Truly a tragic history, and one fraught with so much valour and strength of character, that the Irish must feel proud of the dignity of canonisation now bestowed on their hero.
The Rye House Plot against the lives of Charles II. and his brother, then James, Duke of York, was the means of another distinguished man, Sir Thomas Armstrong, suffering an ignominious end on Tyburn’s fatal tree. Later, a further victim was claimed in Elizabeth Gaunt, who had sheltered one of the conspirators. After the failure of the plot Armstrong fled to Holland, but was seized at Leyden in 1684, and conveyed to England, swearing his innocence. He was taken before Judge Jefferies, and when again he insisted on his innocence, protested against the perjured evidence, and asked for nothing but the free course of the law, Jefferies said “he should have it to the full”; and so ordered his execution within six days. Like a common malefactor, the knight was dragged through the streets to Tyburn on a hurdle, and was there hanged and quartered. Bishop Burnett says that one of the quarters was sent to Stafford, which place Armstrong represented in Parliament.
The execution of Elizabeth Gaunt was a still more shameless affair, and bears witness to the degeneracy and brutal inhumanity of the times. She was then an old woman, well known for her good works in helping the afflicted and visiting the prisoners. Among those who took part in the Rye House Plot was one James Burton, for whose apprehension a reward was offered. Chance led him in the way of Elizabeth Gaunt, who assisted him to the utmost of her power, and sent him in a boat to Gravesend, whence he escaped to Amsterdam. He was supplied with a large sum of money by his benefactress. On Monmouth’s landing in England to raise the standard of rebellion in 1685, Burton came among his following, fought in the hopeless fight at Sedgemoor, and after the rout fled to London, where he took refuge in the house of John Fernley, a barber in Whitechapel.
Fernley was poor, and his creditors were troubling him. Yet, though he knew the Government were offering £100 for Burton, he would not betray him. The wretch, whom he was thus sheltering, had no such scruples. Finding that James II. was dealing out punishment more severely to those who sheltered rebels, than to the rebels themselves, he gave himself up to the Government, and tendered information against both Fernley and Elizabeth Gaunt.
They were brought to trial, and Burton was the chief witness against them. Of Burton’s fate we learn nothing. Fernley was hanged, and for Elizabeth Gaunt was reserved the more dreadful end of death by fire. William Penn, the famous Quaker, who lies buried at Jordans, near Beaconsfield, and who during his life travelled far afield and founded Pennsylvania, went to Tyburn to witness the execution. He afterwards related that, when this poor woman had calmly disposed the straw about her in such a manner as to hasten the blaze and so shorten her sufferings, all the bystanders burst into tears.
Elizabeth Gaunt was the last woman who suffered death in England for a political offence.
Tyburn, however, enjoys such reputation—if that is the word—as still clings to the name, less from its nobler victims than from those darlings of the populace, the highwaymen of a later day, whose exploits were deservedly cut short by the hangman’s noose; and we must hurry on. One more State plot in the reign of William III. (Mary had been dead a year) had its sequel under the Triple Tree, and the affair is worth mention, because it throws a weird light on public manners so late as two centuries ago. This was the Assassination Plot, for alleged participation in which, Sir William Parkyns and Sir John Friend, a non-juror, were condemned to die.
Sir John Friend, whom Lord Macaulay describes as “a man who had made a very large fortune by brewing, and who spent it freely in sedition,” thought the whole thing so rash that he refused to join it from the first. Sir William Parkyns, old and gouty as he was, amassed arms at his country house sufficient for a troop of cavalry.
It was first suggested to assassinate William III. just as the royal coach was passing from Hyde Park, where Apsley House now stands, into the Green Park, but afterwards it was agreed to murder him when he was going to hunt at Richmond. The secret leaked out; the chase was given up at the last moment, and the chiefs of the conspiracy were sought for. Parkyns was found concealed in a garret in the Temple, and Friend at the house of a Quaker, where he had taken refuge. Lord Macaulay describes the final scene, which had some dramatic moments.
“The execution of the two knights was eagerly expected by the population of London. The States General were informed by their correspondent that of all the sights, that in which the English most delighted was a hanging, and that of all hangings within the memory of the oldest man, that of Friend and Parkyns had excited the greatest interest. The multitude had been incensed against Friend by reports touching the exceeding badness of the beer he had brewed. It was even rumoured that he had, in his zeal for the Jacobite cause, poisoned all the casks which he had furnished to the Navy. An innumerable crowd accordingly assembled at Tyburn.”