it is really too great a task to follow the history of salisbury through the centuries to the present time; nor, indeed, since the city and the cathedral are from our present point of view but incidents along the exeter road, would it be desirable to dwell very long on their story, which, as may have been judged from what has already been said, is an exceedingly turbulent one. the fearful martyrdoms carried out in fisherton fields by the bloody hell-hounds of the marian persecution still stain the records of the church; nor, although the very reading of them turn brain and body sick, and make even the architectural enthusiast almost turn away in disgust from that lovely cathedral, may god grant{174} that they ever be forgotten, as in the england of to-day they would almost seem to be. hellish ferocity, damnable frauds, how they smirch those sculptured stones and cry insistently for remembrance!
nicholas shaxton, bishop in the time of henry the eighth, was alive to it all, and cleared away the false relics; the ‘stinking boots, mucky combs, ragged rochetts, rotten girdles, pyled purses, great bullocks’ horns, locks of hair, filthy rags, and gobbets of wood,’ which he found here; but, with less courage than others, he recanted in mary’s reign. sherfield, recorder of salisbury, was another reformer, but he lived in less dangerous times for such men. it was in 1629 that he smashed the stained-glass window, representing the creation, in st. edmund’s church. in other times he would assuredly have been burnt for this act; as it was, he was summoned before the star chamber. he pleaded that the window did not contain a true history of the creation, and objected that god was represented as ‘a little old man in a long blue coat,’ which he held was ‘an indignity offered to almighty god.’ he was committed to the fleet prison for this, fined ￡500, and required to apologise to the bishop of salisbury. fortunate mr. sherfield!
murder of the hartgills
this fair city has been almost as much of a golgotha as the settlements of savage african kinglets are wont to be. shakespeare has made mention of the execution of the duke of buckingham here in 1484 by richard the third, but many an one has suffered and left no such trace. that such executions were generally unjust and almost always too{175} severe is their sufficient condemnation; but the hanging of charles, lord stourton, in 1556, is an exception. the affair for which he was put to death was the murder of the two hartgills, father and son, at kilmington, somerset, and it affords an unusually instructive glimpse into the manners of the period. it seems that william hartgill had long been steward to the previous lord stourton, the father of charles. like most stewards, he had profited by his stewardship, over and above his salary, to a considerable extent. there was no friendship wasted between him and the new lord, but the quarrels which had taken place between william hartgill and his son on the one side, and charles, lord stourton, and his servants on the other, finally came to a head when my lord demanded a written undertaking from his mother that she would never marry again, and that hartgill should be bond for the undertaking being kept. the widowed lady stourton was residing at the hartgills’ house when this demand was made. she refused to have anything to do with such a paper, and hartgill bluntly declined as well. lord stourton would then appear to have determined on revenge for this defeat, and eventually, after the hartgills had been on several occasions waylaid, threatened, and attacked by his servants, he conceived the devilish plan of a pretended reconciliation over this and other disputes in the village churchyard of kilmington, the occasion to be used as a means of taking them off their guard, and finally disposing of them. the two victims were suspicious of this apparent friendliness; but, unhappily for them,{176} eventually agreed to meet in that god’s acre, on 12th january 1556, there to settle all accounts and differences. they met, and, at a previously arranged signal, lord stourton’s servants rushed upon the hartgills and stabbed and battered them to death in a revoltingly cruel manner, while their master looked on with approval. the details of this cold-blooded atrocity are fully set forth in the trials of that period, for the satisfaction of any one greedy of horrors.
the devil’s health
this was in the reign of queen mary, when protestants were burned at the stake with the approval of roman catholics; but not even in those brutal times could this affair be hushed up. lord stourton was arrested, brought to trial in london, and, together with four of his servants, found guilty of murder, and sentenced to death. justice was commendably swift. the two hartgills had been done to death on the 12th of january, and on the second day of march in the same year my lord set out under escort from the tower of london for salisbury, the place of execution. the melancholy cavalcade came down the exeter road, the chief figure in it set astride a horse, with legs and arms pinioned. the first night they lay at hounslow, the second at staines, the third at basingstoke, and thence to salisbury, where, in the market place, on the morning of the 6th of march, they hanged him with a silken cord. his servants were turned off at the end of quite common hempen ropes, which doubtless did their business quite as neatly. the body of this prime malefactor, the organiser of the crime, was{177} buried with much ceremony in the cathedral, but those of the lesser criminals were treated (we may suppose) with less reverence, because you may search the building in vain for tomb or epitaph to their memory. but—quaintest touch of all—the silken rope by which lord stourton swung was suspended here, over his tomb, where it remained for many a long year afterwards.
the next outstanding landmark in the way of executions is the hanging of a prisoner who had just been awarded a sentence when he threw a brickbat at the chief justice. his lordship was considerably damaged and for this assault pronounced sentence of death upon him. the execution took place at once, outside the council house, the unfortunate man’s right hand being first struck off.
the civil war did not result in anything very tragical for salisbury, the operations in and around the city being quite unimportant. the ‘catherine wheel inn,’ however, was the scene of much alarm among the superstitious, when, according to a gruesome story, the cavaliers assembled there, having toasted the king and the royal family, proceeded to drink the health of the devil,—and the devil appeared, the room becoming filled with ‘noisome fumes of sulphur, and a hideous monster, which was the devil, no doubt,’ entering, and grabbing the giver of the toast, flying away with him out of the window.
salisbury was the scene of penruddocke’s rising for the king in 1655. he was a county gentleman, of compton chamberlayne, and with some others and a{178} band of a hundred and fifty horsemen, rode into the city at four o’clock in the morning of 14th march. they seized the judges of assize in their beds, opened the doors of the prison, and imprisoned the judges in the place of the released convicts. then, finding the citizens too timid to join them in their revolt against cromwell, they sped across country, into devon, where they were captured.
charles the second was welcomed by salisbury’s citizens, just as they welcomed every one else; practising with much success st. paul’s admirable precept, to be ‘all things to all men.’ when james the second came here, on his way to meet, and fight, the prince of orange, he was escorted, with every show of deference and respect, to his lodgings at the bishop’s palace by the mayor, and when he had slunk away, and the prince came, less than four weeks later, and was lodged in the same house, the same mayor did precisely the same thing.
from the beginning of the seventeenth century onward the citizens began to dearly love kings and great personages, or, if they did not love them, effectually pretended to do so. when plague ravaged the city of london, no one coming from that direction was allowed to enter salisbury, and even salisbury’s own citizens returning home from that infected centre were obliged to remain outside for three months, while goods were not permitted to be brought nearer than three mile hill. but charles the second and his court, flying from london from the disease, were welcomed all the same!
