Tower hill and Tyburn. The date of this ferocious ballad is not likely to have been long before the execution of the regicides Harrison, Hacker, Cook, and Hew Peters, in October, 1660; some on the 13th, others on the 16th. Probably, shortly before the trial of Harry Marten, on the 10th of the same month. The second verse indicates a considerable lapse of time since Monk’s arrival and the downfall of the Rump (burnt in effigy, Febr. 11, 1659-60); so we may be certain that it was written late, about September, if not actually at beginning of October.
Sir Robert Tichbourne, Commissioner for sale of State-lands, Alderman, Regulator of Customs, and Lord Mayor in 1658, was named in the King’s Proclamation, 6th June, 1660, as one of those who had fled, and who were summoned to appear within fourteen days, on penalty of being exempted from any pardon. His name occurs again, among the exceptions to the Act of Indemnity; along with those of Thos. Harrison, Hy. Marten, John Hewson, Jn. Cook, Hew Peters, Francis Hacker, and other forty-five. Nineteen of these fifty-one surrendered themselves: Tichbourne and Marten among them. None of them were executed; although Scoop was, who also had yielded. The trial of the regicides commenced on 9th October, at Hick’s Hall, Clerkenwell.
Hugh Peters suffered, along with John Cook (the Counsel against Charles I.) “that read the King’s charge,” on the 16th October. He was depressed in spirits at the last, but there was dignity in his reply to one who insulted him in passing—“Friend, you do not well to trample on a dying man;” and his sending a token to his daughter awakens pity. Physically he had failed in courage, and no wonder, to face all that was arrayed to terrify him: or he might have justified anticipations and “made a pulpit of the place.” His last sermon at Newgate is said to have been “incoherent.”
Harry Marten’s private life is so generally declared to have been licentious (dozens of ballads referring to his “harem,” “Marten’s girl that was neither sweet nor sound,” “Marten, back and leave your wench,” &c.), and his old friend Cromwell when become a foe openly taxing him as a “whoremaster,” that it is better for us to think of him with reference to his unswerving faithfulness in Republican opinions; his gay spirit (more resembling the reckless indifference of Cavaliers than his own associates can have esteemed befitting); his successful exertions on many occasions to save the shedding of blood; and his gallant bearing in the final hours of trial. The living death to which he was condemned, of his twenty years imprisonment at Chepstow Castle, has been recorded (mistakenly as thirty) by that devoted student Robert Southey, clarum et venerabilem nomen! in a poem which can never pass into oblivion, although cleverly mocked by Canning in the Anti-Jacobin, Nov. 20, 1797:—
For twenty years secluded from mankind
Here Marten lingered. Often have these walls
Echo’d his footsteps, as with even tread
He paced around his prison; not to him
Did Nature’s fair varieties exist:
He never saw the sun’s delightful beams