AFTER TYBURN.
What became of the bodies of those done to death at Tyburn? Some were quartered, parboiled, and stuck up on the gates of the city or elsewhere, as the king might direct. These would be but few out of the great total. For two centuries there was regular provision for the decent burial of executed persons, in the circumstances mentioned by Stow.
Stow tells how, in 1348, Ralph Stratford, Bishop of London, bought a piece of ground, called “No Man’s Land,” which he enclosed with a wall of brick, and dedicated for burial of the dead: this was Pardon churchyard. In the following year Sir Walter Manny bought thirteen acres of land adjoining, and here were buried more than fifty thousand persons who died of the frightful pestilence then raging, known as the Black Death. In 1371 Sir Walter founded here the Charterhouse, giving to the monastery the thirteen acres, and also the three acres adjoining, which “remained till our time by the name of Pardon churchyard, and served for burying of such as desperately ended their lives, or were executed for felonies, who were fetched thither usually in a close cart, bailed over and covered with black, having a plain white cross thwarting, and at the fore end a St. John’s cross without, and within a bell ringing by shaking of the cart, whereby the same might be heard when it passed: and this was called the friary cart, which belonged to St. John’s, and had the privilege of sanctuary.”[74]
“It remained till our time,” says Stow, and this is one of those passages telling what Stow had seen—passages that give so vivid an interest to his story of London.
In the Grey Friars’ Chronicle we find an instance of the burial in Pardon churchyard of persons executed at Tyburn:—
“1537. Also this yere the xxv day of Marche the Lyncolnechere men that was with bishoppe Makerelle was browte owte of Newgate vn-to the yelde-halle [Guildhall] in roppys, and there had their jugment to be drawne, hongyd, and heddyd, and qwarterd, and soo was the xxix of Marche after, the wyche was on Maundy Thursdaye, and alle their qwarteres with their heddes was burryd at Pardone churche-yerde in the frary.”[75]
From Stow’s account of the execution, quoted in the Annals, we learn that the number of Lincolnshire men executed on this occasion was twelve.
The priory of St. John’s was dissolved in 1540, and with it went the friary cart.