OLD LONDON MONUMENTS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 26 November 1924, Page 3

OLD LONDON MONUMENTS.

STATUE OF KING CHARLES. NEARLY 300 YEARS OLD. HOAV IT AVAS PRESERVED. AA'hich is the oldest statue in London apart from those of historic interest in Westminster Abbey? Certainly a good claim could be made out for that of Charles I. in Trafalgar Square. For 250 years this regal horseman has been gazing down Whitehall, and inviting tffe attention of the faithful friends of the Stuart cause who annually lay their wreaths around this memorial of the “Martyr King.’! The statue itself was 40 years old when it was placed in position. It was cast in 1663, in the old Bartholomew Close, by Hubert Le Soeur, a Frenchman, who received £6OO. Lord Treasurer Weston commissioned it in order that it might adorn his Roehampton Gardens, but it never went there,, because AA'eston’s Royal master was soon in the thick of his losing battle with his Parliament.

In their ruthlessness to destroy every trace of the Stuart regime, the Commonwealth Government sold the monument to a Holborri brazier, a man named Rivett, for a “song.” They gave him explicit instructions that it must be broken up. Now, whether Rivett was ah ardent loyalist or a cunning rogue may not be very clear, but what he did was to hide it in the vaults of St. Paul’s, Co vent Garden. Meanwhile, as evidence that the Government’s orders had been obeyed, he purchased a stock of old metal and made a quantity of knives and forks, which he declared were mounted with bronze taken from the statue of the executed King. It was a neat stroke of business. The Royalists and the Parliamentarians were equally keen bidders for them, the one in order that they might be sacred mementoes, and the other in order to keep them as symbols of triumph. The imposture was not discovered until the Restoration, when the surrender of the statue was demanded, "first by Weston’s, heir and then by the House of Lords. The wily brazier, however, contended that he had paid for it and that it was his property, and he resolutely refused to give it> up. The Sheriff of London was put on his track, but it was not until several years later, after what must have been an obstinate struggle, that Rivett said he was “presenting” the statue to the reigning King. Le Boeur’s instruction, when he was casting the horse, was to make it bigger than a great horse by a foot, the rider to be in proportion. It is always regarded as a fine piece of work, and so also is the pedastral on which it stands, the carvings on this being by Grinling Gibbons. It was erected in 1674 oji the spot which it still occupies, and where only a few years earlier the regicide had been beheaded, a spectacle witnessed by Pepys. ' Here also, until 1674, had stood the old Charing, or Eleanor, Cross.