Downing Street.—"Baron Bothmar's house was part of the forfeited property of Lee, Lord Lichfield, who retired with James II., to whom he was Master of the Horse. At the beginning of the present century there was no other official residence in the street than the house which belonged, by right of office, to the First Lord of the Treasury, but by degrees one house was bought after another: first the Foreign Office, increased afterwards by three other houses; then the Colonial Office; then the house in the north corner, which was the Judge Advocate's, since added to the Colonial Office; then a house for the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and lastly, a whole row of lodging-houses, chiefly for Scotch and Irish members."
Whitehall.—"King Charles I. was executed on a scaffold erected in front of the Banqueting House, towards the park. The warrant directs that he should be executed 'in the open street before Whitehall.' Lord Leicester tells us in his Journal, that he was 'beheaded at Whitehall Gate.' Dugdale, in his Diary, that he was 'beheaded at the gate of Whitehall;' and a single sheet of the time reserved in the British Museum, that 'the King was beheaded at Whitehall Gate.' There cannot, therefore, be a doubt that the scaffold was erected in front of the building facing the present Horse Guards. We now come to the next point which has excited some discussion. It appears from Herbert's minute account of the King's last moments, that 'the King was led all along the galleries and Banqueting House, and there was a passage broken through the wall, by which the king passed unto the scaffold.' This seems particular enough, and leads, it is said, to a conclusion that the scaffold was erected on the north side. Where the passage was broken through, one thing is certain, the scaffold was erected on the west side, or, in other words, 'in the open street,' now called Whitehall; and that the King, as Ludlow relates in his Memoirs, 'was conducted to the scaffold out of the window of the Banqueting House.' Ludlow, who tells us this, was one of the regicides, and what he states, simply and straightforwardly, is confirmed by any engraving of the execution, published at Amsterdam in the same year, and by the following memorandum of Vertue's on the copy of Terasson's large engraving of the Banqueting House, preserved in the library of the Society of Antiquaries:—'It is, according to the truest reports, said that out of this window King Charles went upon the scaffold to be beheaded, the window-frame being taken out purposely to make the passage on to the scaffold, which is equal to the landing-place of the hall within side.' The window marked by Vertue belonged to a small building abutting from the north side of the present Banqueting House. From this window, then the King stept upon the scaffold."
We shall probably next week indulge in a few QUERIES which have suggested themselves to us, and to which Mr. Cunningham will perhaps be good enough to reply.
ANECDOTE OF CHARLES I.
I have great pleasure in forwarding to you an anecdote of the captivity of Charles I., which I think will be considered interesting to your readers. Of its authenticity there can be no doubt. I extract it from a small paper book, purchased some fifty years since, at Newport, in the Isle of Wight, which contains the history of a family named Douglas, for some years resident in that town, written by the last representative, Eliza Douglas, at the sale of whose effects it came into my grandfather's hands. There are many curious particulars in it besides the anecdote I have sent you; especially an account of the writer's great-great-grandfather (the husband of the heroine of this tale), who "traded abroad, and was took into Turkey as a slave," and there gained the affections of his master's daughter, after the most approved old-ballad fashion; though, alas! it was not to her love that he owed his liberty, but (dreadful bathos!) to his skill in "cooking fowls, &c. &c. in the English taste;" which, on a certain occasion, when some English merchants came to dine with his master, "so pleased the company, that they offered to redeem him, which was accepted; and when freed he came home to England, and lived in London to an advanced age; so old that they fed him with a tea-spoon."
After his death his wife married again; and it was during this second marriage that the interview with King Charles took place.
"My mother's great-grandmother, when a-breeding with her daughter, Mary Craige, which was at y'e time of King Charles being a prisoner in Carisbrook Castle, she longed to kiss the King's hand; and when he was brought to Newport to be carried off, she being acquainted with the gentleman's housekeeper, where the King was coming to stay, till orders for him to leave the island, she went to the housekeeper, told her what she wanted, and they contrived for her to come the morning he was to go away. So up she got, and dressed herself, and set off to call her midwife, and going along, the first and second guard stopped her and asked her where she was going; she told them 'to call her midwife,' which she did. They went to this lady, and she went and acquainted his Majesty with the affair; he desired she may come up to him, and she said, when she came into the room, his Majesty seemed to appear as if he had been at prayers. He rose up and came to her, who fell on her knees before him; he took her up by the arm himself, and put his cheek to her, and she said she gave him a good hearty smack on his cheek. His Majesty then said, 'Pray God bless you, and that you go withal.' She then went down stairs to wait and see the King take coach; she got so close that she saw a gentleman in it; and when the King stept into the coach, he said, 'Pray, Sir, what is your name?' he replied, 'I am Col. Pride.' 'Not miscalled,' says the King. Then Pride says, 'Drive on, coachman.'"
E.V.