The “Catherine Wheel” long boasted a legend of a meeting of Royalists during the Commonwealth, at which, the toast of the King having been drunk, one of the company then proposed the health of the Devil, who promptly appeared and amid much smoke and blue fire flew away with his proposer out of the window.  This story rather hints at a republican spirit on the part of the townspeople.  That was certainly manifested when Colonel Penruddocke led his “forlorn hope” into the city and, long before, when the Jack Cade rebellion gained a great number of adherents in Salisbury.

The city had a number of these fine old inns, famous centuries before the great days of the Exeter road.  Nearly all have disappeared, but the “White Hart” in John Street is little altered and the “Haunch of Venison” is said to be the oldest house in the city.

In our peregrinations of the streets we have passed two statues neither of great merit but each perpetuating the memory of men of more than local fame.  The bronze figure in front of the Council House is that of Lord Herbert of Lea, better known perhaps as Sydney Herbert, Minister during the Crimean War.  The other is a very different manner of man—­Henry Fawcett.  The memorial of the blind Postmaster-General and great political economist stands in Queen Street, close to his birthplace.  The Blackmore and Salisbury Museums are in St. Anne’s Street.  Both are most interesting; the first named has an important collection of Palaeolithic and Neolithic remains.

The history of Salisbury, happily for the citizens, has not been very stirring, apart from the few incidents already briefly mentioned.  Executions in 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.