It was a little less than a hundred years later, that the newer choice was made, for about 1413 we read that the gallows was set up at the northern boundary of the Leper Hospital of St. Giles, half-way to Tyburn. It is referred to in ancient documents as the "Novelles furches," i.e. the "new forks": in allusion to the arms of the gallows-tree. There, in 1417, Sir John Oldcastle was hanged and his body afterwards burnt.
But Smithfield was still occasionally the scene of executions, and there, also, the fires that consumed the Protestant martyrs in the Marian persecution were lighted. Even so late as 1693, the celebrated highwayman, Captain James Whitney, was executed at Smithfield, on a spot known as "Porter's Block," near Cowcross Street. The equally celebrated, or notorious, John Cottington, called "Mulled Sack," was hanged at "Smithfield Rounds," some years earlier.
"The Elms" was also the name of the earlier Tyburn, and much confusion has naturally arisen over this duplicating of names. The original Tyburn appears to have been established on the banks of a stream, which long ago ran across what is now Oxford Street, near Stratford Place. Here, then, were those other elms, distinct from the fatal elms of Smithfield. [2] To this place the executions were remitted, no doubt following upon the remonstrance of some aggrieved person, who found the gallows of St. Giles injuring his property. [3] The continued westward progression of Tyburn Tree is, indeed, a sign of the growth of London in that direction, and a proof of the very natural objection entertained by residents and owners of property to executions conducted in front of their windows.
The Tye Bourne obtained its name from the two branches, in which it flowed down from the Hampstead heights towards the Thames. The two streams were something over half a mile apart: the easterly branch crossing Oxford Street just below Stratford Place, and the westerly—the "West Bourne," that has itself also disappeared, but has given its name to Westbourne Grove and Westbourne Terrace—flowing across the Bayswater Road into Kensington Gardens. Its course lay along what is now Kensington Gardens Terrace, and does so still: underground, and enclosed in a pipe.
A Roman road went due west out of the West Gate of Londinium to join the Watling Street (which ran from Stangate, Lambeth, across the Thames at Westminster, in a north-westerly direction to Edgware) at the present junction of Oxford Street, Bayswater Road, and the Edgware Road, occupying the line of the existing Oxford Street. It crossed the eastward branch of the Tye Bourne by a paved ford: the "strat-ford" i.e. "street ford," that long, long ago suggested a name for Stratford Place. Even the great modern borough of St. Marylebone owes its name to this bourne, and to the original church of St. Mary, built not far from its bank. The present Marylebone Lane owes its curious windings to the fact that it was once a country lane that followed the twists and turns of the little river.
St. Marylebone gets its name in a manner worth describing. The original church of St. John, Tyburn, that had stood from time immemorial beside the banks of the Tye Bourne, between the Oxford Street end of what are now Marylebone Lane and Stratford Place, was situated in a very lonely, yet exposed situation, on the great road from the City of London to the west. The village centred about where High Street, Marylebone, is now to be found, and the church and the village pound stood apart. So often was this original place of worship broken into and desecrated by thieves and vagabonds that it became at last necessary to remove it altogether. Accordingly, a licence was obtained in 1440 from the Bishop of London, Robert Braybrooke, to demolish the building and to erect a new church in the village itself, to be dedicated to St. Mary. Hence the disuse of "Tyburn" and the rise of "St. Mary-le-bourne."
The old Court House and vestry offices of Marylebone, in Marylebone Lane, built in 1829, occupy the site of the ancient vestry and that of the old pound for strayed cattle; and skeletons, found there in plenty at the building of it, were ascribed to the criminals anciently hanged and gibbeted on the spot, rather than thought to be the bones of the respectable inhabitants.
But, however dangerous the neighbourhood for three hundred and sixty-four days of the year, it was on one summer's day, annually, the scene of a gay civic festival. Ever since 1239 there had been conduits established here for the supply of water to London—that one square mile of London known as the City—and to this spot on that annual occasion repaired my Lord Mayor and aldermen, to feast in a building called the "Banqueting House," that then stood in the pleasant country meadows. It may be found, distinctly marked, on old maps, on the site of Stratford Place, which itself is of considerable age, having been begun in 1744.
A record is still preserved of that civic junketing in 1562, when, after lunch, the Lord Mayor and the other guests hunted the hare through the woods of St. Marylebone. Then they dined, and, the huntsman having unearthed a fox, the hunt tailed away to St. Giles-in-the-Fields, where at last he was killed, "with great hollowing and blowing of horns at his death."
There should never have been the slightest doubt as to the real meaning of the word "Tyburn." It clearly means "the two streams." Somewhat similar derivations of place-names are found in the numerous "Twyfords" throughout the country, and in the name of Tiverton: the meanings being, of course, respectively, "Two Fords," and "Two Ford Town." But we find such derivations as "t'Ay Bourne," and the quaint passage written in 1617, "Teyborne, so-called of bornes and springs and of tying men up there." Fuller, at any rate, if not prepared to suggest an origin, was not, on the other hand, content to accept the popular view. He adopted a mildly critical attitude when he wrote his Worthies, and said: "Some will have it from Tie and Burne, because the poor Lollards for whom this instrument (of cruelty to them, though of justice to malefactors) was first set up, had their necks tied to the beame, and their lower parts burnt in the fire. Others will have it that it is called from Twa and Burne; that is, two rivulets, which it seems meet near to the place."