The scaffold was generally built on four strong posts with a platform, five feet high, and in the centre of the platform was placed the block. The victim was generally bound, unless by desire the binding was omitted.
For the gratification of those curious in such matters, it may be as well to give the bloody head roll of the most illustrious of the victims executed on Tower Hill, and the date of their decapitation.
June 22, 1535, Bishop Fisher; July 6, 1535, Sir Thomas Moore; July 28, 1540, Cromwell, Earl of Essex; May 27, 1541, Margaret Pole, Countess of Shrewsbury; Jan. 20, 1547, Earl of Surrey, the poet; March 20, 1549, Thomas Lord Seymour, of Sudeley, by order of his brother, the Protector Somerset, who was beheaded Jan. 22, 1552; Feb. 12, 1553-4, Lord Guildford Dudley; April 11, 1554, Sir Thomas Wyatt; May 12, 1641, Earl of Strafford; Jan. 10, 1644-5, Archbishop Laud; Dec. 29, 1680, William Viscount Stafford, "insisting on his innocence to the very last;" Dec. 7, 1683, Algernon Sydney; July 15, 1685, the Duke of Monmouth; Feb. 24, 1716, Earl of Derwentwater and Lord Kenmuir; Aug. 18, 1746, Lords Kilmarnock and Balmerino; Dec. 8, 1746, Mr. Radcliffe, who had been, with his brother, Lord Derwentwater, convicted of treason in the Rebellion of 1715, when Derwentwater was executed; but Radcliffe escaped, and was identified by the barber who, thirty-one years before, had shaved him in the Tower. Mr. Chamberlain Clark, who died in 1831, aged 92, well remembered (his father then residing in the Minories) seeing the glittering of the executioner's axe in the sun as it fell upon Mr. Radcliffe's neck. April 9, 1747, Simon Lord Lovat, the last beheading in England, and the last execution upon Tower Hill, when a scaffolding, built near Barking-alley, fell with nearly 1,000 persons on it, and twelve were killed.
THE CADGERS OF LONDON BRIDGE.
