Four different medals were struck to commemorate and characterise the murder. In one of these Godfrey is represented walking with a sword through his body, while on the reverse St. Denis is shown carrying his head in his hand, with the inscription—
“Godfrey walks uphill after he is dead;
Dennis walks downhill carrying his head.”
The design of another medal illustrates Prance’s statement that Godfrey’s body was first moved from Somerset House in a sedan chair, and then on a horse to Primrose Hill.
The burial of the murdered Justice in St. Martin’s Church was attended by more than a thousand people of distinction, and his portrait was placed in the vestry-room, where it hangs to this day.
[473] William Lloyd (1627-1717), successively Bishop of St. Asaph, Lichfield-and-Coventry, and Worcester, was Vicar of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields 1677-80.
[474] “The two grand Ingrossers of Coles: viz. The Woodmonger, and the Chandler. In a dialogue, expressing their unjust and cruell raising the price of Coales, when, and how they please, to the generall oppression of the Poore. Penn’d on Purpose to lay open their subtile practices, and for the reliefe of many thousands of poore people, in, and about the Cities of London, and Westminster. By a Well-willer to the prosperity of this famous Common-wealth. London, Printed for John Harrison at the Holy-Lamb at the East end of S. Pauls, 1653.”
[475] It has been demonstrated by Mr. Sidney Young in his learned work, The Annals of the Barber Surgeons (1890), that this painting cannot represent the granting of the Charter by Henry VIII. This event occurred in 1512, when the King was but twenty-one years of age; Holbein makes him a man of fifty. Mr. Young believes Holbein’s subject to be the Union of the Barbers Company with the Guild of Surgeons, accomplished by Act of Parliament in 1540.
[476] Of this picture, which narrowly escaped the Fire of London, Pepys thus speaks in his Memoirs:—August 28, 1688. “And at noon comes by appointment Harris to dine with me: and after dinner he and I to Chyrurgeons’-hall, where they are building it new,—very fine; and there to see their theatre, which stood all the fire, and (which was our business) their great picture of Holbein’s, thinking to have bought it, by the help of Mr. Pierce, for a little money: I did think to give £200 for it, it being said to be worth £1000; but it is so spoiled that I have no mind to it, and is not a pleasant, though a good picture.”—S.
[477] This painting represents Edward VI. presenting the Royal Charter of Endowment to the Lord Mayor in 1552; it cannot, therefore, be by Holbein, who died in 1543. Walpole attributes the painting to Holbein, but says the picture was not completed by him. He states that Holbein introduced his own head into one corner. Wornum thinks that there is not a trace of this master’s hand in the picture.