the Market Place seem to have had an unenviable
notoriety. The most dramatic of these was the beheading of the Duke of
Buckingham in 1484. A headless skeleton dug up in 1835 during
alterations to the "Saracen's Head," formerly the "Blue Boar," was
popularly supposed to be his, though records appear to show that his
corpse was in fact taken to the Greyfriars' Monastery in London. In
Queen Mary's time there was a burning of heretics in the space devoted
to violent death, a space which afterwards saw many others as
needlessly cruel. One is extraordinary in its details. A prisoner
sentenced to the lock-up lost control of himself--possibly he was
innocent--and threw a stone at the judge. He was at once sentenced to
death and removed to the Market Place, his right hand being cut off
before he was hanged. As lately as 1835 two men here suffered the
extreme penalty for arson. To the hanging of Lord Stourton, a just and
well-merited punishment, reference has already been made. But perhaps
the most vindictive execution of all was that of a boy of fifteen in
1632 when Charles I was in the town. The lad was hanged, drawn and
quartered for saying he would buy a pistol to kill the King.

Royal visits have been many. Henry III probably came here when he
granted the charter of New Sarum. When Henry VI visited the city the
inhabitants were ordered to wear red gowns, possibly a piece of sharp
practice on the part of the city fathers, who were nearly all
clothiers or cloth-merchants. Richard III was here at the time of
Buckingham's execution, and Elizabeth under happier circumstances, in
1574, when she was presented by the Corporation with a slight
honorarium of twenty pounds and a gold cup, but James I, who was here
several times on his way to the stag hunting in Cranborne Chase only
obtained a silver cup. Unlike his predecessor, however, he possessed a
consort and the royal pair were presented with twenty pounds each.
James' unfortunate son held here one of those unsuccessful councils of
war that seemed always to turn events in favour of the enemy. The
second Charles came twice in a hurry. The first time was after the
battle of Worcester on his flight to the coast, and again he came for
sanctuary with his whole court when the plague was ravaging the
capital. He was almost the only traveller from London or the east that
the authorities would allow, during that dreadful time, within the
city boundaries; even natives returning home were o