Tyburn

" Your Grace talks mysteries—Buckingham blushes—and the rogue himself is dumb."


" That honest gentleman, please your Majesty," replied the Duke of Ormoud, " whose modesty makes him mute, though it cannot make him blush, is the notorious Colonel Blood, as he calls himself, whose attempt to possess himself of your Majesty's royal crown, took place at no very distant date, in this very Tower of London."
" That exploit is not easily forgotten," said the King; " but that the fellow lives, shows your Grace's clemency as well as mine."
" I cannot deny that I was in his hands, sire," said Ormond, " and had certainly been murdered by him, had he chosen to take my life on the spot, instead of destining me—I thank him for the honour—to be hanged at Tyburn.
 
The last to have the honor of being hanged at Tyburn was one John Austen, hanged on November 7, 1783 (per The Book of Days); for robbery with violence.  Tyburn suffered its own sort of death, when executions were transferred from Tyburn to Newgate.  Thus ended nearly eight centuries of continuous functio.  The first execution was William Fitz Osbern, in 1196.  Text above is from "Perveril of the Peak".

Eugene Aram

From “The Book of Days”, and the "Newgate Calendar" (source of image), comes the story of Eugene Aram who was hanged at Tyburn, per these sources, on August 16, 1759. Aram was noteworthy firstly for being a scholar, having a noted facility for languages. Unfortunately, what gained him a historical note was his conviction for murdering a man named Daniel Clarke.


The murder may have been simply for gain, or he may have suspected his wife of having an affair with Clarke, which he claimed after conviction, and before his execution. The contrast between Aram’s extraordinary self-developed language skills and this act of violence has inspired several literary works. Among those is Thomas Hood’s “The Dream of Eugene Aram”, and Edward Lytton Bulwer’s “Eugene Aram, a Tale”.

It is Bulwer’s work that provides the link to Sir Walter Scott. Bulwer dedicated his work to Scott:

TO SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART,, &c., &c.

SIR,


IT has long been the high and cherished hope of my ambition to add my humble tribute to the rich and numberless offerings that toe been laid upon the shrine of your genius. At each succeeding book that I have given to the world, I have paused to consider, if it were worthy of being inscribed with your great name, and at each I have played the procrastinator, and hoped for that morrow of better desert which never came. Having now arrived at a work which closes the series I contemplated from the first, it is possible that this may be the only opportunity afforded me of expressing that high, that just, that affectionate admiration with which you hare inspired me in common with all your cotemporaries, and which a French writer has not ungracefully termed " the happiest prerogative of genius." I seize this occasion, then, not as the best, but lest I should lose the last. As a Poet, and as a Novelist, your fame has attained to that height in which praise has become superfluous; but in the character of the writer, there seems to me a yet higher claim to veneration than in that of the writings. The example your genius sets us, who can emulate?—the example your moderation bequeaths to us, who shall forget? It is a great lesson to all cultivators of letters, to behold one who, in winning renown, has at last conquered envy, and who is at once without an equal and without a detractor.


You have left us for a while; but what heart does not, from that very absence, and from its reported cause, follow you to a southern shore, with feelings that make remembrance a duty scarcely less than a delight? What Scotchman can ever forget that you have immortalised his country — or what Englishman that you have bestowed an equal gift upon his language? Whatever the honours that await you abroad, you have left the gratitude, the homage, the very hearts of two mighty Nations to watch over your fame at home.


You, I feel assured, will not deem it presumptuous in one, who, to that bright and undying flame which now streams from the gray hills of Scotland,—the last halo with which you have crowned her literary glories, — has turned from his first childhood with a deep and unrelaxing devotion; — you, I feel assured, will not deem it presumptuous in him to inscribe an idle work with your illustrious name: — a work which, however worthless in itself, assumes something of value in his eyes when thus rendered a tribute of respect to you.


THE AUTHOR OF "EUGENE ARAM."


London, December 22, 1831

Roger Mortimer

On November 29, 1330, Earl of March Roger Mortimer was hanged at Tyburn. The charge was treason. The charges were brought by King Edward III of England, who had been under Mortimer's tutelage while a minor, after Edward II was forced to abdicate the throne.

Edward II's departure was brought on by Mortimer himself, along with Edward's own wife Isabella of France. Mortimer and Isabella had become lovers while both were in France; Mortimer due to refusing Edward's summons, Isabella merely to escape from Edward. Mortimer launched an invasion of England from Flanders, and successfully deposed Edward (1327).

As Edward III was underage at the time his father abdicated, he could not take the throne. Mortimer effectively ruled for three years, until Edward, now 18 and weary of Mortimer's control, decided to take matters into his own hands. Around Michaelmas 1330, Edward summoned a parliament at Nottingham, to approach Mortimer's castle. The castle being heavily guarded, the castle gatekeeper was approached instead. Sir William Eland knew of an underground passage into the castle that even Mortimer himself was unaware of. The opening, which became known as Mortimer Hole, was used to gain access, arrest Mortimer, and take him out with none of the guards being aware.

Scott includes a reference to Roger Mortimer in his Kenilworth.