TO KENNINGTON COMMON.
The ever-to-be-amused public were not left without diversity of grim entertainment between the condemnation of Radcliffe and the execution of his sentence. On Friday, November 28th, there was the strangling (with the other repulsive atrocities), of five political prisoners, on Kennington Common, in the morning, and the revival of a play (which had years before been condemned because of the political opinions of the author), in the evening. In the morning, two sledges stood ready for the dragging of eight prisoners from the New Prison, Southwark, to the gallows, disembowelling block, and fire, on the Common. This was not an unfrequent spectacle; and on this occasion, as on others, there was, without cowardly feeling, a certain dilatoriness on the part of the patients, who never knew what five minutes might not bring forth. Sir John Wedderburn, indeed, went into the foremost sledge, with calm readiness, and Governor (of Carlisle) Hamilton stept in beside him. Captain Bradshaw stood apart, hoping not to be called upon. There was a little stir at the gate which attracted feverish attention on the part of the patients.—‘Is there any news for me?’ asked Bradshaw, nervously. ‘Yes,’ replied a frank official, ‘the Sheriff is come and waits for you!’ Bradshaw had hoped for a reprieve; but hope quenched, the poor fellow said he was ready. Another Manchester Captain, Leath, was equally ready but was not inclined to put himself forward. Captain Wood, after the halter was loosely hung for him around his neck, called for wine, which was supplied with alacrity by the prison drawers. When it was served round, the captain drank to the health of the rightful king, James III. Most lucky audacity was this for Lindsay, a fellow officer from Manchester, bound for Kennington. While the wine was being drunk, Lindsay was ‘haltering,’ as the reporters called it. He was nice about the look of the rope, but just as he was being courteously invited to get in and be hanged, a reprieve came for him, which saved his life. Two other doomed rebels, for whom that day was to be their last, had been reprieved earlier in the morning, and that was why the puzzled spectators, on the way or at the place of sacrifice, were put off with five judicial murders when they had promised themselves eight.
CIBBER’S ‘REFUSAL.’
In the evening, the play which was to tempt the town was a revival of Cibber’s ‘Refusal, or the Ladies’ Philosophy.’ It had not been acted for a quarter of a century (1721), when it had failed through the opposition of the Jacobites, who damned the comedy, by way of revenge for the satire which Cibber had heaped on the Nonjurors. Now, the play went triumphantly. No one dared,—when the hangman was breathless with over-work, and the headsman was looking to the edge of his axe, for the ultimate disposal of Jacobites,—to openly avow himself of a way of thinking which, put into action, sent men to the block or the gallows. All that could be done in a hostile spirit was done, nevertheless. The Jacks accused Cibber of having stolen his plot from predecessors equally felonious; but they could not deny that the play was a good play; and they asserted, in order to annoy the Whig adaptor, that the Witling of Theophilus Cibber was a finer touch of art than that of his father in the same part.
EXECUTION OF RADCLIFFE.
On the 8th of December, Charles Radcliffe closed the bloody tragedies of the year, with his own. He came from the Tower like a man purified in spirit, prepared to meet the inevitable with dignity. They who had denied his right to call himself a peer, allowed him to die by the method practised with offenders of such high quality. The only bit of bathos in the scene on the scaffold was when the poor gentleman knelt by the side of the block, to pray. Two warders approached him, who took off his wig, and then covered his head with a white skull cap. His head was struck off at a blow, except, say the detail-loving newspapers, ‘a bit of skin which was cut through in two chops.’ The individual most to be pitied on that December morning was Radcliffe’s young son, prisoner in the Tower, who was still believed by many to be the brother of the young Chevalier.
There was another prisoner there whose life was in peril; namely Simon, Lord Lovat. The progress up to London of Lovat and of the witnesses to be produced against him was regularly reported. There was one of the latter who hardly knew whether he was to be traitor or witness, Mr. Murray of Boughton. The following describes how he appeared on his arrival at Newcastle, and is a sample of similar bulletins. ‘July 17th. On Thursday Afternoon, arrived here in a Coach under the Care of Lieutenant Colonel Cockayne, escorted by a Party of Dragoons, John Murray, Esq., of Boughton, the Pretenders Secretary, and yesterday Morning he proceeded to London. He seem’d exceedingly dejected and looked very pale.’
LOVAT’S PROGRESS.
The London papers sketched in similar light touches the progress of Lovat. In or on the same carriage in which he sat were other Frasers, his servants or retainers who, as he knew, were about to testify against him, and whose company rendered him extremely irritable. The whole were under cavalry escort, travelling to London, only by day. On the morning Lovat left his inn at Northampton, the landlady was not there to bid him farewell. The old gallant enquired for her. He was told that she was unavoidably absent. ‘I have kissed,’ said he, ‘every one of my hostesses throughout the journey; and am sorry to miss my Northampton landlady. No matter! I will salute her on my way back!’ On Lovat’s arrival at St. Albans, Hogarth left London, for what purpose is explained in part of the following advertisement, which appears in the papers under the date of Thursday, August 28th. ‘This day is published, price one shilling, a whole length print of Simon Lord Lovat, drawn from the life and etch’d in Aqua fortis, by Mr. Hogarth. To be had at the Golden Head, in Leicester Fields, and at the Print shops. Where also may be had a Print of Mr. Garrick in the character of Richard III., in the first scene, price 7s. 6d.’
HOGARTH’S PORTRAIT OF LOVAT.