Old and New London, A Narrative of its History, its People and its Places. Illustrated with Numerous Engravings from the Most Authentic Sources. vol I
Thornbury, Walter
1872-78
Temple Bar.
Temple Bar.
[extra_illustrations.1.22.4] was rebuilt by [extra_illustrations.1.22.5] , in -, soon after the Great Fire had swept away London churches, out of the City gates, streets, and houses, and had destroyed of the wards, and laid waste acres of buildings, from the Tower eastward to the Inner Temple westward. | |
The old black gateway, once the dreaded Golgotha of English traitors, separated, it should be remembered, from , the city from the shire, and the Freedom of the City of London from the Liberty of the City of , As Hatton (-Queen Anne) says,-- We need hardly say that nothing can be more erroneous than the ordinary London supposition that ever formed part of the City fortifications. Mr. Gilbert à Beckett, laughing at this tradition, once said in :
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The Bar, after having been for many years a great obstruction to the traffic, was removed in the winter of -, whilst the New Law Courts were in process of erection. The Bar was of Portland stone, which London smoke alternately blackens and calcines; and each facade had Corinthian pilasters, an entablature, and an arched pediment. On the ) side, in niches, stood, as eternal sentries, Charles I. and Charles II., in Roman costume. Charles I. long ago lost his baton, 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 were James I. and Elizabeth (by many able writers supposed to be Anne of Denmark, the queen of James I.). She was pointing her white finger at Child's; while he, looking down on the passing cabs, seemed to say,
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These affected, mean statues, with their crinkly drapery, were the work of a vain, half-crazed sculptor, named John Bushnell, who died mad in . Bushnell, who had visited Rome and | |
23 | Venice, [extra_illustrations.1.23.1] , and the statues of Charles I., Charles II., and Gresham, in the old Exchange. |
The slab over the eastern side of the arch bore the following inscription, which was all but obliterated by time:--
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All these persons were friends of Pepys. | |
The upper part of the Bar was flanked by scrolls, but the fruit and flowers once sculptured on the pediment, and the supporters of the royal arms over the posterns, had crumbled away. In the centre of each facade was a semi-circular-headed, ecclesiastical-looking window, that cast a dim horny light into [extra_illustrations.1.23.2] , held of the City, at an annual rent of some , by Messrs. Childs, the bankers, as a sort of muniment-room for their old account-books. There was 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. | |
There is no extant historical account of 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:-- says Strype, [extra_illustrations.1.23.4] is to be seen in the view of London in the , (James I.), and in Hollar's sevensheet map of London (Charles II.). | |
The date of the erection of the is not to be ascertained; but there is the house plain enough in a view of London to which Maitland affixes the date about (the 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, , 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 is in , the year of Edward III. ; and in the year of the same reign we find, at an inquisition before the mayor, 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 . his referred to some dispute about the right of. way through the Temple, built in the reign of Henry I. In Richard II. granted a licence for paving Strand Street from to the Savoy, and collecting tolls to cover such charges. | |
The historical pageants that have taken place at deserve a notice, however short. On the , the corpse of that brave and chivalrous king, the hero of Agincourt, Henry V., was borne to its rest at by the chief citizens and nobles, and every doorway from to had its mournful torch-bearer. In - the hearse of Elizabeth of York, queen of Henry VII., halted at , on its way from the Tower to , and at the Bar the Abbots of and 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--. In the next reign poor Anne Boleyn, radiant with happiness and triumph, came through the Bar (), on her way to the Tower, to be welcomed by the clamorous citizens, the day before her ill-starred coronation. on that occasion was new painted and repaired, and near it stood singing men and children--the conduit all the time running claret. The old gate figured more conspicuously the day before the coronation of that wondrous child, Edward VI. hogsheads of wine were then ladled out to the thirsty mob, and the gate at was painted with battlements and buttresses, richly hung with cloth of Arras, and all in a flutter with There were French trumpeters blowing their best, besides with children singing to the same. In , when Edward's cold-hearted half-sister; Mary Tudor, came through the City, according to ancient English custom, the day | |
24 25 | 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 horses draped with the same. Minstrels piped and trumpeted at Ludgate, and was newly painted and hung. |
Old , the background to many historical scenes, figures in the rash rebellion of [extra_illustrations.1.25.1] . When he had fought his way down to , 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 , where he surrendered. This foolish revolt led to the death of innocent Lady Jane Grey, and brought brave gentlemen to the scaffold and the gallows. | |
On [extra_illustrations.1.25.2] [extra_illustrations.1.25.5] procession from the Tower before her coronation, , [extra_illustrations.1.25.3] , the giants, stood on the Bar; and on the south side there were chorister lads, of whom, richly attired as a page, bade the queen farewell in the name of the whole City. In , the glorious year in which the Armada was defeated, [extra_illustrations.1.25.6] | |
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, Francis Bacon, who displayed his wit by saying to a friend,
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In , when the Earl of Essex made his insane attempt to rouse the City to rebellion, , we are told, was thrown open to him; but Ludgate being closed against him on his retreat from , he came back by boat to Essex House, where he surrendered after a short and useless resistance. | |
[extra_illustrations.1.25.4] [extra_illustrations.1.26.3] made his public entry into his royal City of London, with his consort and son Henry, upon the -. The king was mounted upon a white genet, ambling through the crowded streets under a canopy held by gentlemen of the Privy Chamber, as representatives of the Barons of the Cinque Ports, | |
26 | and passed under arches of triumph, to take his leave at the Temple of Janus, erected for the occasion at . This edifice was fiftyseven feet high, proportioned in every respect like a temple. |
In (the year of the execution of Charles), Cromwell and the Parliament dined at in state, and the mayor, says Whitelocke, delivered up the sword to the Speaker, at , as he had before done to King Charles. | |
Philips, Milton's nephew, who wrote the continuation of Baker's Chronicle, describes the [extra_illustrations.1.26.1] 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 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, An alderman then replied, and the gates were thrown open. | |
When William III. came to see the City and the Lord Mayor's Show in , the City militia, holding lighted flambeaux, lined as far as . | |
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 for the victory of Blenheim. Here Marlborough's coach ominously broke down in , when he returned in triumph from his voluntary exile. | |
George III. passed through , 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 , to thank God at for the downfall of Bonaparte. | |
On the , the accession of [extra_illustrations.1.26.4] , [extra_illustrations.1.26.5] Sir Peter Laurie, picturesque in scarlet gown, Spanish hat, and black feathers, presented the City sword to the Queen at ; Sir Peter was again ready with the same weapon in , when the Queen opened the new ; but in , 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 's recollection. On , when General Monk- as his old Cromwellian soldiers used to call him--entered London, dislodged the 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 o'clock, says:--
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On , the year after the sham Popish Plot concocted by those matchless scoundrels, [extra_illustrations.1.26.2] , an expelled naval chaplain, and Bedloe, a swindler and thief, 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 Ribbon Club, whose tavern, the was at the corner of , opposite the Inner Temple gate. To scare and vex the Papists, the church bells began to ring out as early as o'clock on the morning of that dangerous day. At dusk the procession of several half-crazed torch-bearers started from , along , and down and (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 and , by the , along and on to , 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. | |
27 [extra_illustrations.1.27.1] | consisted of groups of priests, Jesuits, and friars, 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 . It was attended by a body-guard of 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, upon the east side of the Bar, with a wreath of gilt laurel, and placed under her hand, which pointed to Child's Bank, a golden glistening shield, with the motto, inscribed upon it. Several lighted torches were stuck before her niche. Lastly, amidst a fiery shower of squibs from every door and window, [extra_illustrations.1.27.3] , with shouts that reached almost to . |
These mischievous processions were continued till the reign of George I. There was to have been a magnificent display in , 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 , and forbade the ceremony. | |
As early as years after the Restoration, Sir Balthazar Gerbier, a restless architectural quack and adventurer of those days, wrote a pamphlet proposing a sumptuous gate at , 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, was of the stations for constables, firemen, and soldiers. | |
The Rye-House Plot brought the trophy to the Golgotha of the Bar, in , 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 --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 [extra_illustrations.1.27.2] , 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 parts. The fore-quarter (after being boiled in pitch at Newgate) was set on , the head was placed on all, and the rest of the body was sent to Stafford, which town Sir Thomas represented in Parliament. | |
years after, the heads of more traitors --this time conspirators against William III.- joined the relic of Armstrong. Sir John Friend was a rich brewer at . Parkyns was an old Warwickshire county gentleman. The plotters had several plans. 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 . The murderers agreed to assemble near where Apsley House now stands. Just as the royal coach passed from across to the , conspirators agreed to fall on the guards, and butcher the king before he could leap out of his carriage. These Jacobite gentlemen died bravely, proclaiming their entire loyalty to King James and the
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The unfortunate gentlemen who took a moody pleasure in drinking 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 began its mournful march. | |
Sir Bernard Burke mentions a tradition that the head of the young Earl of Derwentwater was exposed on in , 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 ridge, where that cruel tyrant Henry VIII. had placed it. Some years ago, when the Earl of | |
28 | Derwentwater's coffin was found in the family vault, the head was lying safe with the body. In 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 , . He plunged deeply into the Atterbury Plot of , 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 distinct bodies of Jacobites, to seize the Tower and the Bank, to arrest the king and the prince, and capture or kill Lord Cadogan, 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 men to meet them- of these would be wanted to guard London, for Scotland, and for the garrisons. The original design had been to take advantage of the king's departure for Hanover, and, in the words of of the conspirators, the Jacobites were fully convinced that Layer was hanged at Tyburn, and his head fixed upon . | |
Years after, stormy night in , 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 of the , and was praised by Dr. Johnson for his learning. | |
The rebellion brought the heads of fresh victims to the Bar, and this was the last triumph of barbarous justice. Colonel Francis Towneley's was the ; that of Fletcher (his fellow-officer), the and last. The Earls of Kilmarnock and Cromarty, Lord Balmerino, and other rebels ( of them having been captured in Carlisle) were tried the same session. Towneley was a man of about years of age, nephew of Mr. Towneley of Towneley Hall, Lancashire (of the family), who had been, tried and acquitted in , though many of his men were found guilty and executed. The nephew had gone over to France in , and obtained a commission from the French king, whom he served for years, being at the siege of Philipsburg, and close to the Duke of Berwick when that general's head was shot off. About , Towneley 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 Towneley 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 Towneley, was a rash young chapman, who managed his widowed mother's provision shop is mother had begged him on her knees to keep out of the rebellion, even offering him a for his own pocket, if he would stay at home. He bought a captain's commission of Murray, the Pretender's secretary, for ; wore the smart white cockade and a Highland plaid sash lined with white silk; and headed the very 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, Towneley, and other unfortunate Jacobites were hanged on 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 of the . 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-- [extra_illustrations.1.28.1] --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 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 | |
29 | 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, fell on the neck of a companion and expired. Mr. Dawson had behaved gallantly in prison, saying, [extra_illustrations.1.29.1] |
A curious old print of , full of vulgar triumph, reproduces a representing the Bar with 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 coffins and a crown, is the motto, Underneath are written these patriotic but doggrel lines:--
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The heads of Fletcher and Townley were put on the Bar . On Horace Walpole, writing to a friend, says he had just been roaming in the City, and According to Mr. J. T. Smith, an old man living in remembered the last heads on being visible through a telescope across the space between the Bar and Leicester Fields. | |
Between and A.M., on the morning of , a mysterious man was arrested by the watch as he was discharging, by the dim light, musket bullets at the heads then remaining upon . 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 nights past to amuse himself in the same manner. says the past record of the event, Upon searching this very suspicious marksman, about musket bullets were found on him, wrapped up in a paper on which was written the motto,
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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 , when of them (Towneley 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 , 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 literary club, in , Soho, it being the awful evening when Boswell was to be balloted for. The conversation turned on the new and commendable practice of erecting monuments to great men in . The Doctor observed: 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 Mrs. Black, the wife of the editor of the , when asked if she remembered any heads on , used to reply, in her brusque, hearty way,
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The cruel-looking spikes were removed early in the present century. The panelled oak gates were often renewed, though certainly shutting them too often never wore them out. | |
As early as Alderman Pickett (who built the arch), with other subversive reformers, tried to pull down . 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 , in chronicling the clearance away of some hovels encroaching upon the building, says: In a proposal for its repair and restoration was defeated in the Common Council; and 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 , leaving the archway in the centre; and Mr. W. Burges, the architect, suggested a new arch in keeping with the new Law Courts opposite. [extra_illustrations.1.30.1] | |
It is a singular fact that the a chronicle of Wren's works written by Wren's clever son, contains hardly anything about . According to Mr Noble, the Wren manuscripts in the , Wren's ledger in the Bodleian, and, the Record Office documents, are equally silent; but from a folio at the , entitled it would appear that the Bar cost altogether ; Bushnell, the sculptor, receiving out | |
of this sum for his stone monarchs. The mason was John Marshall, who carved the pedestal of the statue of Charles I. at and worked on the Monument in . In 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, once a protection, then an ornament, became an obstruction--the too narrow neck of a large decanter--a bone in the throat of . It also became dilapidated and dangerous, and was eventually removed, as already stated, in -. Yet to the last we felt a lingering fondness for the old barrier that we had seen draped in black for a dead hero and [extra_illustrations.1.30.2] . We had shared the sunshine that brightened it and the gloom that has darkened it, and we felt for it a species of friendship, in which it mutely shared. It is worthy of notice here that the visit of Her Majesty and the Prince of Wales to , in the month of , mentioned by us in a previous chapter, was the very last occasion on which Royalty passed in state through the gates of . | |
Footnotes: [extra_illustrations.1.22.4] Temple Bar [extra_illustrations.1.22.5] Sir Christopher Wren [extra_illustrations.1.23.1] executed Cowley's monument in Westminster Abbey [extra_illustrations.1.23.2] a room above the gate [extra_illustrations.1.23.4] This structure [extra_illustrations.1.25.1] Sir Thomas Wyatt [extra_illustrations.1.25.2] Elizabeth's [extra_illustrations.1.25.5] Autograph of Elizabeth [extra_illustrations.1.25.3] Gogmagog the Albion and Corineus the Briton [extra_illustrations.1.25.6] Elizabeth passed through the Bar on her way to return thanks to God solemnly at St. Paul's. [extra_illustrations.1.25.4] King James [extra_illustrations.1.26.3] Autograph of James I [extra_illustrations.1.26.1] ceremony at Temple Bar [extra_illustrations.1.26.4] Queen Victoria [extra_illustrations.1.26.5] Victoria 1837 [extra_illustrations.1.26.2] Titus Oates [extra_illustrations.1.27.1] This procession [extra_illustrations.1.27.3] the Pope and his companions were toppled into the huge bonfire [extra_illustrations.1.27.2] Rye House [] Amongst these we must not forget Joseph Sullivan, who was executed at Tyburn for high treason, for enlisting men in the service of the Pretender. In the collection of broadsides belonging to the Society of Antiquaries there is one of great interest, entitled Perkins against Perkin, a dialogue between Sir William Perkins and Major Sulliviane, the two loggerheads upon Temple Bar, concerning the present juncture of affaires. Date uncertain. [extra_illustrations.1.28.1] a fighting-man of the day, named Buckhorse [extra_illustrations.1.29.1] Bulk Shop at Temple Bar [extra_illustrations.1.30.1] Procession Program-Prince of Wales and Alexandra 1863 [extra_illustrations.1.30.2] glittering with gold in honour of a young bride |