ed Surrey and London on Kennington Common, and round the
pavilion set up for the Prince of Wales there was so great a crush of
spectators that a poor woman fell and had her leg broken. The Prince
gave her ten guineas. That was a cricketer. And yet, within eight years,
Kennington was back among the vilest barbarities of the Middle Ages. The
'Forty-five was to set a mark of ferocious savagery in Kennington annals
hardly surpassed by Tyburn. The Earl of Kennington (that, with the
nickname of 'Butcher,' was one of the titles of the Duke of Cumberland)
had sent to gaol in Southwark nine officers whom he had taken prisoner
at Carlisle, fighting for Charles Edward Stuart. They were ordered for
execution, and on July 30, at eleven o'clock in the morning, were taken
on three sledges to Kennington Common. The gallows were there, the
block, the faggots. The prisoners were allowed to pray among themselves.
Then they were pinioned and placed in the cart under the gallows; the
fires were lighted, the cart moved away. Before they were dead they were
cut down, beheaded, disembowelled and their hearts burned in the fire;
the executioner, throwing in the heart of the last, who was no more than
a boy, cried 'God save King George!' Part of the crowd answered with a
shout; the rest looked on in sorrow. The boy who suffered with the elder
men was James Dawson, and Shenstone wrote a ballad on his death. He had
been engaged to be married to a young girl, who insisted on seeing her
lover's last moments. When all was over, she threw herself back in the
coach, called to him that she followed him, and as she spoke, died.

Another gathering on Kennington Common might have had more wholesale
consequences. The Chartists met there in 1848. Feargus O'Connor was
their leader, and he and the petition which the delegates were to take
to the House of Commons went out in two large cars. The petition went
first, drawn by four horses, and piled up like bales of cotton; the car
was decorated with flags, banners, and mottoes, and so were the horses.
Then came O'Connor and the delegates, equally superb in bunting. They
drove down Holborn and across Blackfriars Bridge, and on Kennington
Common an enormous crowd, between 15,000 and 50,000, the different
accounts say, received the banners and the delegates with loud cheers.
But no bloodshed followed. O'Connor was informed that the crowd could
not be allowed to march to the House of Commons, where, indeed, they
would