips, Milton's nephew, who wrote the continuation of Baker's Chronicle, describes the ceremony at Temple Bar on the proclamation of
Charles II. The old oak gates being shut, the
king-at-arms, with tabard on and trumpet before
him, knocked and gravely demanded entrance.
The Lord Mayor appointed some one to ask
who knocked. The king-at-arms replied, that if
they would open the wicket, and let the Lord
Mayor come thither, he would to him deliver
his message. The Lord Mayor then appeared,
tremendous in crimson velvet gown, and on horseback, of all things in the world, the trumpets
sounding as the gallant knight pricked forth to
demand of the herald, who he was and what was
his message. The bold herald, with his hat on,
answered, regardless of Lindley Murray, who
was yet unknown, "We are the herald-at-arms
appointed and commanded by the Lords and
Commons assembled in Parliament, and demand
an entrance into the famous City of London, to
proclaim Charles II. King of England, Scotland,
France, and Ireland, and we expect your speedy
answer to our demand." An alderman then replied, "The message is accepted," and the gates
were thrown open.
When William III. came to see the City and
the Lord Mayor's Show in 1689, the City militia,
holding lighted flambeaux, lined Fleet Street as
far as Temple Bar.
The shadow of every monarch and popular hero
since Charles II.'s time has rested for at least a
passing moment at the old gateway. Queen Anne
passed here to return thanks at St. Paul's for the
victory of Blenheim. Here Marlborough's coach
ominously broke down in 1714, when he returned
in triumph from his voluntary exile.
George III. passed through Temple Bar, young
and happy, the year after his coronation, and again
when, old and almost broken-hearted, he returned
thanks for his partial recovery from insanity; and
in our time that graceless son of his, the Prince
Regent, came through the Bar in 1814, to thank
God at St. Paul's for the downfall of Bonaparte.
On the 9th November, 1837, the accession of
Queen Victoria, Sir Peter Laurie, picturesque in
scarlet gown, Spanish hat, and black feathers, presented the City sword to the Queen at Temple
Bar; Sir Peter was again ready with the same
weapon in 1844, when the Queen opened the new
Royal Exchange; but in 1851, when her Majesty
once more visited the City, the old ceremony was
(wrongly, we think) dispensed with.
At the funeral of Lord Nelson, the honoured
corpse, followed by downcast old sailors, was met
at the Bar by the Lord Mayor and the Corporation;
and the Great Duke's funeral car, and the long
train of representative soldiers, rested at the Bar,
which was hung with black velvet.
A few earlier associations connected with the
present Bar deserve a moment or two's recollection.
On February 12th, when General Monk—"Honest
George," as his old Cromwellian soldiers used to
call him—entered London, dislodged the "Rump"
Parliament, and prepared for the Restoration
of Charles II., bonfires were lit, the City bells
rung, and London broke into a sudden flame of
joy. Pepys, walking homeward about ten o'clock,
says:— "The common joy was everywhere to
be seen. The number of bonfires—there being
fourteen between St. Dunstan's and Temple Bar,
and at Strand Bridge, east of Catherine Street, I
could at one time tell thirty-one fires."
On November 17, 1679, the year after the sham
Popish Plot concocted by those matchless scoundrels, Titus Oates, an expelled naval. chaplain, and
Bedloe; a swindler and thief, Temple Bar was
made the spot for a great mob pilgrimage, on the
anniversary of the accession of Queen Elizabeth,
The ceremonial is supposed to have been organised
by that restless plotter against a Popish succession,
Lord Shaftesbury, and the gentlemen of the Green
Ribbon Club, whose tavern, the "King's Head," was
at the corner of Chancery Lane, opposite the Inner
Temple gate. To scare and vex the Papists, the
church bells began to clash out as early as three
o'clock on the morning of that dangerous day. At
dusk the procession of several thousand half-crazed
torch-bearers started from Moorgate, along Bishopsgate Street, and down Houndsditch and Aldgate
(passing Shaftesbury's house imagine the roar of the
monster mob, the wave of torches, and the fiery
fountains of squibs at that point!), then through
Leadenhall Street and Cornhill, by the Royal
Exchange, along Cheapside and on to Temple Bar,
where the bonfire awaited the puppets. In a
torrent of fire the noisy Protestants passed through
the exulting City, making the Papists cower and
shudder in their garrets and cellars, and before the
flaming deluge opened a storm of shouting people.
This procession consisted of fifteen groups of
priests, Jesuits, and friars, two following a man on a
horse, holding up before him a dummy, dressed to
represent Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, a Protestant
justice and wood merchant, supposed to have been
murdered by Roman Catholics at Somerset House.
It was attended by a body-guard of 150 swordbearers and a man roaring a political cry of the time
through a brazen speaking-trumpet. The great
bonfire was built up mountain high opposite the
Inner Temple gate. Some zealous Protestants,
by pre-arrangement, had crowned the prim and
meagre statue of Elizabeth (still on the east side
of the Bar) with a wreath of gilt laurel, and placed
under her hand (that now points to Child's Bank)
a golden glistening shield, with the motto, "The
Protestant Religion and Magna Charta," inscribed
upon it. Several lighted torches were stuck before
her niche. Lastly, amidst a fiery shower of squibs
from every door and window, the Pope and his
companions were toppled into the huge bonfire, with
shouts that reached almost to Charing Cross.
These mischievous processions were continued
till the reign of George I. There was to have been
a magnificent one on November 17, 1711, when
the Whigs were dreading the contemplated peace
with the French and the return of Marlborough.
But the Tories, declaring that the Kit-Cat Club was
urging the mob to destroy the house of Harley, the
Minister, and to tear him to pieces, seized on the wax
figures in Drury Lane, and forbade the ceremony.
As early as two years after the Restoration, Sir
Balthazar Gerbier, a restless architectural quack
and adventurer of those days, wrote a pamphlet
proposing a sumptuous gate at Temple Bar, and the
levelling of the Fleet Valley. After the Great Fire
Charles II. himself hurried the erection of the Bar,
and promised money to carry out the work. During
the Great Fire, Temple Bar was one of the stations
for constables, 100 firemen, and 30 soldiers.
The Rye-House Plot brought the first trophy to
the Golgotha of the Bar, in 1684, twelve years after
its erection. Sir Thomas Armstrong was deep in the
scheme. If the discreditable witnesses examined
against Lord William Russell are to be believed,
a plot had been concocted by a few desperate
men to assassinate "the Blackbird and the Goldfinch "—as the conspirators called the King and
the Duke of York—as they were in their coach on
their way from Newmarket to London. This plan
seems to have been the suggestion of Rumbold,
a maltster, who lived in a lonely moated farmhouse, called Rye House, about eighteen miles from
London, near the river Ware, close to a by-road
that leads from Bishop Stortford to Hoddesdon.
Charles II. had a violent hatred to Armstrong,
who had been his Gentleman of the Horse, and was
supposed to have incited his illegitimate son, the
Duke of Monmouth, to rebellion. Sir Thomas was
hanged at Tyburn. After the body had hung half an
hour, the hangman cut it down, stripped it, lopped
off the head, threw the heart into a fire, and divided,
the body into four parts. The fore-quarter (afterbeing boiled in pitch at Newgate) was set on
Temple Bar, the head was placed on Westminster
Hall, and the rest of the body was sent to Stafford,
which town Sir Thomas represented in Parliament.
Eleven years after, the heads of two more traitors
—this time conspirators against William III.—
joined the relic of Armstrong. Sir John Friend
was a rich brewer at Aldgate. Parkyns was an old
Warwickshire county gentleman. The plotters
had several plans. One was to attack Kensington
Palace at night, scale the outer wall, and storm or
fire the building; another was to kill William on a
Sunday, as he drove from Kensington to the chapel
at St. James's Palace. The murderers agreed to
assemble near where Apsley House now standsJust as the royal coach passed from Hyde Park
across to the Green Park, thirty conspirators agreed
to fall on the twenty-five guards, and butcher the
king before he could leap out of his carriageThese two Jacobite gentlemen died bravely, proclaiming their entire loyalty to King James and
the "Prince of Wales."
The unfortunate gentlemen who took a moody
pleasure in drinking "the squeezing of the rotten
Orange" had long passed on their doleful journey
from Newgate to Tyburn before the ghastly procession of the brave and unlucky men of the rising,
in 1715 began its mournful march. (fn. 1)
Sir Bernard Burke mentions a tradition that
the head of the young Earl of Derwentwater was
exposed on Temple Bar in 1716, and that his wife
drove in a cart under the arch while a man hired,
for the purpose threw down to her the beloved
head from the parapet above. But the story is
entirely untrue, and is only a version of the way
in which the head of Sir Thomas More was removed by his son-in-law and daughter from London
Bridge, where that cruel tyrant Henry VIII. had
placed it. Some years ago, when the Earl of
Derwentwater's coffin was found in the family vault,
the head was lying safe with the body. In 1716
there was, however, a traitor's head spiked on the
Bar—that of Colonel John Oxburgh, the victim of
mistaken fidelity to a bad cause. He was a brave
Lancashire gentleman, who had surrendered with
his forces at Preston. He displayed signal courage
and resignation in prison, forgetting himself to
comfort others.
The next victim was Mr. Christopher Layer, a
young Norfolk man and a Jacobite barrister,
living in Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane.
He plunged deeply into the Atterbury Plot of
1722, and, with Lords North and Grey, enlisted
men, hired officers, and, taking advantage of the
universal misery caused by the bursting 'of the
South Sea Bubble, planned a general rising against
George I. The scheme was, with four distinct bodies
of Jacobites, to seize the Tower and the Bank, to
arrest the king and the prince, and capture or kill
Lord Cadogan, one of the Ministers. At the trial it
was proved that Layer had been over to Rome, and
had seen the Pretender, who, by proxy, had stood
godfather to his child. Troops were to be sent from
France; barricades were to be thrown up all over
London. The Jacobites had calculated that the
Government had only 14,000 men to meet them—
3,000 of these would be wanted to guard London,
3,000 for Scotland, and 2,000 for the garrisons. The
original design had been to take advantage of the
king's departure for Hanover, and, in the words of
one of the conspirators, the Jacobites were fully
convinced that "they should walk King George
out before Lady-day." Layer was hanged at Tyburn,
and his head fixed upon Temple Bar.
Years after, one stormy night in 1753, the rebel's
skull blew down, and was picked up by a nonjuring attorney, named Pierce, who preserved it as
a relic of the Jacobite martyr. It is said that Dr.
Richard Rawlinson, an eminent antiquary, obtained
what he thought was Layer's head, and desired in
his will that it should be placed in his right hand
when he was buried. Another version of the story
is, that a spurious skull was foisted upon Rawlinson,
who died happy in the possession of the doubtful
treasure. Rawlinson was bantered by Addison for
his pedantry, in one of the Tatlers, and was praised
by Dr. Johnson for his learning.
The 1745 rebellion brought the heads of fresh
victims to the Bar, and this was the last triumph
of barbarous justice. Colonel Francis Townley's
was the sixth head; Fletcher's (his fellow-officer),
the seventh and last. The Earls of Kilmarnock and
Cromarty, Lord Balmerino, and thirty-seven other
rebels (thirty-six of them having been captured in
Carlisle) were tried the same session. Townley
was a man of about fifty-four years of age, nephew
of Mr. Townley of Townley Hall, in Lancashire
(the "Townley Marbles" family), who had been
tried and acquitted in 1725, though many of his
men were found guilty and executed. The nephew
had gone over to France in 1727, and obtained
a commission from the French king, whom he
served for fifteen years, being at the siege of
Philipsburg, and close to the Duke of Berwick
when that general's head was shot off. About
1740, Townley stole over to, England to see his
friends and to plot against the Hanover family; and
as soon as the rebels came into England, he met
them between Lancaster and Preston, and came
with them to Manchester. At the trial Roger
M'Donald, an officer's servant, deposed to seeing
Townley on the retreat from Derby, and between
Lancaster and Preston riding at the head of the
Manchester regiment on a bay horse. He had a
white cockade in his hat and wore a plaid sash.
George Fletcher, who was tried at the same
time as Townley, was a rash young chapman, who
managed his widowed mother's provision shop
"at Salford, just over the bridge in Manchester."
His mother had begged him on her knees to keep
out of the rebellion, even offering him a thousand
pounds for his own pocket, if he would stay at
home. He bought a captain's commission of
Murray, the Pretender's secretary, for fifty pounds;
wore the smart white cockade and a Highland
plaid sash lined with white silk; and headed the
very first captain's guard mounted for the Pretender at Carlisle. A Manchester man deposed
to seeing at the Exchange a sergeant, with a drum,
beating up for volunteers for the Manchester
regiment.
Fletcher, Townley, and seven other unfortunate
Jacobites were hanged on Kennington Common.
Before the carts drove away, the men flung their
prayer-books, written speeches, and gold-laced hats
gaily to the crowd. Mr. James (Jemmy) Dawson,
the hero of Shenstone's touching ballad, was one
of the nine. As soon as they were dead the hangman
cut down the bodies, disembowelled, beheaded, and
quartered them, throwing the hearts into the fire.
A monster—a fighting-man of the day, named
Buckhorse—is said to have actually eaten a piece
of Townley's flesh, to show his loyalty. Before the
ghastly scene was over, the heart of one unhappy
spectator had already broken. The lady to whom
James Dawson was engaged to be married followed
the rebels to the common, and even came near
enough to see, with pallid face, the fire kindling,
the axe, the coffins, and all the other dreadful
preparations. She bore up bravely, until she heard
her lover was no more. Then she drew her head
back into the coach, and crying out, "My dear, I
follow thee—I follow thee! Lord God, receive our
souls, I pray Thee!" fell on the neck of a companion
and expired. Mr. Dawson had behaved gallantly in
prison, saying, "He did not care if they put a ton
weight of iron upon him, it would not daunt him."
A curious old print of 1746, full of vulgar triumph,
reproduces a "Temple Bar, the City Golgotha," representing the Bar with three heads on the top of it,
spiked on long iron rods. The devil looks down
in ribald triumph from above, and waves a rebel
banner, on which, besides three coffins and a crown,
is the motto, "A crown or a grave." Underneath
are written these patriotic but doggrel lines:—
"Observe the banner which would all enslave,
Which misled traytors did so proudly wave;
The devil seems the project to surprise;
A fiend confused from off the trophy flies.
While trembling rebels at the fabric gaze,
And dread their fate with horror and amaze,
Let Britain's sons the emblematic view,
And plainly see what is rebellion's due."
The heads of Fletcher and Townley were put
on the Bar August 12, 1746. On August 15th
Horace Walpole, writing to a friend, says he had
just been roaming in the City, and "passed under
the new heads on Temple Bar, where people make
a trade of letting spy-glasses at a halfpenny a look."
According to Mr. J. T. Smith, an old man living in
1825 remembered, the last heads on Temple Bar
being visible through a telescope across the space
between the Bar and Leicester Fields.
Between two and three A.M., on the morning of
January 20, 1766, a mysterious man was arrested
by the watch as he was discharging, by the dim
light, musket bullets at the two heads then remaining upon Temple Bar. On being questioned by the puzzled magistrate, he affected a
disorder in his senses, and craftily declared that the
patriotic reason for his eccentric conduct was his
strong attachment to the present Government, and
that he thought it not sufficient that a traitor
should merely suffer death; that this provoked
his indignation, and it had been his constant
practice for three nights past to amuse himself in
the same manner. "And it is much to be feared,"
says the past record of the event, "that the man is
a near relation to one of the unhappy sufferers."
Upon searching this very suspicious marksman,
about fifty musket bullets were found on him,
wrapped up in a paper on which was written the
motto, "Eripuit ille vitam."
After this, history leaves the heads of the unhappy
Jacobites—those lips that love had kissed, those:
cheeks children had patted—to moulder on in the
sun and in the rain, till the last day of March, 1772,.
when one of them (Townley or Fletcher) fell. The
last stormy gust of March threw it down, and a
short time after a strong wind blew down the other;
and against the sky no more relics remained of
a barbarous and unchristian revenge. In April,
1773, Boswell, whom we all despise and all like,.
dined at courtly Mr. Beauclerk's with Dr. Johnson,
Lord Charlemont (Hogarth's friend), Sir Joshua
Reynolds, and other members of the literaryclub, in Gerrard Street, Soho, it being the awful
evening when Boswell was to be balloted forThe conversation turned on the new and commendable practice of erecting monuments to great
men in St. Paul's. The Doctor observed: "I remember once being with Goldsmith in Westminster
Abbey. Whilst we stood at Poet's Corner, I said
to him,—
"Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis."—Ovid.
When we got to Temple Bar he stopped me, and
pointing to the heads upon it, slily whispered,—
"Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis."
This anecdote, so full of clever, arch wit, is sufficient
to endear the old gateway to all lovers of Johnson
and of Goldsmith.
According to Mr. Timbs, in his "London and
Westminster," Mrs. Black, the wife of the editor of
the Morning Chronicle, when asked if she remembered any heads on Temple Bar, used to reply, in
her brusque, hearty way, "Boys, I recollect the scene
well! I have seen on that Temple Bar, about
which you ask, two human heads—real heads—
traitors' heads—spiked on iron poles. There were
two; I saw one fall (March 31, 1772). . Women
shrieked as it fell; men, as I have heard, shrieked.
One woman near me fainted. Yes, boys, I recollect
seeing human heads upon Temple Bar."
The cruel-looking spikes were removed early in
the present century. The panelled oak gates have
often been renewed, though certainly shutting them
too often never wore them out.
As early as 1790 Alderman Pickett (who built
the St. Clement's arch), with other subversive reformers, tried to pull down Temple Bar. It was
pronounced unworthy of form, of no antiquity, an
ambuscade for pickpockets, and a record of only
the dark and crimson pages of history.
A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine, in 1813;
chronicling the clearance away of some hovels
encroaching upon the building, says: "It will not
be surprising if certain amateurs, busy in improving
the architectural concerns of the City, should at
length request of their brethren to allow the Bar or
grand gate of entrance into the City of London to
stand, after they have so repeatedly sought to
obtain its destruction." In 1852 a proposal for its
repair and restoration was defeated in the Common
Council; and twelve months later, a number of
bankers, merchants, and traders set their hands to
a petition for its removal altogether, as serving no
practical purpose, as it impeded ventilation and
retarded improvements. Since then Mr. Heywood
has proposed to make a circus at Temple Bar,
leaving the archway in the centre; and Mr. W.
Burges, the architect, suggested a new arch in
keeping with the new Law Courts opposite.
The room over Temple Bar (see page 37).
It is a singular fact that the "Parentalia," a
chronicle of Wren's works written by Wren's clever
son, contains hardly anything about Temple Bar.
According to Mr Noble, the Wren manuscripts in
the British Museum, Wren's ledger in the Bodleian,
and the Record Office documents, are equally
silent; but from a folio at the Guildhall, entitled
"Expenses of Public Buildings after the Great
Fire," it would appear that the Bar cost altogether
£1,397 10s.; Bushnell, the sculptor, receiving out
of this sum £480 for his four stone monarchs.
The mason was John Marshall, who carved the
pedestal of the statue of Charles I. at Charing
Cross and worked on the Monument in Fish Street
Hill. In 1636 Inigo Jones had designed a new
arch, the plan of which still exists. Wren, it is
said, took his design of the Bar from an old temple
at Rome.
The old Bar is now a mere piece of useless and
disused armour. Once a protection, then an ornament, it has now become an obstruction—the too
narrow neck of a large decanter—a bone in the
throat of Fleet Street. Yet still we have a lingering
fondness for the old barrier that we have seen
draped in black for a dead hero and glittering with
gold in honour of a young bride. We have shared
the sunshine that brightened it and the gloom that
has darkened it, and we feel for it a species of
friendship, in which it mutely shares. To us there
seems to be a dignity in its dirt and pathos in the
mud that bespatters its patient old face, as, like a
sturdy fortress, it holds out against all its enemies,
and Charles I. and II., and Elizabeth and James I.
keep a bright look-out day and night for all attacks.
Nevertheless, it must go in time, we fear. Poor old
Temple Bar, we shall miss you when you are gone!
Titus Oates In the Pillory (see page 22).