The streets of London through the centuries / Thomas Burke.

  • Thomas Burke
Date:
1949
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The streets of London through the centuries / Thomas Burke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the manchet and eat a mouthful of it and drank a small glassful of claret wine. . . . A Guard was made all along the galleries and the Banqueting House, but behind the soldiers abundance of'men and women crowded in, though with some peril to their persons to behold the saddest sight England ever saw. And as his Majesty passed by with a cheerful look, heard them pray for him, the soldiers not rebuking any of them: by their silence and dejected faces seeming rather afflicted than insulting. . . . There was a passage broken through the wall by which the King passed unto the scaffold, where, after his Majesty had spoken a little, the fatal stroke was given by a disguised person. Cromwell’s funeral, it seems, was pompous but less impressive. According to Evelyn, who saw it: He was carried from Somerset House in a velvet bed of state drawn by six horses, houss’d with the same; the pall held up by his new lords; Oliver lying in effigie in royal robes, and crown’d with a crown, sceptre, and globe, like a king; the pendants and guidons were carried by officers of the army; and the imperial banners, achevements, etc., by the heraulds in their coates; a rich caparison’d horse, embroider’d all over with gold; a knight of honour arm’d eap-a-pie, and after all, his guards, souldiers and innumerable mourners. In this equipage they proceeded to Westminster; but it was the joyfullest funeral I eyer saw, for there were none that cried but dogs, which the soldiers hooted away with a barbarous noise, drinking and taking tobacco in the streetes as they went. After the death of Cromwell, the streets became more lively—or rather, more disorderly. Protector Richard commanded little respect, and various factions began to contend for power—the royalists, the army, the parliament, with sub-divisions of each group. Riots and demonstrations of all kinds were frequent. During the sitting of the Rump Parliament, an army of apprentices and others from the City* marched to the House of Commons demanding a dissolution. When they refused to disperse, the soldiers were called out, with orders to fire, and one of the demonstrators was killed. The mayor and aldermen thereupon sent a strong protest, and backed the citizens’ demand for a new Parliament. The existing Parliament retorted by sending Monk and the army to take down the gates of the City, and its other defences, and occupy it. This was done, but Monk, who had been waiting to see which way the country’s feeling was turning, suddenly rejected the Parliament and sided with the city. He and the army marched to White¬ hall and ordered that the existing Parliament should quit and that a new, and more representative Parliament, be summoned. As the army was entirely in his hands, Parliament was compelled to obey. The dissolution of that Rump Parliament wras hailed with wild celebrations in all the streets of the city. Peals were rung from the bells of all the churches. Bonfires were lit in the roads at such short intervals that,
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