to contain the remains of his royal master, Henry the Eighth. The coffin itself was manufactured out of the mainmast of the French ship, L'Orient, which was blown up at the battle of the Nile. It was sent as a present to Nelson by one of his gallant followers, Captain Hallowell,* of the Swiftsure. "I have taken the liberty," he wrote to the hero, "of presenting you a coffin made from the mainmast of L'Orient, that, when you have finished your military career in this world, you may be buried in one of your trophies." Nelson accepted the melancholy offering in the same spirit in which it had been sent. He even ordered it to be placed upright in his cabin, as if to serve him as a memento mori in the hour of victory and triumph; and it was only in accordance with the entreaties of an old and favourite servant that he at length consented to its being removed.

* Afterwards Admiral Sir Benjamin Hallowell Carew, G.C.B.

THE OLD BAILEY, NEWGATE, CHRIST'S HOSPITAL, ST. SEPULCHRE'S CHURCH.

DERIVATION OF WORD OLD BAILEY.

GREAT ANTIQUITY OF COURT OF JUSTICE THERE. THE PRESS YARD.-" PEINE FORTE ET DURE.'

IVY LANE. -PANNIER ALLEY.

-PERSONS INTERRED THERE.

-

NEWGATE PRISON.

OLD CHRIST CHURCH, NEWGATE, MODERN CHRIST CHURCH, NEWGATE. CHRIST'S HOSPITAL.- —ST. SEPULCHRE'S CHURCH.-CURIOUS CEREMONY AT EXECUTIONS.-PIE CORNER.-GREEN ARBOUR COURT.

THE street which bears the name of the Old Bailey runs parallel with the site of that part of the city wall which anciently connected Lud Gate with New Gate. Here stood Sidney House, the residence of the Sidneys, Earls of Leicester, previous to their removal to Leicester Square; and here too, at the house of his father, in May 1551, was born the celebrated antiquary, William Camden. No. 68, close to Ship Court, was the residence of the notorious Jonathan Wild; and in Ship Court Hogarth's father kept a school.

The word Old Bailey has been supposed by some to be derived from the Ballium, or outer walled court, attached to the ancient fortifications. According to other accounts, the word is corrupted from Bail Hill, the place where offenders were tried by the Bailiff; a derivation which appears

to be the more reasonable, from the circumstance of that part of the court, in which prisoners are confined previous to their trial, still retaining the name of the Bail Dock.

This celebrated court of justice is of great antiquity; our oldest records failing to afford us any clue to the date of its foundation. Could those grey and gloomy walls speak, what fearful chronicles of crime, what tales of human suffering, could they not unfold! Within the area which they contain, how many virtuous patriots and self-devoted martyrs, how many ruthless murderers and desperate malefactors,-have stood from time immemorial at its solemn bar of justice! How many cheeks have become blanched,-how many hearts have palpitated,-in that awful moment, when the ear of the prisoner is stretched forth to catch the purport of that verdict, on which depends either his restoration to all that life holds most dear, or his being condemned to perish before the inquisitive gaze of an assembled multitude, by an ignominious death. Here, on the 9th of October 1660, commenced the famous trial of the Regicides, many of whom were subsequently dragged on hurdles to Charing Cross, to expiate their offences, attended by the most terrifying circumstances that barbarity could invent. Here stood, at the bar of justice, the sturdy enthusiast, General Harrison; the witty atheist, Henry Marten; the fanatic preacher, Hugh Peters; Cook, who had conducted the prosecution on the part of the Com

mons of England at the trial of Charles the First, and Colonel Hacker, who had guarded the King on the scaffold! Here, in 1683, the high-minded and virtuous; William Lord Russell, was arraigned for high treason! Here the ill-fated poet, Richard Savage, underwent his trial for killing a fellow-creature in a drunken brawl at Charing Cross, in 1727; here Dr. Dodd was condemned to death for forgery, in 1777; Bellingham, for assassinating Mr. Percival in the lobby of the House of Commons, in 1812; and Thistlewood, and the other Cato Street conspirators, in 1820. To these names might be added a host of others, scarcely less familiar to us; from such miscreants as Jack Shepherd and Jonathan Wild,-who were tried at the Old Bailey, the one in 1724, and the other in 1725,-to others whose career of villany and blood has, in our own time, led to their expiating their crimes on the scaffold.

Another spot in the Old Bailey, which still retains its ancient name, and recalls to our memory many a scene of horror, is the Press Yard. Frequently we read of cases in the olden times, when a criminal, in order to avoid conviction, has refused to plead at the bar, and thus, though his own life has been sacrificed, has preserved his property to his family, instead of its falling into the hands of the Crown. In order to overcome this difficulty, a new law was passed which provided that in similar cases of contumacy, the prisoner should in future be removed from the bar, and having been stretched on his back, that a large weight of iron should be

placed on his chest and stomach, to be gradually increased either till the culprit consented to plead, or till death should release him from his agony. Of this terrible kind of torture,-styled "Peine forte et dure," the Press Yard in the Old Bailey is said to have been but too frequently the scene. At a later period, apparently from motives of humanity, a preliminary and milder form of torture was introduced,—namely, that of forcibly compressing the thumb with whipcord, in order, if possible, to force the prisoner to plead, without having recourse to the more intolerable infliction of "Peine forte et dure." Incredible as it may appear, these barbarous expedients were actually had resort to as late as the reign of George the Second. In 1721, we find one Mary Andrews undergoing the agony of the compression, till three whipcords had been severally broken, nor was it till a fourth had been applied that she consented to plead. A still more remarkable instance occurred the same year, in the case of Nathaniel Hawes. The application of the cord failing to produce any effect, he was subjected to the severer torture, which he endured for seven minutes under a weight of two hundred and fifty pounds, when human nature could hold out no longer, and he consented to plead. The latest occasion of the Old Bailey having been the scene of these horrors, appears to have been in 1734.

As a striking example of the application of the "Peine forte et dure," we may mention the tragic story of Major Strangeways, who died under its