It Was Marlowe: A Story of the Secret of Three Centuries

by Wilbur Gleason Zeigler

“A fit mate for the felon!”

“He handles his reins like Tyburn hemp!”

“An apprentice for the hangman!”

“Take that!”

“And that!”

Another volley of stones and mud followed. Bame lay flat in the cart and escaped injury, but the driver fell back stunned, with the reins in his nerveless hands. Then there was a discharge of firearms. The guards had leveled their blunderbusses and puffs of smoke curled upwards from the wide mouths. The mob turned and broke away precipitately on all sides, leaving two who had fallen with the report of the firearms, and now lay outstretched on the stone pavement. One of them was Gyves. His late prominence and appearance as the leading spirit of the mob had made him the mark for more than one of the guards, and his body was riddled with balls. Thus was the beginning of the ride marked with death, and the end was to be no less a tragedy.

While London was under the rule of the Plantagenets, the penalty pronounced against capital offenders was inflicted amid the elms in Smithfield; but under the piteous eyes of children from the windows of the encroaching dwellings of a rapidly increasing populace, the executioner bungled so badly in his frequent task, that early in the reign of the Tudors, the distant bank of the Tyburn was selected as a more suitable spot for carrying the death sentence into effect. Here, for a few years following, the surrounding fields remained open, and none but the constant mob from Faringdon ward looked upon the unsightly object under the “Tyburn tree.” This mob followed the cart of the condemned in all seasons and under all skies. On dry roads it was enveloped in dust; the mud was beaten down by its untiring feet in stormy seasons, and while it was compact in body upon leaving Newgate it was a scattered procession in its retreat from Tyburn.

The Tyburn road started amid thick clustering buildings, but soon shaking itself free from these, it ran on, wide and firm, by bordering dwellings, tippling houses and inns, into the open country, where it straggled and seemed aimless in its purpose. But this seeming was only to quiet the thousands of wretches who were carried over its surface on their last ride. For them there were three miles of hard travel, and at the end of each intermediate mile, hope could kindle in their breasts that the ride might be only the beginning of a journey into exile. In summer they saw broad fields of grain; felt the cool shade of forests; heard the songs of birds; or, in the dead season of the year, reaped from the vision of white hills a temporary respite from brooding melancholy.

The crowd that followed the cart bearing Bame was boisterous to a degree suggestive of immediate violence. They had, with blanched faces, seen the death meted out to two of their members; and while this scene had for a time appalled and silenced them, as they drew away from the close buildings in the outer ward of the city, their ill will against the guard and its prisoner became manifest through their murmurs and demeanor. They did not blame the guard so much as they did the prisoner. The guard had done its duty, undoubtedly; it was a mere instrument, but Bame had been the cause. The result lay at his door. The driver must press forward speedily, and the hangman must be unusually expeditious if the crowd was to be pacified.

Bame realized the situation, and contrary to the usual desire of Tyburn passengers, prayed for a speedy ride. There was the inn of the White Ox on ahead. Would it ever be reached? The wheels of the cart sunk so deep in the mud that it seemed as though at every yard they would stop turning. The guard flourished its weapons at the restless mob behind it, and still the procession moved. Here was the White Ox at last, and there at the front edge of its wide porch stood the man who had actually counted seven hundred and four condemned felons ride by the White Ox during that year. He thought that he had marked them on the inner edge of the white railing against which he was leaning, but he had missed at least two score driven by on several early hours while he was sleeping off the effect of some late-at-night potations. He had reason to count, for he was the tapster, and here the executioner always stopped for a drink. It was not to steady his nerves, for apparently he had none. The tapster had it ready when the cart stopped.