ing on that landing with his back to this door of the Hall, he will see opposite him the balustrade of the landing, over which he can look down to the ground floor below. On his left will be the flight of stairs by which he has ascended to the landing, the stairs which were placed there in 1798 by James Wyatt. If now he will suppose those stairs removed and will extend the landing and its balustrade over the place where the stairs were situated, until the landing and balustrade reach the west wall of the annexe, he will not require to be a Scotsman to consider that he is standing on a balcony. Now, he has only to make a window in the west wall of the annexe (where there is none at present) above the end of the extended landing, and he may be surprised to find how correctly that window might be described as the window of the landing, or balcony. Through this window, if he looks out, he will see Whitehall Street and the Horse Guards buildings, opposite. Next, in continuing the transformation, he must move the whole altered structure, viz., the extended landing, and the west wall of the annexe with the window he has newly made in it, nearer to Whitehall street, until the west wall of the annexe is only two or three feet behind the west façade of the Banqueting House.

This movement of structures will bring the landing (or balcony) opposite the west doorway in the north wall of the Hall, which doorway is now a cupboard built up at the back, and the condition of affairs, as he has altered them, will then represent how they were, approximately, in the time of

Charles I.

Now, if he breaks down the piece of wall beneath the window he has made in the west wall of the annexe, to the level of the landing or balcony floor, he will have a door-window, formed partly of window and partly of broken down wall. If next a platform be erected along the adjacent front of the Banqueting House, and prolonged for a few feet to the north of the north-west corner of the House, then the two or three feet of space intervening between this platform and the door-window can be easily bridged by a few " planks," on which it will be a very simple matter to walk out from the balcony, through the doorwindow to the platform. He will then have passed through a reconstructed door-window, formed partly of the "window of the balcony,' ," and partly of the wall purposely broken downe at ye north end of the roome,' as was the opening on the 30th January, 1649.

It is clear that there must have been some method of bridging the short space between the door-window and the scaffold platform. The King is said to have come out on planks, in a contemporary manuscript, which, if correct, would have been a simple and convenient method of making the crossing and one that might naturally be conjectured, but how the short bridge was actually constructed is of small importance.

If, after what has been stated, there is still doubt as to the landing at the north end of the Hall being the "balcony "the Scotsmen referred to, the question may be asked, Where then was the balcony they mentioned? It certainly was not the slightly projecting stonework in the central portion of the House on the west front, which projection extends from the ground to the roof, and embraces three of the windows in each of the three rows along the front, for at no place in this projecting stonework are there found the essential features of a balcony, viz., "a projection from a wall of a house, either externally or internally, protected by a balustrade or railing, and forming a floor on which one or more persons may stand.

There is no structure connected with the Hall, and never has been such, that could be called a balcony, where the King could have been brought out to the western front, except a landing at the north end.

As regards the inscribed plate, under the central window on the west front of the Banqueting House, MR. BERESFORD says that my informant, the sergeant at the Banqueting House, is wrong as to the date of the fixing of the plate, and that the reason given why the plate was put where it is now situated is also an error. I think it is quite possible that MR. BERESFORD is referring to a different time and event concerning this plate, from those I referred to, as I shall show presently.

I

I said I could not vouch for the accuracy of the details the sergeant gave me, but that I had no reason to doubt their correctness. have again seen the sergeant, and he said that if 1897 was not the date when the plate was fixed, it must have been quite close to that time, which he estimated from the date of the resignation of one of the Secretaries of the United Service Institution, which took place about a year after the plate was put under the window. The sergeant is a steady Scotsman, and as regards his other details concerning the plate, I do not doubt what he said. He told me of how he was at first blamed by the Secretary when it was found

that the plate had been put under the centre window, until it was understood that it was the foreman of the works who was at fault. The latter, as I have stated, raised objections to changing the plate, and it was left where he put it.

that

Within the last few weeks I asked a relative, who was Adjutant of the Black Watch when this sergeant was in the regiment, if he remembers the sergeant, and he says he recollects him very well and his memory of him is that he was a very good non-commissioned officer, reliable and trustworthy. The sergeant, who is about to retire, is now the only man on the staff of the Banqueting House who was there when the plate was fixed. I asked him if he ever heard of anything that happened subsequent to the fixing of the plate which might have occasioned its being left in the place where it was put, in or about 1897, but he said he knew of nothing in respect. I made enquiries at the Office of Works about this plate, and the official I saw there, who takes an interest in such questions, said he would have the matter looked into and let me know the result, but I did not subsequently hear from him. Since, however, I have been at the Office of Works, I have heard from a trustworthy source, unnecessary to specify, that some years after the plate was put under the centre window of the Hall, an application was made to the Works Department to have it taken down and fixed elsewhere on the Hall front, but the Office replied that the opinion of the Department was that it was not worth while moving the plate from where it now is, and nothing was done in the matter.

As the plate refers to "the Scaffold erected in front of this spot," its statement is not historically correct.

It seems possible that MR. BERESFORD may have heard of this later event, and that it is to this he referred, and not to the earlier circumstances mentioned by the sergeant, to which my article called attention, and which were quite different in time and details from those of the later occurrence.

In concluding these remarks, I may say that having made an immense search through records, manuscripts, papers, and printed works connected with the Banqueting House and the death of Charles I, and having examined very fully the structure of the House, and traced back, with the aid of maps, plans, and drawings, the alterations made in the building and its connexions since the seventeenth century, I have not the slightest

doubt that the King passed to his death from the Hall in the way I have stated, and that the scaffold was erected on the western front of the House in the position I have indicated. I am convinced there is no evidence in England to refute either of these statements.

It was a very simple plan that was adopted for bringing the King from the Hall, and required no special intelligence on the part of the Parliament men who devised it. They already had as an example, the instance of the fencers in the reign of James I using the window in the same place in the first Hall, for going out to their encounters western front.

London.

on

CHARLES HERBERT THOMPSON.

the

BURIAL OF CHARLES I (cliii. 460; cliv. 13). There are two slight errors in my reply to DR. COCK.

1. The Perfect Diurnall (not Occurrences) said, on Thursday, Feb. 1, "The Kings head is sowed on and his body removed to St James's and embalmed." As to Trapham, who embalmed the King's body, if DR. Cock refers to the Calendars of State Papers from 1654 to 1658, inclusive, I think he will probably agree with me in thinking that this man also embalmed Cromwell. If so, the process was the same, in both cases.

66

2. I also forgot to notice that Sanderson said that the King's body was coffined in lead at St. James's. But this is more likely to have been done at Windsor, after the Duke of Richmond's arrival, on the afternoon of the 8th, the day preceding the funeral; and, if so, would explain the absence of an outer coffin.

Perfect Occurrences for 26 Jan.-2 Feb., stated, under the date of Wednesday (Jan. 31), "The Commons were acquainted that the King desired of Col. Tomblinson [sic] that his body might be embalmed and laid by because, perhaps, his son Charles might come over to inter him. The House referred it to a Committee. A Committee was appointed to consider of the King's body and other things relating thereto.'

Everything was done by Committee at this time. And the Committees do not always seem to have agreed.

It may interest MR. AMBROSE HEAL to know that the frontispiece to the 1875 issue is the identical steel engraved view of the Devil Tavern in Fleet Street, which figures in the much discussed second and revised edition of 1855, of J. H. Burn's Catalogue of the Beaufoy Tokens in the Guildhall Library.

Price's first volume was printed by Taylor and Francis, of Red Lion Court, Fleet Street, who may have been the successors of Arthur Taylor, of Coleman Street, who printed Burn's descriptive catalogue, and who doubtless had the engraved plates. Does this particular illustration appear anywhere else?

nineteenth century obsolete country banker's I have one or two engraved proofs of early cheques, which I shall be pleased to give MR. MANCHÉE if he will communicate with E. E. NEWTON.

me.

I desire you to pay unto Mr. Tho. Pigot or his order three days after sight of this the summe of forty pounds & place it to the account of £10:00:00 GAINSBOROUGH.

Your Servant,

For Sr Francifs Child at his house near Temple Barr This varies somewhat from the example given by MR. W. H. MANCHÉE at the last

reference.

In F. G. Hilton Price's The Mary Gold by Temple Bar,' published in 1902, are several reproductions, in facsimile, of similar old cheques, with such endings as Your Humble Servant, Oxford"; "Your Assured friend, Bolton " your affectionate Friend, Bedford" your Affectionate friend to serve Brereton you, ; "Yr. Ser. & friend, Castlemaine "; "Your humble servant, Chesterfield "; and Yr. real friend & Servant, Robert Feilding "-most of these being of the early part of the eighteenth century, with a few of the latter part of the preceding

one.

In Hilton Price's earlier work, Temple Bar, or Some Account of Ye Mary Gold, No. 1 Fleet Street,' published in 1875, a draft of the Earl of Gainsborough's of 1705 is reproduced; it is in exactly the same terms and style as the one I have already given, but for some reason or another it is not included in his much larger and fuller edition of 1902.

It appears in The Weekly Journal, or Saturday's Post for Jan. 4, 1724, and several succeeding issues, and relates to the sale of an "Italian Bolus, a quack medicine said to cure numerous diseases, of which a long list is given. The advertisement concludes with the statement that this nostrum

Is to be had only at the Flaming Sword, the Corner of Russel-Street, over against Will's

Coffee-house, Covent Garden; and if sold at any other Place is Counterfeit.

Referring to the meaning of the word "drawer," I cannot quite bring myself to the belief that, when used by itself, it means a pattern drawer," or, still less, a gold and silver wire-drawer," for is not the work of each of these quite distinct in character?

Surely the original members of the Worshipful Company of Gold and Silver Wire Drawers were not delineators or limners of patterns on velvet, silk or linen; did they not make gold and silver wire?

Connected with the advertisement I have quoted, this Flaming Sword, I think, could hardly have been a gold and silver wire drawer's, or a sword cutler's; were not these tradesmen far too respectable to have anything to do with the nauseous nostrum sold there? It might have been the quack's own place of business, or a small publican's. E. E. NEWTON.

Hampstead, Upminster, Essex.