Behold the head of a traitor

London calling.

London Walks connecting.

This… is London.

This is London Walks.

Streets ahead.

Story time. History time.

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And a top of the morning to you. It’s October 29th.

October 29th, 1618.

It’s about 8 o’clock in the morning. We’re in the Old Palace Yard, right in front of Westminster Hall.

There’s a huge crowd of people here. A sullen, morose crowd of people.

In their midst, a twelve by twelve raised platform. It’s the centre of attention.

Well it was until just now. Here comes a procession. Making its way to the scaffold. Some 60 guards. Guarding one man. And with him, a few people who are clearly participants rather than spectators. Main actors. One of them is the Dean of Westminster. Another is the Sheriff. And then there’s a big, stern, masked, hard-looking man carrying an axe. The crowd parts to let them pass through, make their way to the scaffold. Go up the steps onto that 12 by 12 platform. The prisoner – the condemned man – for it is he, Sir Walter Raleigh – has spent his last night in the Gatehouse Prison. Originally the gatehouse to Westminster Abbey, it’s now maximum security, the lockup for the most treacherous of the Crown’s subjects.

Sir Walter Raleigh’s day of days had begun at 4 am with a visit from the Dean of Westminster. He’d come with glad tidings. The all-merciful king has issued a royal warrant. You won’t be hanged, drawn and quartered. It won’t be anything like that unpleasant. They’re just going to lop your head off with a sword. Good news, isn’t it.

And then the Dean blesses Sir Walter Raleigh, gives him his last communion. Sir Walter Raleigh smokes his last pipe. He’s not in the least agitated or fearful. He shrugs off what’s about to happen to him. He says death is simply another journey to be taken.

He’s almost jolly. He says he has every intention of persuading the world that he died an innocent man.

He has a good hearty breakfast. A dish of fried steaks and roasted eggs and burned sack. That’s white fortified wine taken with treacle and hazel-nut sugar.

And then it’s time to get his gear on, dress for his final performance. He wears a night-cap, a ruff band, a hare-coloured satin double, with a black wrought waistcoat under it; a pair of black cut taffeta breeches, a pair of ash-coloured silk stockings, and a wrought black velvet gown.

That wrought black velvet gown is a nightgown. Appropriate because Sir Walter Raleigh is going to his final rest. Oh and he wears a diamond ring given to him by Queen Elizabeth.

On his way to the scaffold, like a modern tennis star giving his wrist-band to a fan, Raleigh gives his nightcap to a bald well-wisher. He says, “thou has more need of it now than I.”

The execution is scheduled for nine o’clock. Walter Raleigh and his supporting cast climb up onto the scaffold at eight o’clock. All eyes on him, all ears straining, he’ll speak for 45 minutes. Proclaiming his innocence. He opens his remarks by saying how ‘indebted’ he was to ‘his Majesty who had permitted him to die in this public place, where he might with freedom disburden himself.

Fifteen minutes to go. The public address is over. Sir Walter Raleigh bows his head in prayer. He prays up to the very end. Well almost the very end.

The time has come. The sheriff clears the scaffold. Of all but the essential players. Bizarrely, Sir Walter Raleigh seems to have donned several pieces of headgear that morning. He throws his hat to an old acquaintance in the crowd. If you please, think of Andy Murray tossing those wristbands to the fans. He gives his stitched cap to Robert Smith, his servant during all those years that he was locked up in the Tower of London. He hands his purse to an old man who stands beside him on the scaffold. And now the moment is approaching. He takes off his satin doublet. He takes of his black velvet nightgown.

And then – the unforgettable moment – he says to the executioner, “let me see the axe.” He runs his finger along it, to make sure it’s sharp. There are two versions of what he said. One of them has him saying, “this will cure all sorrows.” And then he kisses the blade. And lays it down. The other eyewitness account reported him saying, “this is a sharp medicine, a physician for all sorrows.”

The axeman is trembling. Sir Walter pats him on the back. Buck up man. You can do it. It’s all right.

Sir Walter Raleigh is offered a blindfold. He refuses it. He’s going to look death in the eye.

He has no fear of the axe and he’s not going to tremble at its shadow.

He kneels down. To see how the block fits him. The executioner kneels down with him and asks his forgiveness. Sir Walter Raleigh forgives him. They embrace. Raleigh tells the axeman, “strike when I give the sign.” The execution tells him to lay his face towards the east. Sir Walter Raleigh says, “no matter how the head lie, so the heart be right.” And then he gives the sign. Thrusts his arms forward. Nothing happens. Raleigh rebukes the executioner. “What do you fear?” Strike, man, strike.

It takes two blows of the axe to sever the head.

Her husband’s head is given to Sir Walter Raleigh’s wife. She’s keeps it in a velvet-lined red leather bag. Carries round with her. Keeps it until she dies. The heirloom then passes to their son. He keeps it until he dies. He’s buried with his father. Well, with the rest of his father. There in St Margaret’s, right there just yards from the execution site. It’s a reunion of sorts. Because the head is buried with Sir Walter Raleigh’s son and the rest of Sir Walter.

Anything else? Well, we’ve just scratched the surface of this tale. How it came about that Sir Walter Raleigh had that 9 am, October 29th, 1618 appointment with the executioner is of course an interesting and important matter in its own right. But that’s maybe for another day. Let’s just end by answering the question, why Old Palace Yard, why there? Because of Guy Fawkes, the greatest traitor in English history, that’s why. It was right there, just 13 years earlier that Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators had tried to blow up parliament and the king at the State Opening of Parliament. Right about this time of the year, November 5th, 1605. Remember, remember the 5th of November. Simon will of course be doing a Guy Fawkes walk come the appointed hour. Well, two of them actually. And it was in Old Palace Yard was executed. And that time, the ever merciful, the oh so merciful King James did not commute the sentence. Guy Fawkes got the full monte. So to speak. But executing Sir Walter Raleigh, it was a way of saying, what a heinous, monstrous traitor Sir Walter Raleigh was, he was in the same league as Guy Fawkes.

Except he wasn’t of course. When the axeman held up Sir Walter Raleigh’s head and said, “behold the head of a traitor” the standard response from the assembled crowd was, “God save the king.” The crowd that day was silent. They didn’t like what they’d seen, they didn’t like what had happened to a great fellow Englishman. Sir Walter Raleigh’s ghost will follow the King’s son to his beheading some 31 years later. Will be looking on.   

course an inIt’s the focus of attention. On it are three or four men. One of them has a sword.

Beside him, a man who has less than an hour to live.

The man who’s about to die – he’s going to be decapitated – is Sir Walter Raleigh.

I expect Sir Walter Raleigh knows – as do all of us in the crowd – Lady Luck’s smiling on Sir Walter Raleigh today. He’s caught a break.

Here’s his original sentence. This is what he thought his day would be like.

“Since you have been found guilty of these horrible treasons, the judgement of the court is that you shall be had from hence to the place whence you came, there to remain until the day of execution. And from thence you shall be drawn upon a hurdle through the open streets to the place of execution, there to be hanged and cut down alive, and your body shall be opened, your heart and bowels plucked out, and your privy members cut off, and thrown into the fire before your eyes; then your head to be stricken off from your body, and your body shall be divided into four quarters, to be disposed of at the king’s pleasure.

And God have mercy on your soul.”

In the event, that horrific sentence was commuted to beheading with a sword.

You’ve been listening to This… is London, the London Walks podcast. Emanating from www.walks.com –

home of London Walks,

London’s signature

walking tour company.

London’s local, time-honoured, fiercely independent, family-owned, just-the-right-size

walking tour company.

And as long as we’re at it,

London’s multi-award-winning walking tour company. Indeed, London’s only award-winning walking tour company.

And here’s the secret: London Walks is essentially run as a guides’ cooperative.

That’s the key to everything.

It’s the reason we’re able to attract and keep the best guides in London. You can get schlubbers to do this for £20 a walk. But you cannot get world-class guides – let alone accomplished professionals.

It’s not rocket science:

you get what you pay for.

And just as surely,

you also get what you don’t pay for.

Back in 1968 when we got started

we quickly came to a fork in the road. We had to answer a searching question:

Do we want to make the most money? Or do we want to be the best walking tour company in the world?

You want to make the most money you go the schlubbers route. You want to be the best walking tour company in the world

you do whatever you have to do

to attract and keep

the best guides in London –

you want them guiding for you,

not for somebody else.

Bears repeating:

the way we’re structured –

a guides’ cooperative –

is the key to the whole thing.

It’s the reason for all those awards, it’s the reason people who know go with London Walks, it’s the reason we’ve got a big following,

a lively, loyal, discerning following – quality attracts quality.

It’s the reason we’re able – uniquely – to front our walks with accomplished, in many cases

distinguished professionals:

By way of example, Stewart Purvis, the former Editor

(and subsequently CEO) of Independent Television News.

And Lisa Honan, who had a distinguished career as a diplomat (Lisa was the Governor of St Helena, the island where Napoleon breathed his last and, some say, had his penis amputated –

Napoleon didn’t feel a thing – if thing’s the mot juste – he was dead.)

Stewart and Lisa –

both of them CBEs –

are just a couple of our headline acts.

Or take our Ripper Walk. It’s the creation of the world’s leading expert on Jack the Ripper, Donald Rumbelow, the author of the definitive book on the subject.  Britain’s most distinguished crime historian, Donald is, in the words of The Jack the Ripper A to Z,“internationally recognised as the leading authority on Jack the Ripper.” Donald’s emeritus now but he’s still the guiding light on our Ripper Walk. He curates the walk. He trains up and mentors our Ripper Walk guides. Fields any and all questions they throw at him.

The London Walks Aristocracy of Talent – its All-Star team of guides – includes a former London Mayor. It includes the former Chief Music Critic for the Evening Standard. It includes the Chair of the Association of Professional Tour Guides. And the former chair of the Guild of Guides.

It includes barristers, doctors, geologists, museum curators, a former Museum of London archaeologist, historians,

university professors (one of them a distinguished Cambridge University paleontologist); it includes

criminal defence lawyers,

Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre actors,

a bevy of MVPs, Oscar winners (people who’ve won the big one, the Guide of the Year Award)…

well, you get the idea.

As that travel writer famously put it, “if this were a golf tournament,

every name on the Leader Board would be a London Walks guide.”

And as we put it: London Walks Guides make the new familiar

and the familiar new.

And on that agreeable note…

come then, let us go forward together on some great London Walks.

And that’s by way of saying, Good walking and Good Londoning

one and all. See ya next time.

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