Died: Bishop Gavin
Dunbar, 1547; Cardinal Baronius, eminent
ecclesiastical writer, 1607, Rome; Alexander Brume,
poet, 1666; Archibald Campbell, ninth Earl of Argyle,
beheaded, 1685, Edinburgh; Sir Thomas Pope Blount,
miscellaneous writer, 1697, Tittenhanger; Dr. Thomas
Edwards, learned divine, 1785, Nuneaton; Richard
Parker, head of the
naval mutiny at the Nore, hanged,
1797; Rev. Henry Kett, drowned, 1825; Sultan Mahmoud,
of Turkey, 1839; James Silk Buckingham, miscellaneous
writer, 1855.
Feast Day: St. Paul the
Apostle, 68. St. Martial, Bishop of Limoges, 3rd
century.
MRS. PIOZZI
Many people are remembered for
the sake of others; their memory survives to after
times because of some with whom they were connected,
rather than on account of their own peculiar merits.
The world is well contented to feed its curiosity with
their sayings and doings, in consideration of the
influence which they exercised over, or the
acquaintance they had with, some one or other of its
favourite heroes.
Mrs. Thrale-Piozzi, (n�e
Hester Salusbury) enjoys this sort of parasitical
celebrity. Not that we wish to insinuate that she had
not sufficient merit to deserve to be remembered on
her own account. A woman of agreeable manners and
lively wit, possessed of great personal attractions,
if we may not say beauty, she could make no unskilful
use of a ready pen, and enjoyed in her own day a
literary notoriety. Yet it is not the leader of
fashion, nor the star of society, nor the intelligent
writer, that the present generation troubles itself to
remember, so much as the sprightly hostess and dear
intimate friend of Dr. Samuel Johnson.
Henry Thrale, Mrs. Thrale's
first husband, entertained and commanded the best
London society. Engaged in business as a brewer, as
his father had been before him, he was, in education,
manners, and style of living, a perfect gentleman.
Having neglected to avail himself of no advantages
which wealth offered, or ambition to rise in the world
prompted him to turn to his profit, he contrived to
secure his position still more firmly by marrying a
lady of good family and fair expectations. There was
no passionate attachment in the case; it was a mere
matter of business. The lady, indeed, according to her
own account, seems scarcely to have been consulted;
but, romance set aside, she made a good wife, and he,
on the whole, a good husband. Such a wife was a
valuable acquisition to Thrale's rising importance;
doubtless her wit and spirit were the soul of that
motley fashionable group, half literary, half
aristocratic, which his wealth and generous
hospitality drew together to Streatham.
It must have been at one time
no small privilege to be a guest at Mrs. Thrale's
table. Here was the author of Rasselas, 'facile princeps,' a centre of
attraction, flattered and
fondled, in spite of his uncouthness and occasional
rudeness; here was 'little Burney,' Madame D'Arblay,
jotting down notes stealthily for the Diary; here
Garrick thought much of
himself, as usual, and
listened condescendingly to Goldsmith's palaver,' or
writhed to hear the plaguy hostess telling how she sat
on his knee as a child; here, too, was Bozzy, lively
and observing, if not always dignified; here were
Reynolds, and Burke, and Langton,
and Beauclerk�lords,
ladies, and ecclesiastics.
Johnson himself was introduced
to the Thrales by Arthur Murphy, on the first
reasonable pretext which Murphy could frame, and the
result gave satisfaction to all parties. The shock of
his appearance did not prove too much for them, for
the introducer had taken care to give them due
warning. Mr. Thrale took to Johnson, and that 'figure
large and well formed,' that `countenance of the cast
of an ancient statue,' as Boswell has it, gravely
humorous, began to appear weekly at Mr. Thrale's
table; and when the family removed to Streatham, they
persuaded the lexicographer to accompany them, because
he was ill, and sadly in want of kind attention. He
continued to live with them almost entirely for twenty
years, and Mrs. Thrale's good care succeeded at
length, as she herself informs us, in restoring him to
better health and greater tidiness.
Johnson delighted in Mrs.
Thrale. He scolded her, or petted her, or paid her
compliments, or wrote odes to her, or joined with. her
in her pleasant literary labours, according to the
form which his solid respect and fatherly affection
assumed at any particular time. She gives us a
specimen of his friendly flattery�a translation which
he made at the moment from a little Italian poem:
'Long may live my lovely
Hetty,
Always young, and always pretty;
Always pretty, always young,
Live my lovely Hetty long;
Always young, and always pretty,
Long may live my lovely Hetty! '
After Thrale's death, in 1781,
Mrs. Thrale left Streatham, and Johnson had to leave
it also. From this time to 1784, though there is
evidence of some little unpleasantness having arisen,
we find Johnson keeping up a familiar correspondence
with the widow, and occasionally in her company. But
on June 30th of that year she put his patience and good
sense utterly to flight for a time, by informing him
that she designed immediately to unite herself to Mr. Piozzi, who had been the
music-master of her
daughters. He wrote to her in great haste, what she
describes afterwards as 'a rough letter,' and
certainly it was:
'MADAM,�If I interpret your
letter right, you are ignominiously married; if it
is yet undone, let us [ ] more [ ] together. If you
have abandoned your children and your religion, God
forgive your wickedness; if you have forfeited your
fame and your country, may your folly do no further
mischief. If the last act is yet to do, I, who have
loved you, esteemed you, reverenced you, and [�]; I,
who long thought you the first of womankind, entreat
that, before your fate is irrevocable, I may once
more see you. I was, I once was, Madam,
'Most truly yours,
'July 2nd, 1784. 'SAM JOHNSON.
I will come down if you permit it.'
To this he received a reply:
'July 4th, 1784.
SIR,�I have this morning
received from you so rough a letter in reply to one
which was both tenderly and respectfully written,
that I am forced to desire the conclusion of a
correspondence which I can bear to continue no
longer. The birth of my second husband is not meaner
than that of my first; his sentiments are not
meaner, his profession is not meaner, and his
superiority in what he professes is acknowledged by
all mankind. It is want of fortune, then, that is
ignominious; the character of the man I have chosen
has no other claim to such an epithet. The religion
to which he has always been a zealous adherent will,
I hope, teach him to forgive insults he has not
deserved; mine will, I hope, enable me to bear them
at once with dignity and patience. To hear that I
have forfeited my fame is indeed the greatest insult
I ever yet received. My fame is as unsullied as
snow, or I should think it unworthy of him who must
henceforth protect it.
'I write by the coach, the
more speedily and effectually to prevent your coming
hither. Perhaps 'by my fame (and I hope it is so)
you mean only that celebrity which is a
consideration of a much lower kind. I care for that
only as it may give pleasure to my husband and his
friends.
'Farewell, dear sir, and
accept my best wishes. You have always commanded my
esteem, and long enjoyed the fruits of a friendship
never infringed by one harsh expression on my part
during twenty years of familiar talk. Never did I
oppose your will, or control your wish, nor can your
unmerited severity itself lessen my regard; but,
till you have changed your opinion of Mr. Piozzi,
let us converse no more. God bless you.'
Upon receiving this rejoinder,
the old man penned a more amiable epistle, not
apologizing, yet, as he says, with tears in his eyes;
in answer to which, Mrs. Piozzi informs us, she wrote
him a very kind and affectionate farewell,' though she
did not see fit to publish it afterwards, as we might
have expected. Immediately upon this she went to Italy
with her new husband, and Johnson died the same year.
It is painful to contemplate
such an end to a friendship of twenty years; but with
what we now know of the case through the labours of
Mr. Hayward, there is no room for hesitation as to
which was in the wrong. There had been no cessation of
benefits or of friendly feeling from Mrs. Thrale to
Johnson up to the moment of his writing her the
`rough' letter. The only prompting cause of that
letter was that she, the widow of a brewer in good
circumstances, was going to gratify a somewhat
romantic attachment which she had formed to a man not
in any particular inferior to her first husband,
except in worldly means. The outrage was as
unreasonable in its foundation as it was gross in its
style. True, what is called society took the same
unfavourable view of Mrs. Thrale's second marriage;
but the same society would have continued to smile on
Mrs. Thrale as the mistress of Mr. Piozzi, if the sin
could only have been tolerably concealed. Society,
which admired wealth in a brewer, could see no merit
in an Italian gentleman�for such it appears he
was�whom poverty condemned to use an honourable and
dignifying knowledge for his bread. Was it for a sage
like Johnson to endorse the silly disapprobation of
such a tribunal, and to insult a woman who for many
years had literally nursed him as a daughter would a
father? The only true palliation of his offence is to
be found�and let us find it�in his age and infirm
health.
THE
PILLORY
An act of the British
parliament, dated June 30th, 1837, put an
end to the use of the pillory in the United Kingdom, a
mode of punishment so barbarous, and at the same time
so indefinite in its severity, that we can only wonder
it should not have been extinguished long before.
The pillory was for many ages
common to most European countries. Known in France as
the pillori or carcan, and in Germany as the pranger,
it seems to have existed in England before the
Conquest in the shape of the stretch-neck, in which
the head only of the criminal was confined. By a
statute of Edward I it was enacted that every
stretch-neck, or pillory, should be made of convenient
strength, so that execution might be done upon
offenders without peril to their bodies. It usually
consisted of a wooden frame erected on a stool, with
holes and folding boards for the admission of the head
and hands, as shown in the sketch of Robert Ockam
undergoing his punishment for perjury in the reign of
Henry VIII. In the companion engraving, taken from a
MS of the thirteenth century, we have an example of a
pillory constructed for punishing a number of
offenders at the same time, but this form was of rare
occurrence.
Rushworth says this instrument
was invented for the special benefit of
mountebanks
and quacks, 'that having gotten upon banks and forms
to abuse the people, were exalted in the same kind;'
but it seems to have been freely used for cheats of
all descriptions. Fabian records that
Robert Basset,
mayor of London in 1287, 'did sharpe correction upon
bakers for making bread of light weight; he caused
divers of them to be put in the pillory, as also one
Agnes Daintie, for selling of mingled butter.' We
find, too, from the Liber Albus, that fraudulent corn,
coal, and cattle dealers, cutters of purses, sellers
of sham gold rings, keepers of infamous houses,
forgers of letters, bonds, and deeds, counterfeiters
of papal bulls, users of unstamped measures, and
forestallers of the markets, incurred the same
punishment. One man was pilloried for pretending to be
a sheriff's serjeant, and arresting the bakers of
Stratford with the view of obtaining a fine from them
for some imaginary breach of the city regulations.
Another, for pretending to be the summoner of the
Archbishop of Canterbury, and summoning the prioress
of Clerkenwell. Other offences, visited in the same
way, were playing with false dice, begging under false
pretences, decoying children for the purpose of
begging and practising soothsaying and magic.
Had the heroes of the pillory
been only cheats, thieves, scandalmongers, and
perjurers, it would rank no higher among instruments
of punishment than the stocks and the ducking stool.
Thanks to Archbishop Laud and
Star Chamber tyrants, it
figured so conspicuously in the political and
polemical disputes which heralded the downfall of the
monarchy, as to justify a writer of our own time in
saying, 'Noble hearts had been tried and tempered in
it; daily had been elevated in it mental independence,
manly self-reliance, robust, athletic endurance. All
from within that has undying worth, it had but the
more plainly exposed to public gaze from with-out.'
This rise in dignity dates
from 1637, when a decree of the Star Chamber
prohibited the printing of any book or pamphlet
without a license from the Archbishop of Canterbury,
the Bishop of London, or the authorities of the two
universities; and ordered all but 'allowed' printers,
who presumed to set up a printing press, to be set in
the pillory, and whipped through the City of London.
One of the first victims of this ordinance was
Leighton (father of the archbishop of that name), who
for printing his Zion's Plea against Prelacy, was
fined �10,000, degraded from the ministry, pilloried,
branded, and whipped, besides having an ear cropped,
and his nostril slit.
Lilburn and Warton were also
indicted for unlawfully printing, publishing, and
dispersing libellous and seditious works; and upon
refusing to appear to answer the interrogatories of
the court, were sentenced to pay �500 each, and to be
whipped from the
Fleet Prison to the
pillory at
Westminster; a sentence which was carried into
execution on the 18th of April 1638. The undaunted
Lilburn, when elevated in the pillory, distributed
copies of the obnoxious publications, and spoke so
boldly against the tyranny of his persecutors, that it
was thought necessary to gag him.
Prynne, after
standing several times in the pillory for having by
his denunciations of lady actresses libeled Queen
Henrietta by anticipation, solaced his hours of
imprisonment by writing his News from Ipswich, by
which he incurred a third exposure and the loss of his
remaining ear; this was in 1637. He did not suffer
alone, Burton and Dr. Bastwick
being companions in
misfortune with him. The latter's offence consisted in
publishing a reply to one Short, directed against the
bishops of Rome, and concluding with 'From plague,
pestilence, and famine, from bishops, priests, and
deacons, good Lord deliver us!' How the two bore their
punishment is told in a letter from Garrard to Lord
Strafford:
'In the palace-yard two pillories were
erected, and there the sentence of the Star Chamber
against Burton, Bastwick, and Prynne was executed.
They stood two hours in the pillory. The place was
full of people, who cried and howled terribly,
especially when Burton was cropped. Dr. Bastwick was
very merry; his wife, Dr. Poe's daughter, got on a
stool and kissed him. His ears being cut off, she
called for them, put them in a clean handkerchief, and
carried them away with her. Bastwick told the people
the lords had collar-days at court, but this was his
collar-day, rejoicing much in it.'
The sufferers were cheered
with the acclamation of the lookers-on, notes were
taken of all they said, and manuscript copies
distributed through the city.
Half a century later, and the
once popular informer, Titus Oates, expiated his
betrayal of innocent lives in the pillory. Found
guilty of perjury on two separate indictments, the
inventor of the Popish Plot was condemned in 1685 to
public exposure on three consecutive days. The first
day's punishment in Palace Yard nearly cost the
criminal his life; but his partisans mustered in such
force in the city on the succeeding day that they were
able to upset the pillory, and nearly succeeded in
rescuing their idol from the hands of the authorities.
According to his sentence, Oates was to stand every
year of his life in the pillory on five different
days: before the gate of Westminster Hall on the 9th
of August, at Charing Cross on the 10th, at the Temple
on the 11th, at the Royal Exchange on the 2nd of
September, and at Tyburn on the
24th of April; but,
fortunately for the infamous creature, the Revolution
deprived his determined enemies of power, and turned
the criminal into a pensioner on Government.
The next famous sufferer at
the pillory was a man of very different stamp. In
1703, the Government offered a reward of fifty pounds
for the apprehension of a certain spare,
brown-complexioned hose-factor, the author of a
scandalous and seditious pamphlet, entitled The
Shortest Way with the Dissenters. Rather than his
printer and publisher should suffer in his stead,
honest Daniel Defoe gave himself up, and was
sentenced
to be pilloried three times; and on the 29th of July
the daring satirist stood unabashed, but not carless,
on the pillory in Cheapside�the punishment being
repeated two days afterwards in the Temple, where a
sympathizing crowd flung garlands, instead of rotten
eggs and garbage, at the stout-hearted pamphleteer,
drank his health with acclamations, while his noble
Hymn to the Pillory was passed from hand to hand, and
many a voice recited the stinging lines:
'Tell them the men that
placed him here
Are scandals to the times;
Are at a loss to find his guilt,
And can't commit his crimes!'
Even his bitterest foes bear
witness to Defoe's triumph. One Tory rhymester
exclaims:
All round him Philistines
admiring stand,
And keep their Dagon safe from Israel's hand;
They, dirt themselves, protected him from filth,
And for the faction's money drank his health.'
The subjects of this
ignominious punishment did not always escape so
lightly; when there was nothing to excite the sympathy
of the people in their favour�still more when there
was something in their case which the people regarded
with antipathy and disgust � they ran great danger of
receiving severer punishment than the law intended to
inflict. In 1756, two thief-takers, named Egan and
Salmon, were exposed in Smithfield for perjury, and
were so roughly treated by the drovers, that Salmon
was severely bruised, and Egan died of the injuries he
received. In 1763, a man was killed in a similar way
at Bow, and in 1780 a coachman, named Read, died on
the pillory at Southwark before his time of exposure
had expired.
The form of judgment expressed
that the offender should be set 'in and upon the
pillory;' and in 1759, the sheriff of Middlesex was
fined �50 and imprisoned for two months, for not
confining Dr.
Shebbeare's neck and arms in the
pillory, and for allowing the doctor's servant to
supply his master with refreshment, and shelter him
with an umbrella. A droll circumstance connected with
the punishment may here be introduced. A man being
condemned to the pillory in or about Elizabeth's time,
the foot-board on which he was placed proved to be
rotten, and down it fell, leaving him hanging by the
neck in danger of his life. On being liberated he
brought an action against the town for the
insufficiency of its pillory, and recovered damages.
We have in our possession a
dateless pamphlet (apparently about 1790), entitled A
Warning to the Fair Sex, or the Matrimonial Deceiver,
being the History of the noted George Miller, who
was
married to upwards of thirty different women, on
purpose to plunder Mein. It gives a detail of the
procedure of Mr. Miller, which simply consisted in his
addressing a love-letter to his intended victim,
seeking an interview, and declaring that since he saw
her life was insupportable, unless under the hope of
obtaining her affections.
It seldom took more than
a
week to secure a new wife for this fellow, and usually
in three days more he had bagged all her money and
deserted her. Most of the thirty wives were servants
with accumulations of wages. George at length was
prosecuted by an indignant female, possessed of rather
more determination than the rest, and his punishment
was�the pillory.
The frontispiece represents him in
this exalted situation, with a crowd of women of the
humbler class � his seraglio, we presume � pelting him
with mud, which some are seen raking from the kennel.
The helpless, miserable expression of the face
projected from a board blackened with dirt, entreating
mercy from those who had none to give, might have been
an admirable subject for
Hogarth.
In 1814, Lord Cochrane, so
unjustly convicted as a party to an attempted fraud on
the Stock Exchange, was sentenced to the pillory. His
parliamentary colleague, Sir Francis Burdett,
told the
Government that if that portion of the sentence were
carried into effect, he would stand in the pillory by
Lord Cochrane's side, and they must be responsible for
the consequences. The authorities discreetly took the
hint, and con-tented themselves with degrading,
fining, and imprisoning the hero.
A pillory is still standing at
the back of the market-place of Coleshill,
Warwickshire, and another lies with the town engine in
an unused chancel of Eye Church, Sussex. The latter is
said to have been last used in 1813.