AN EXIT AT TYBURN 171 



murderers — and waiters were earthworms. I cannot 

 understand it at all. 



At any rate, Edward Bird took it ill and declined 

 the ministrations of the Ordinary, saying ' He was 

 very bu/y, was to write Letters, expected Company, 

 and such-like frivolous Excuses." The Ordinary does 

 not tell us in so many words, but we may suspect that 

 the condemned man told him to go to the Devil. He 

 was, indeed, an altogether hardened sinner, and would 

 not even go to chapel, and was so poor a sportsman 

 that he tried to do the rabble of Tyburn out of the 

 entertaining spectacle of his execution, taking poison 

 and stabbing himself in several places on the eve of 

 that interesting event. 



He seems to have been afraid of hurting himself, 

 for he died neither of poison nor of wounds, and was 

 duly taken to Tyburn in a handsome mourning coach, 

 accompanied by his mother, by other Christians and 

 gentlemen, by the Ordinary, and three other clergymen, 

 to see him duly across the threshold into the other 

 world. He stood an hour under the fatal tree, talking 

 with his mother, and no hour of his life could have 

 sped so swiftly. Then the chaplain sang a penitential 

 psalm and the other divines prayed, and the candidate 

 for the rope was made to repeat the Apostles' Creed, 

 after which he called for a glass of wine. No wine 

 being available, he took a pinch of snuff, bowed, 

 and said, " Gentlemen, I wish your health," and then 

 " was ty'd up, turned off, and bled very much at the 

 Mouth or Nose, or both." 



The mystery of his being accorded a monument 

 in Reigate Church is explained when we learn that 

 his uncle, the Rev. John Bird, was both patron and 

 vicar. A further inscription beyond that already 

 quoted was once in existence, censuring the judge and 

 jury who condemned him. Traditions long survived 

 of his mother, on every anniversary of his execution, 

 j)assing the whole day in the church, sorrowing. 



The date of the monument's disappearance is not 

 clearly established, but old inhabitants of Reigate 



