Free Tyburn: London's Fatal Tree by Alan Brooke Page B

predominantly rural location at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The ‘Triple Tree’ continued to bear its gory fruit. Among the many felons executed at Tyburn there was a continuing presence of Catholics dying for their beliefs even if the state designated them as traitors.
    One such victim was Anne Line, disowned by her family for embracing Catholicism. She became the housekeeper of premises in London owned by Father John Gerard, a leading Jesuit. He had been arrested and placed in the Tower but had managed to escape in 1597. When the authorities began to suspect Anne’s involvement with clandestine Catholic activities, she moved to another house which became a rallying point for recusants. On 2 February 1601 a group of Catholics was about to celebrate Mass in her house when the pursuivants or priest-catchers broke in. The altar prepared for the ceremony was all the evidence that was needed for the arrest of Anne, who was indicted for harbouring a priest. On 27 February 1601, she was taken to Tyburn and hanged with the Catholic priests Mark Barkworth and Roger Filcock. She continued vigorously to declare her faith right until the end.
    In 1606 Robert Drury was offered his life if he would only take the new oath drawn up under the rule of James I which required him as a Catholic to swear allegiance to the King as Head of the Church of England. Pope Paul V condemned the oath ‘as containing many things contrary to the Faith and Salvation’. Drury felt that his conscience would not permit him to take the oath and he died a martyr at Tyburn on 26 February 1607. It was declared that he and other prisoners were to be
    Laid upon a hurdle and so drawne to the place of execution … then to have their secrets cut off and with their entrails thrown into the fire before their faces, their heads to be severed from their bodies, which severally should be divided into four quarters.
    (Harleian Misc. 1809: 46)
    For the occasion of his public demise Drury wore a new black cassock and shoes. He declaimed somewhat unctuously from the gallows that he had never told a lie but then added, after a pause pregnant with second thoughts, ‘not willingly’. A year later Thomas Garnet was also offered his life if he would take the oath but he refused. He was executed with several coiners but casting aside the slight to his religious beliefs that this involved, on the gallows he announced that he was ‘the happiest man this day alive’. In 1610 John Roberts, a Benedictine priest who was found guilty of illegally ministering in England, was hanged and quartered at Tyburn with sixteen other prisoners who had committed a range of criminal offences and was supposedly buried with them in a common grave, although the story is that his remains were later recovered and eventually reinterred at Douai.
    Although accounts of the last dying speeches and the actions of the condemned on the gallows were used by officialdom for propaganda purposes, they sometimes offer useful insights into the interaction between the prisoners, the officials and the crowd. John Roberts had used the gallows to preach a valedictory sermon which so impressed the sheriff that he rebuked hecklers in the crowd who wanted him to stop. The sheriff had made it clear that Roberts would be permitted to say anything that he wanted ‘so long as he speaketh well of the Kinge’. Such concessions could be abused. In 1612 when the priest John Almond was about to be hanged, the sheriff was at first inclined to prevent him from speaking but on receiving an assurance from Almond that he would not say anything offensive to the King or the state, he relented. Almond then annoyed keen Protestants in the crowd by stating that salvation was only to be found within the Church of Rome. Although there were protests at this comment, he finished by mentioning repentance which was regarded as a crucial aspect of any last dying speech. After he had expired, it was said that his heart had leapt