[11]. Journals of Congress (W. C. Ford, editor), 1906, V, 689.
[12]. See, however, Historic Side-lights, by Howard Payson Arnold, p. 284.
[13]. Writings of Jefferson (P. L. Ford), edition of 1892, I, p. 420.
[14]. The first use of the motto is traced in Preble’s History of the American Flag, p. 694.
[15]. Memoirs of Thomas Hollis, Esq., F. R. and A. S. S.; London: MDCCLXXX; vol. 2, p. 789.
[16]. Randall’s Life of Jefferson, 3, 585.
This would seem to be conclusive, but since the writer prepared his brochure on the great seal in 1892 several people whose opinions are entitled to consideration have expressed a doubt whether the inscription does not, or at any rate did not, exist. Bradshaw died during the closing years of the Commonwealth and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Upon the Restoration his body was disinterred and hanged, when several other regicides were executed, after which the trunk was thrown into a hole at the foot of the gallows and the head publicly displayed, as the custom was in those times. Some members of the court of which he was president are said to have gone to Jamaica, and it was declared by some that Bradshaw spread the report of his death and retired secretly to that island. There is even a surviving rumor that he and his colleagues were in this country, and a well-known landmark near New Haven is the “Regicides’ Cave.” In all of this we see merely an example of one of those myths which so often surround the death of one whose life was peculiarly conspicuous. In Bradshaw’s case his double burial in England would still not render impossible a third burial in Jamaica, and even if he was not buried there an inscription upon a cannon in his commemoration might possibly have once existed. But the whole story was investigated in the beginning of the last century by Bryan Edwards, the historian of the West Indies, whose work is an authority. In the fifth edition (London, 1819) of his History of the West Indies (vol. 1, p. 213) he says:
“Some of these men who sat as judges at the trial of Charles I are said to have become peaceable settlers here, and to have remained after the restoration. * * * It is reported also, that the remains of President Bradshaw were interred in Jamaica; and I observe in a splendid book, entitled ‘Memoirs of Thomas Hollis,’ an epitaph which is said to have been inscribed on the president’s grave; but it is to my own knowledge a modern production.”
It may be added that the author made inquiry of Louis A. Dent, esq., lately Register of Wills of the District of Columbia, when he was United States consul at Kingston, concerning traditions of this epitaph, and he declared he knew of none. As his knowledge of Jamaica was thorough such traditions would hardly have escaped him if existent.
That anyone should seize upon the rumors surrounding Bradshaw’s death and make them the basis of a fictitious epitaph is a cause of wonder, until we remember that the author was Benjamin Franklin, whose unique imagination was amused by constructing epitaphs and kindred compositions. His object in this case may easily have been the very effect of inflaming public opinion which Hollis noticed had resulted. The statement that the epitaph was on a cannon at Martha Bay was presumably attached to the copies Hollis saw and accepted by him in good faith.