Philobiblon: After Culloden, the executions

Sunday, December 25, 2005

After Culloden, the executions

My 19th-century "blogger", Frances Williams-Wynn, is engaging in a little historical recording, copying a letter reporting, in great detail, the execution on Tower Hill of two of the lords (Kilmarnock and Balmerino) captured at Culloden in 1745, when the "Young Pretender" was defeated. This is - seriously - not something to read if you get nightmares; it is one of those pieces that make you realise the past is a foreign country.

Then again, I suppose people today do still slow down to look at car accidents.

There's an image of the scene here. (Not gory.)This site records that "a pub called 'THREE LORDS' was built at 27 Church Street, Minories, London E. The Inn sign showed them with the executioner's axe and the block."

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