It is unknown when Tyburn Tree, the most famous permanent gallows of London, was established. Alfred Marks conjectures that Tyburn dates from the time of Henry I (57). He believes that Tyburn must have been constructed by the Normans because it was first called "The Elms," and the elm tree was the Norman tree of justice (57). The first recorded hanging at Tyburn was that of William FitzOsbert in 1196, for the crime of sedition (Laurence 177). According to a 1607 map of Middlesex, engraved by John Norden, Tyburn was located just outside of Hyde Park, well outside of the city of London (so far outside, in fact, that Tyburn could not be included in the Agas map). Marks states that in 1220 the king ordered the construction of two gallows at Tyburn (63). These gallows were used until 1571, when they were replaced by a triangular gallows, or the "triple tree" as it was called, which was capable of holding over twenty-four men at a time (64). The first recorded reference to the triple tree came from an account of the execution of Dr. John Story, who was executed there 1 June 1571 (64, 159). In 1759, the triangular gallows were replaced by moveable gallows, and the last execution at Tyburn took place 7 November 1783 (69, 70). Marks conjectures that fifty thousand persons were hanged or executed at Tyburn over its approximately six hundred years of existence. This figure is quite low, considering that it averages out to less than fifty-two persons annually hanged or executed (78). London’s consciousness of what happened at Tyburn is evident in the writings of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. Executions at Tyburn were recorded by John Stow, in his Annals, and Henry Machyn, in his diary. There were also references made to Tyburn in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama; the first was made by the pseudonymous Martin Marprelate in Pappe with an Hatchet (1589): "Theres one with a lame wit, which will not weare a foure cornerd cap, then let him put on Tiburne, that hath but three corners" (qtd. in Marks 64). Another reference to Tyburn appears in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost: "Thou makest the triumviry, the corner-cap of society, / The shape of love’s Tyburn, that hangs up simplicity" (4.3.48-49). These references deal mainly with the triangular shape of the gallows at Tyburn. John Taylor dedicates an entire poem to Tyburn with his "The Description of Tybvrne." The many records about and references to Tyburn make it almost impossible for a person think about pre-nineteenth-century executions in London without thinking about Tyburn.

-- Tara Drouillard, 2000