Roaring Boys at the Mermaid

I

‘The constable is an arrant rogue, an unseasonable rogue. I have been at the cutting of a thousand better men’s throats than his. And I hope to live to be at the cutting of a hundred thousand better men’s throats than his within this city.’

What eye would not be arrested by a declaration so vivacious and a wish so devout? Thrashing about in the thick parchment-and-paper foliage of the Elizabethan records in Chancery Lane, intent on the hunt which ended with the discovery that Shakespeare’s familiar friend, William Johnson the vintner, was no other than the host of the Mermaid Tavern, I ran upon these engaging speeches about the constable. They were part of a story of how a company of wild young sparks drank themselves quarrelsome at the Mermaid, and went whooping and hallooing through the midnight streets of London, to give bloody battle to a constable and his officers until they were overpowered.

Stories like this one make us regret that Shakespeare and his fellow playwrights lived before the day of the newspaper. Properly to measure their achievement in creating those vigorous and enthralling dramatic pictures of London life, we feel the need of hearing actual Elizabethans — the raw material of the dramatist — speak for themselves, and tell us of experience as it seemed to them. It is true that the surviving letters, memoirs, and pamphlets do much to satisfy us; yet among the manuscript records of trials in Shakespeare’s London we find something more vivid than the newspaper — the depositions of witnesses. Here is a mine of living information, a mine still virtually unexplored. Here from Elizabethan lips we have racy, firsthand reports of remarkable passages of life, of accidents and crimes, all smacking of actuality; characters in search of an author; that

But why has this particular Star Chamber record of a very stirring brawl a stronger attraction for us than other exciting trials — for example, the story of a deer-stealing, or of a duel with rapiers in Moorfields? Well, we have already seen that the action here leads off at the Mermaid Tavern, beloved of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. What is more, in the cloud of witnesses we shall find the testimony of Richard Kitchen, the lawyer who, as we remember, once gave bail for Christopher Marlowe, when that reckless young dramatist was in collision with the law.¹ Further, we shall listen to William Johnson, Shakespeare’s newly discovered friend. And finally, in the chief offender, Sir Edmond Bainham, we shall make the acquaintance of a notable ‘angry boy’ and conspirator, a man who within the year following was condemned to death for his part in the treason of the Earl of Essex; inadvisedly pardoned, he lived to be deeply implicated in Guy Fawkes’s Gunpowder Plot. But to our story.

II

Scene, the Mermaid Tavern in Bread Street, London, kept by William Williamson.

Time, Tuesday, March 18, 1600. Six o’clock in the evening.

Our first witness of what went on that night is ‘poor deceased Kit Marlowe’s’ friend, Richard Kitchen, gentleman, aged forty-six, who says: ‘[While I was] walking with William Williamson in his house at “the Mermaid” in Bread Street, Sir Edmond Bainham came into the house; upon whose coming Williamson said to me, “Here is company coming in: and I had as list have their room as their company, for they will expect to have music here; and they shall not have any in my house.” And presently after Sir Edmond there came two or three more of the company, whereof one of them said, “God’s wounds! what shall we do in this house? for here we shall have neither music nor dicing, for the good man of this house is the precisest [i.e. most puritanical] man in England. We had better have gone to any tavern in London than to have come hither.” Sir Edmond and his company came to the house to supper about six of the clock in the evening, or somewhat after; and presently Williamson went from me and told me that he would go to his men and give order that there should no musicians come unto them.’

Master Williamson need be no Puritan to look askance at the six wild young gentlemen with rapiers and daggers under their cloaks, who, followed by their servants, swaggered into the Mermaid, bent on wine, music, and dice. The leaders, Sir Edmond Bainham and Captain Dutton (though the tavern keeper did not know it), were fresh from service in Ireland under the Earl of Essex, slaughtering kerns and gallowglasses. A third, Tom Badger, was not far behind them in truculence.

Williamson wanted no noise, quarreling, or bloodshed in his house, and might take Dame Quickly’s protest against Pistol out of her mouth: ‘If he swagger, let him not come here: no, by my faith; I must live amongst my neighbours: I’ll no swaggerers: I am in good name and fame with the very best. Shut the door; there comes no swaggerers here: I have not lived all this while to have swaggering now: shut the door, I pray you.’ He wished he had not let these swaggerers in; but at least he could and would shut the door against fiddlers, whose intoxicating strains would stir wine-flown spirits to unruliness; and he gave his eldest servants Johnson and Aldrich orders to that effect.

Lawyer Kitchen took his leave of the master of the tavern, and departed to his lodging. Climbing to an upper chamber of the house, the swaggering six fell to their belly-cheer, and sent the drawers skipping with calls for wine, wine, and still wine. The shades of night closed down; the moon rose over Bread Street, and the arrogant spirits of Bainham, Dutton, Badger, and their cronies rose with it. To crown their revels, they would have music; and a little before nine one of them dispatched a servant of his to fetch a ‘noise’ or band of fiddlers. (Remember how Shakespeare has the First Drawer of the Boar’s-Head Tavern say to the Second Drawer: ‘See if thou canst find out Sneak’s noise; Mistress Tearsheet would fain hear some music. Dispatch!’) Let us follow this lad out on his errand, and await his return at the threshold of the house next to the tavern.

III

Williamson’s next-door neighbor is a very old friend, a forty-seven-year-old pewterer named Robert Sheppard, who has known Williamson — apprentice and afterward householder at the Mermaid — these thirty years (ever since 1570, when Shakespeare was a small boy). As for character, he can say that ‘Williamson hath, ever since he was a householder there, behaved himself very honestly and orderly in the well ordering of his house and family as any man of his trade in London, and doth not maintain any carding or dicing in his house.’ Sheppard is sitting at his door in quiet converse with Robert Payne, another neighbor (who has known Williamson for a score of years), when the fiddlers, found by the roisterers’ emissary, arrive, and the trouble begins.

Payne testifies: ‘[Sitting with Sheppard] at the next door to Williamson’s house, about nine of the clock at night, I did see certain musicians come thither with a servant of one of the gentlemen, and would have come in, but could not be permitted by Williamson and his servants; whereupon the musicians, or the servant which came thither with them, made a great noise by bouncing at the door with their heels, the door being made fast against them.’ Payne and Sheppard came up to see what the row was about, and were joined by Edward Prescott, another neighbor. Prescott says, ‘I reproved the servingman for the disorder and noise, who answered me that he was sent about his master’s business, and his master’s business he would do.’

In the upshot, Williamson let in his three neighbors and the serving-man, but none of the fiddlers. He was much perturbed by the mounting racket abovestairs. Apprehensive potboys brought word that the loud supper party was getting dangerously out of hand, and one of the neighbors went off for the parish constable, one John Weston, a draper, who had retired for the night.

Constable Weston testifies, ‘ I was called out of my bed about nine of the clock at night by some of my neighbors, to go to the said Williamson’s house, who told me there was some misdemeanor committed, and likely to be some mischief done. Whereupon, with as much convenient speed as I could, I did repair to the said house; and as I came near unto the door, I did see divers persons standing there, who upon sight of me said, “Yonder comes the constable!” and withal ran away from the door; they being musicians, as near as I could judge by the moonlight, for I perceived them to have something under their cloaks. And then I knocked at the door and was let in, and went presently [upstairs] into the room where Badger and the rest of the gentlemen were. (I do know Thomas Badger, and have known him for the space of these two years or thereabouts, but do not know any of the other gentlemen.)

‘And upon my coming, Badger took notice of me, and complained himself to me of Williamson, that he would not suffer them to have music there. Whereupon I charged them to keep her majesty’s peace, and to behave themselves like gentlemen. And thereupon one of the gentlemen, which was said to be Sir Edmond Bainham, did desire to speak with Williamson; and presently therewithal came down into a room where Williamson was with Robert Payne, Edward Prescott, and Robert Sheppard, and there spake to Payne (thinking he had been Williamson), and told him that he was sorry that the constable was sent for; and that he thought he might have obtained so much favor as to [have] had some music there. Whereunto Williamson answered, that he did not use to permit any music in his house at that time of night. And then Sir Edmond replied and said, that if they might have so much favor as to stay there some small time, they would depart in quiet manner, without further trouble of any; — using other discreet speeches which I do not now certainly remember.

‘And further, Williamson willed me to persuade them to go quietly out of the house, for that he was afraid they would do some hurt to him or his wife or servants; and said further to me, that he would willingly give them their reckoning to be quietly rid of them.’

Neighbor Sheppard remembers Sir Edmond’s expressions as somewhat more offensive: ‘Taking Payne to be the master of the house, [Sir Edmond] said unto him that he knew her majesty’s laws and what belonged to government better than he did, and so he thought the rest of his company did likewise; and therefore thought himself very hardly dealt with to have a constable sent unto them.’

Obviously it was past closing time, and the tipplers knew it. But they also knew that, however much Williamson wished them gone, it would be a ticklish thing, numerous and reckless as they were, for him to try to eject them. Constable Weston, having delivered his warning and received assurances of good behavior, went home to his interrupted rest.

IV

The gallants were by now more than three parts fuddled and cup-shot. To their first grievance, the prohibition of fiddlers, had been added this second, the sending up of the constable to admonish them. The more they drank and dizzily reflected on their wrong, the more it rankled. They fell to easing ‘ their stomachs with their bitter tongues’; and when, as the night wore on, Williamson went up to reason with them, they gave him saucy and outrageous language. Constabulary interference had been the last straw; and they began to study malicious knavery — especially the annihilation of constables.

Williamson, no longer a young man, was more than tired of his heady guests. It was far past his bedtime; and about ten o’clock he called his eldest servants, William Johnson — Shakespeare’s friend, who in three years was to step in as master of the Mermaid — and Edward Aldrich, to him for their final instructions. Examined in court on the question whether the brawling began in the Mermaid, Johnson testifies: ‘Sir Edmond Bainham and his company did depart from the house of my master about eleven of the clock at night in peaceable manner. Williamson was in his chamber at such time as Sir Edmond Bainham and his company departed thence. Williamson, before he went up into his chamber, willed me and my fellow-servants to stay by them [the company], but not to reply or give any words of offence unto them, whatsoever they should say, but to bear any words which they should say as he himself had done. Neither Sir Edmond Bainham nor any other in his company did throw off their upper garments, nor did draw any manner of weapon, to my knowledge, at the time of their departure from the house.’

Young Aldrich corroborates his fellow servant Johnson as to the time of the roisterers’ departure, and gives his version ofWilliamson’s words as follows: ‘“ You know what hard words they have given me, and I do bear it; and therefore I would that by all means you do bear anything that they shall say.” And further, Sir Edmond and his company did quietly depart out of the house without casting off any of their upper garments, or drawing of any weapons, whilst they were in my sight; and so I left them, and locked up the doors after them. But Sir Edmond Bainham, before he went out of the house, did give his cloak to his man and willed him to hie him home and make a fire in his chamber, and he would come presently.’

The swashbucklers were out of the house without violence or blows struck. With what relief did Johnson and Aldrich shoot the bolts home behind the last well-dressed and drunken back! The fellow servants exchanged a look, and went up to a welcome bed. Their conjecture of the time as ‘ about eleven’ when the riotous pot companions tumbled out of the tavern is conservative, doubtless made so to soften the censure which might fall on the Mermaid for keeping late hours; for when the watch two streets away toward St. Paul’s first heard uproar in the street, it was, according to their calculation, ‘about midnight.’

V

The soft air of an early spring night recalled the winish spirits to their purpose of punishing the officers of the watch, whose duty it was to stop and question all who walked the streets of London at this late hour. When they threw their cloaks to their servants, that rapier arms might have free play, our six roaring boys were far from the cautious mood in which Valentine (in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Wit without Money) asks: ’Draw me a map from the Mermaid; I mean a midnight map to ’scape the watches.’ On the contrary, they were bent on striking terror to the hearts of all watchmen and constables who might cross their path. The more the better. And what their army lacked in numbers they made up in noise. ‘Full of supper and distempering draughts,’ and reeling-ripe for mischief, they made a formidable show with their blades flashing in the moonlight. The two men and a boy of the Friday Street watch who first sighted this warlike front rolling down upon them might be pardoned if they were tempted to follow Dogberry’s advice in Much Ado: —

Master Constable Dogberry. This is your charge: you shall comprehend all vagrom men; you are to bid any man stand, in the prince’s name.

Watch. How, if ’a will not stand?

Dogb. Why, then, take no note of him, but let him go; and presently call the rest of the watch together, and thank God you are rid of a knave.

Verges. If he will not stand when he is bidden, he is none of the prince’s subjects. . . .

Dogb. Well, you are to . . . bid those that are drunk get them to bed.

Watch. How if they will not?

Dogb. Why then, let them alone till they are sober.

The Friday Street constable was named, not Dogberry, but Doughty; and at the corner of Friday and Watling Streets he had posted James Muggins, a haberdasher aged forty-seven, Thomas Bastwicke, a sixty-year-old salter, and an apprentice. These men, outnumbered as they were, and armed only with halberds, — a blade and spearhead mounted on a long handle, — made a commendable but futile attempt to quiet the Sons of Belial, disguised as gentlemen, who descended on them.

Let Muggins tell his story: ‘About 12 of the clock at night, I and Thomas Bastwicke and one other (three watchmen under one Doughty, a constable in Friday Street), being placed at the corner of Friday Street, heard a noise of whooping and hallooing by divers persons whose names I know not; and seeing them coming with their swords drawn, without cloaks, I and the other two watchmen in my company went unto them; and then, putting off my hat, I did desire them to make less noise and to be quiet. And one of them (whose name I know not) then asked of me what I was. And I answered, “One of the Queen’s watch.” And he replied, “Then art a rogue,” and withal laid his hand upon my halberd, endeavoring to take it from me, and struck me on the head with his sword, and on the face with his hand. And one other of the company (whose name I know not) was ready with his sword to have run me through, and so had done, but that one of their company took him and turned him about.’

Bastwicke, the old watchman, corroborates Muggins’s account in detail, and adds, ‘I came to one of the company, whose name I know not [obviously Sir Edmond Bainham], with my hat in my hand, and said unto him, “Good gentleman, be quiet.” “God’s wounds!” said he, and took me by the beard, saying, “Dost thou make but a gentleman of me? I am a knight!” and withal shook me by the beard in such sort as he made my eyes water abundantly. And another of the disordered company, whose name I know not, did thrust at me with a sword or rapier, and he was called away by another of his company who said I should not be hurt because I was an old man; and so they departed.’

VI

For the ‘terrible boys’ this was no victory at all; they wanted watchmen worthy of their steel. The band turned west down Watling Street, and made for St. Augustine’s Gate into Paul’s Churchyard. To reach the Strand, where Bainham, Dutton, and Badger had their lodgings, they must pass St. Gregory’s by St. Paul’s, then down Bowyers’ Row and out through London Wall at Ludgate. Stubborn opposition, however, awaited them in Paul’s Churchyard. In that enclosure there was something more than the dark and shuttered fronts of booksellers’ shops such as the Angel, kept by Andrew Wise, which had for present sale copies of The History of Henry the Fourth. . . . With the humorous conceits of Sir John Falstaff, by William Shakespeare, a playwright who at that moment was doubtless sleeping quietly in his bed across the river in Southwark.

James Briggs, a forty-three-year-old blacksmith, constable of St. Gregory’s, was keeping watch in St. Paul’s Churchyard, with seven or more men under him. Catching the glint of drawn swords approaching from the east through St. Augustine’s Gate, Briggs told off four of his halberdiers to go and look into it.

One of these was Thomas Rice, a clothworker aged twenty-five; and he tells a lively tale as follows: ‘At midnight, James Briggs, constable in St. Gregory’s parish, together with me and others of the watch, were standing at Pullford’s door near unto Paul’s Chain; at which time we saw a company coming from Watling Street end in their doublets and hose, with their swords drawn in their hands. And thereupon James Briggs the constable sent me, Edward Smith, Hugh Williams, and one other of the watch named Jarvys, unto the said persons to inquire what the matter was. And when I and those in my company came near them, I demanded of them what they were, and what the reason was why they were with their swords drawn. Whereupon Badger, one of the company, came forth from the rest, and sware, “God’s wounds! what do you here with your halberds? If you will not stand away, I will run you through.”

’And thereupon the said Badger and his company [came] all together with their swords drawn; and I and the rest of my company kept them back with our halberds, until at last Hugh Williams, lifting up his halberd to strike at them, they brake in with their swords, and had the said Williams down. And Sir Edmond Bainham did then cut Williams in the head, and Captain Dutton with his sword or rapier ran him through the jerkin, doublet, and shirt on his right side, and yet missed his body. And Sir Edmond Bainham having gotten Williams his halberd from him, Sir Edmond and his company passed me and those which were then in my company. Whereupon Constable Briggs with the rest of his company came to rescue us. And then Sir Edmond with his halberd knocked down the said constable; and went on from thence and did hurt one Abraham Parnell, one other of the watchmen, in the wrist.’

One of these watchmen, an apprentice named Richard Exoll, adds, ‘I was knocked down with a halberd twice at the least, and was sore hurt; and I think in my conscience that Briggs had been slain if he had not been well defended by me and other watchmen.’ Bainham worked sanguinary havoc among the watch with their own weapon; but Briggs and Williams, though wounded and momentarily down, were far from out — as the rioters were soon to discover.

After hearing the watch’s view of the battle, it is interesting to read the drunken gentlemen’s very innocentand-injured account of it, prepared for their defense in court: —

‘These defendants did take the ordinary ways towards their lodgings, in which way they happened, at or about the gate which is at or near the west end of Watling Street, to come amongst certain watchmen (as since these defendants understand them to be, but at that time these defendants — it being in the night — did not on the sudden discern what they were, viz., either watchmen or others) who, without making themselves known to be the watch, or requiring these defendants (to their hearing) to stay, did bend their weapons towards these defendants as though they had a purpose to have made an assault; whereupon these defendants did draw their weapons, and afterwards some strokes passed between them, wherein these defendants (or most of them) received divers blows and wounds, to the great effusion of the blood of some of them, and some of them were stricken down divers times to the ground, so as they were all greatly astonied and amazed; which affray was committed in or on two several places in the high street, but not within the churchyard of St. Paul’s (to these defendants’ knowledge). But therein what hurt was done to others, [or] by whom and in what manner the same was done, these defendants do not know, for that the same was a sudden uproar and fury raised to the great affright and astonishment of these defendants. But if in the said affray any hurt hath been done, or offence committed by these defendants or by their means, they are heartily sorry and grieved for the same, and do in all humbleness submit themselves to the grave, honorable, and favorable censure of this most honorable Court.’

Very innocent, surprised, and apologetic. But we have yet to hear the outcome of the fray as the watch saw it.

VII

Dutton and Bainham were in a drunken fury, and struck to kill. In this crisis, as Watchman Exoll tells us, ’the watch, for safeguard of their lives, were enforced to cry out for help; and upon that cry the said disordered persons fled towards Ludgate. And I, with the constable and the rest of the watch, followed towards Ludgate, and there and near thereabouts divers of them were taken.’

The watch, although they called for help, evened up scores with Bainham and Dutton, whom they left down near Ludgate, badly damaged and unable to move, while they chased and captured Tom Badger and one William Grantham. The rest made good their escape. Several citizens — a constable and some haberdashers in and about Bowyers’ Row and Ludgate, where the running fight took place — rolled out of bed at the shouts for aid, and dashed into the dark street to lend a hand. We can piece together the details from their testimony.

Nicholas Dethicke, a haberdasher: ‘I did hear a very great outcry and uproar in the streets, and heard people cry “Murder! Murder!” Whereupon I presently arose and went forth into a place called Bowyers’ Row near Ludgate; and then and there perceived that there had been a great affray and outrage done by Sir Edmond Bainham, Captain Dutton, and others. And perceiving the said Sir Edmond to be hurt in the same affray and outrage, I took him by the arm and went with him to a barber’s shop thereby, where he was dressed.’ Bainham was supported on the other side by another haberdasher, Henry Colthurste, who corroborates this story.

Dethicke says he found Bainham and Dutton ‘sore hurt and wounded’; and ‘what with their hurts and what with the distemperature of drink, [they] did exceedingly stagger in their going as they passed along, and were fain to be holden up. And in the time they were dressed of their hurts, did show great tokens of their insobriety, not fit to be spoken of in this honorable Court.’

Thomas Langwith, a haberdasher who helped to get Dutton back up the street to the barber’s shop in the Churchyard by Paul’s Chain, deposes: ‘I found Captain Dutton sitting upon the bench near Ludgate, being hurt, and heard [him] desire to go to a surgeon’s to be dressed. And so he rose and went; and upon the way in Ludgate Street, Dutton said, “If I live, I will be revenged of this city. I will set fire on it.”’

Dethicke relates further that ‘as he [Sir Edmond] was in dressing, Captain Dutton, being overcome with drink, came into the barber’s shop: unto whom Sir Edmond (also overcome with drink) then said, “How dost thou, Tom? I doubt not but we shall have a day [i.e, of revenge] shortly for this. And I hope to be at the sacking of this city.” And immediately upon the uttering of these speeches, the said Dutton fell asleep. And afterwards, upon the multiplying of speeches, Sir Edmond swore by God’s wounds that if he had but fifty horse, he could overcome the city.’

Constable Briggs and more of his men joined the gathering in the barber’s shop, bringing in Tom Badger and the fourth prisoner, William Grantham. Briggs and his watch had wounds of their own to be looked to. Says Exoll, of the watch: ‘Sir Edmond Bainham, seeing Briggs the constable come into the barber’s shop, said, “God’s wounds! art thou alive yet? I had thought thou hadst been slain, or else I would have run my rapier up to the hilts in thee, for I have been sundry times troubled with watches.”'

Rice, of the watch, recalls a fiery threat : ‘Sir Edmond said, “If I live, I will be revenged of thee, Briggs, if thy name be Briggs. I will fire thee and this city.”'

Thomas Smith, another haberdasher, remembers something very insulting: ‘[Sir Edmond] willed Briggs the constable to keep on his hat to keep in his cuckold’s horns.’

VIII

When the barber had finished binding up the assorted wounds, and Tom Dutton had been shaken out of his stupor, the recessional began. Briggs and his watch marched the four bandaged revelers back through Paul’s Churchyard, up Old Change to Cheapside, and so eastward to the Compter in Wood Street — the jail a few yards north of the Mermaid Tavern where, a few hours before, this memorable night, had begun. Bainham’s and Dutton’s tongues had not been arrested, and the grim watch had to listen to more abuse and threats as they trudged along.

Rice, of the watch: ‘Captain Dutton, as he was passing from the barber’s shop towards the Compter, said, “What do these halberds here? There need not so many halberds with me, now I am hurt.” “Nay,” said one of the company, “the halberds go not with you, they go with the constable.” “The constable,” said Dutton, “is an arrant rogue, an unseasonable rogue. I have been at the cutting of a thousand better men’s throats than his. And I hope to live to be at the cutting of a hundred thousand better men’s throats than his within this city.”’

Exoll, of the watch: ‘Captain Dutton, as he went towards the Compter, said that the constables and watchmen were a company of rogues, rascals, villains . . . and unseasonable slaves. And that if ever any of them chanced to come under his command, he would plague the rogues for that night’s work.’

Weylde, the Ludgate constable, who, like the haberdashers, had left his bed at the cries of ‘Murder!’: ‘Captain Dutton, as he was . . . going along the Old Change, swore these horrible oaths, viz., “By the blood and wounds of God, I hope ere it be long to see the throats of ten thousand of you cut.”’

When he saw the gate of the jail waiting for him, Sir Edmond hurled his final defiance at Constable Briggs. This was Tuesday night; and Sir Edmond had intended to leave London within three days — before Easter Sunday. Now, however, he had earned the privilege of spending that holy tide in jail.

Briggs the constable relates that ‘when Sir Edmond Bainham came to the Compter gate, he said to me, “Sirrah, is thy name Briggs? and dost thou mean to have me into this place (meaning the Compter)? I will make thee repent it, for I meant to have gone out of town within these three days, but now I will not go these three weeks. For what with making of friends, and what with giving of bribes, I will be revenged of thee, and be thy undoing.” ’

Exoll, of the watch: ‘Sir Edmond at the Compter gate also said that he thought to have gone out of town within three or four days; but now he would stay a quarter of a year. . . . And that he would have the constable in the Compter within ten days, and would not leave him whilst he was worth a groat.’

IX

It seems pretty clear that Bainham’s and Dutton’s alcoholic abuse and threats of revenge voiced the Elizabethan antagonism, bred of the rise of the industrial and mercantile classes, between courtier and citizen, gentleman and tradesman, heir and selfmade man. Every thrust of the rapier on the night of our story was a drunken assertion of privilege; every hearty counterblow of the halberd was a knock-down argument for a common law over every Englishman. The watch, under the frothy insults, — that they were base rascals, to be cuckolded by their betters, — contented themselves with a glance at the bandaged gentlemen headed for jail, and with the cool retort, ‘Nay, the halberds go not with you, they go with the constable.’

The pertinacious parish constable, Blacksmith Briggs, commands our admiration. He saw these murderous gentlemen behind the bars, and would risk what they and their possible friends in high places might do to him afterwards.

Briggs the constable laid down his halberd three centuries ago; yet do we not meet him whenever we walk abroad in the streets of London to-day? He has changed his doublet and hose for a suit of uniform blue, but under it he is unmistakably the same Briggs, embodiment of English order. A Londoner can take Carlyle’s famous sentence about Shakespeare, transpose the names ‘Shakespeare’ and ‘ParishConstable,’ and yet do truth no violence: ‘Wheresoever, under what sort of Shakespeare soever, English men and women are, they will say to one another, “Yes, this Parish-Constable is ours; we produced him, we speak and think by him; we are of one blood and kind with him.”'

It is satisfying to learn that our roaring boys spent several cooling weeks in prison. Though, after they were released, it was a month or more before the lords in Star Chamber passed judgment on them. What the sentence was we do not know; but as they apologized, and made much of their irresponsible and intoxicated condition at the time of their offense, they were perhaps let off by their judges with a reprimand. In the interim, Bainham, who had lost his rapier in the brawl, found leisure to return and vent his spleen on Briggs and the watch in further threats.

For this we have Briggs’s words: ‘Since the said 18th day of March, Sir Edmond Bainham, Captain Dutton, and others in their company came unto my house in Adling Street, London; and there they spake with Abraham Parnell, one of the said watchmen [whom Bainham had wounded in the wrist], and, as I was told, asked for me. And Parnell (as I have been informed) answered that I was not within. And presently after, I came home; and there found Sir Edmond Bainham and his company; and he then asked of me for his rapier, which he lost the said night time before mentioned, saying he would have the same rapier again, and that Dethicke the stock-seller could tell where it was; wishing that I and all my company (meaning the aforesaid watch) had been hanged seven years before; saying further (as I have been since informed), it were a good deed to beat the said Parnell as long as he could stand over him. And Captain Dutton (as I was likewise informed) then said, “But not here.”’

No doubt the set faces of Parnell’s friends and neighbors, and the wellknown alacrity with which London apprentices, at the cry of ‘Clubs! Clubs!’ could tumble out of their houses and fall on with four-foot crabtree cudgels, may have had something to do with Captain Dutton’s caution.

X

Whether the swearing knight got his lost rapier again or not, we do not know. But on Sunday, February 8, 1601, less than a year after his midnight running skirmish with the watch in Bowyers’ Row below St. Paul’s, Sir Edmond Bainham was once more facing halberds on that very spot.

It was the fatal Sunday of the Earl of Essex’s abortive insurrection. On his first move, the government had hastily proclaimed the Earl a traitor; and now, unsuccessful in his desperate attempt to secure support among the Londoners, Essex was leading his company of lords, knights, and gentlemen back out of the City to his house in the Strand. We remember that some of these conspirators had spent the preceding afternoon heartening themselves for their attempt by witnessing a performance of Richard II, with its deposition of a sovereign, given at their special request by Shakespeare and his fellows at the Globe.

As Essex brought his cavalcade down Bowyers’ Row towards Ludgate, he found his way barred. Sir John Leveson had stretched a chain across the street, and behind it he had drawn up musketeers and pikemen, with halberdiers at the ends by the houses. Essex halted, and by messengers sought to persuade Leveson to let him pass. The knight, however, had orders to hold the place, and stood firm.

But in the Earl’s band of desperates there were hotheads like Bainham, spoiling for fight. And Leveson tells us that, upon his fifth refusal to budge, ‘one of the Earl’s side cried, “Shoot! Shoot!” and then the pistols were discharged at us within a three-quarters pike’s length of us, and they were answered again by such shot as we had. And forthwith Sir Christopher Blunt charged with his sword and target, and came close to the chain, and cut off the head of sundry of the pikes, and with him divers other of the Earl’s company, of which some got between the post and the chain, and let drive among our pikes and halberds. And in this encounter Sir Christopher Blunt was hurt, first by a thrust in the face, and then felled by a knock on the head. Upon the sight whereof, and of the fall of young Mr. Tracy, the Earl’s page, our company coming upon them put them back; which the Earl perceiving called them off, and so departed from us.’ The Earl’s page was killed, one tall halberdier mortally wounded, and much blood shed on both sides. Essex and his followers turned down to the Thames, and found their way out of the City by water, only to surrender later in the day.

Bainham must have cut and slashed with the best in the fray, for, after examination, with two others he was arraigned and condemned to death. His sentence was pronounced on Ash Wednesday, the very day which saw the beheading of the Earl of Essex in Tower Yard at eight o’clock in the morning. During the subsequent weeks that witnessed the execution of Sir Christopher Blunt and three more of Essex’s followers, Bainham lay in the King’s Bench prison in Southwark, not far from Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, expecting death. His lands and goods, as those of an attainted traitor, were seized for the Queen. We learn from the inventory that in his house at Boxley, Kent, the officers found ‘a pair of playing tables’ (backgammon boards), worth two shillings; ‘one Bible and a service book,’ worth five shillings; in the parlor, ‘one form’ (a bench), ‘and one pair of virginals’ (a spinet or small harpsichord), twenty shillings; and finally, as we might expect, a very good armory — materials for gambling, religion, music, and fighting.

Spring wore on into summer, but still the order for Bainham’s execution did not come. Friends were exerting themselves in his behalf, and at length, on August 10, 1601, a pardon came from the Queen; and, though heavily fined, he was free.

The next glimpse we have of him, more than a year later, is brief but characteristic: he is fighting a fierce duel with another of Essex’s followers, a man who had been fined £200 for his part in the rebellion. That invaluable gossip, John Chamberlain, writes in October 1602: ‘Sir Edward Michelborne and Sir Edmond Bainham were lately in the field together, and both sore hurt; but I know not the quarrel.’

Three years pass; Elizabeth has been succeeded by James; and suddenly, in that grisly chapter of history, the Gunpowder Plot, appears the name of our desperado, Sir Edmond Bainham, wrung from the lips of Guy Fawkes, Thomas Winter, and Father Garnet. Bainham, they admitted, had been sent as a secret envoy from the plotters to Rome, to be ready, when James I and the Parliament had been blown to bits, to secure the Pope’s help for oppressed Catholics in England.

Guy Fawkes confessed that Catesby (the ringleader) told him ‘ that Sir Edmond Bainham was directed by him to go to the Pope, and to acquaint him with the hard estate of the Catholics of England; to the end Sir Edmond Bainham might be there in readiness, and the Pope to be by him acquainted with the success, and to be prepared for the relief of Catholics after the project of the powder had taken effect; and that then such further employment might have been made of Sir Edmond Bainham to the Pope as should have been thought fit. [Signed] Guido Faukes.’

Complicity deep as this in the Gunpowder Treason made it prudent for Bainham not to return to England, where the government had its talons sharpened for him. He remained on the Continent, and distinguished himself in the autumn of 1608 by provoking the English Ambassador, Edmonds, with some insulting language. Chamberlain, the gossip, writes: ‘We hear that Sir Thomas Edmonds hath lately played the part of a tall gentleman, rather than of a grave ambassador, in drawing upon Sir Edmond Bainham, for the little respect he used towards him.’

In the following winter Chamberlain gives us our last picture of Bainham, fighting a ‘bloody battle’ with Sir Griffin Markham, a conspirator banished for treason in the Bye Plot of 1603: ‘We hear of a bloody battle in the Low Countries betwixt Sir Edmond Bainham and Sir Griffin Markham, who fell out in discourse about the powder treason, and fought with short sword and pistol in their shirts on horseback. Markham was left dead in the field; and the other, plus plein que vide of cuts and gashes. It seems some angry planet reigns amongst these swaggering mates.’ Chamberlain’s informant was mistaken: Markham unfortunately survived. And what angry star brought the unregretted Bainham at last to a disastrous end, we do not know.

We have been carried far from the wild supper party at the Mermaid with which we began. But the doings of this ‘swaggering mate,’ Bainham, have given us a tingling taste of dangerous Elizabethan life. We have seen him touch the lives of Richard Kitchen, Marlowe’s ally; of William Johnson of the Mermaid, Shakespeare’s friend; of the Earl of Essex on his last bitter day of freedom. We hear Bainham’s name on the lips of Guy Fawkes; and at length he cuts his way out of the story in a haze of blood. No wonder that Williamson, when his Mermaid was invaded with a plague of Bainhams, cried, ‘I would willingly give them their reckoning to be quietly rid of them! ’