II.
Leaving Christ's Hospital, and rambling on, one soon comes to a church partly covered with ivy, in a yard filled with shrubbery and autumn flowers. It is S. Sepulchre's, the burial-place of Captain John Smith, the Virginia pioneer. It is almost a sacred duty to pay a passing tribute to his memory, notwithstanding a lifelong grudge against him for not rounding off his romantic career by wedding the dusky Pocahontas. The clock of this church has the sad distinction of regulating the hanging of criminals at Newgate. The tower has four pinnacles, each one bearing a vane with its own notions as to rectitude, which has given rise to the saying that "unreasonable people are as hard to reconcile as the vanes of S. Sepulchre's tower, which never looked all four upon one point of the heavens."
In old times, the bell of this church was tolled as criminals passed to Tyburn, and the bell-man cried: "All good people, pray heartily unto God for these poor sinners, who are now going to their death;" for which he received the sum of one pound, six shillings, and eight pence. A hand-bell was likewise rung for them to stop for a nosegay of flowers. It must have been a great consolation to them! And yet who knows but such silent messengers of God might not have spoken to many a heart inaccessible to human tongue?
In the XVIIth century a legacy of fifty pounds was left to S. Sepulchre's on condition that, before execution-day, some one should go to Newgate in the dead of night, and give twelve solemn tolls with a hand-bell by way of calling attention to the following appeal:
"All you that in the condemned hole do lie,
Prepare you, for to-morrow you must die:
Watch, all, and pray, the hour is drawing near
That you before the Almighty must appear:
Examine well yourselves, in time repent,
That you may not t' eternal flames be sent;
And when S. Sepulchre's bell to-morrow tolls,
The Lord have mercy on your souls!
Past twelve o'clock!"
Plucking an ivy-leaf from the wall of S. Sepulchre's, our pilgrim kept on his way. West Smithfield at the corner of a street brought our friend Fox and his martyrs to mind, and he turned down towards the square where John Rogers met his fate. A tablet of Scotch granite fastened to the wall of S. Bartholomew's Hospital marks the spot. This tablet is protected by a grating, the upright rods of which terminate in gilded flames of most portentous brightness. He did not see any such tablet around London recording the numberless Catholic martyrs of Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth's time.
No dispassionate reader of history can regard the church as responsible for the sufferings of the so-called "Marian Martyrs." But let us thank God that such severe penalties are now obsolete in Catholic and Protestant lands alike!
Smithfield was the ordinary place of execution before Tyburn was used. The patriot Wallace was executed here on S. Bartholomew's eve, 1305. Shakespeare makes Henry V. say: "The witch in Smithfield shall be burned to ashes." In Henry VIII.'s time, poisoners were here boiled to death, as the old chronicles of the Grey Friars testify. Here is one quotation: "The x day of March was a mayde boyllyd in Smythfelde for poysing of divers persons." Evelyn records as late as 1652: "Passing by Smithfield, I saw a miserable creature burning, who had poisoned her husband."
But there are pleasanter memories connected with Smithfield, or Smoothfield, as it was originally called. It was once a famous tilting-ground. Froissart tells us how in 1393 "certain lords of Scotland came into England to get worship by force of arms in Smithfield." Here Edward III. celebrated the victories of Cressy and Poitiers by jousts and feats of arms; and Richard II., at the time of his marriage, ordered here a tournament of three days.