Notoriety
The notoriety of Gregory and "Young Gregory" led to "the Gregory Tree" becoming a euphemism for the gallows, and was one of the reasons for the decline in popularity of the name Gregory. The name "Gregory" became a general nickname for executioners:
| “ | Even before the days of Jack Ketch it was customary to affix a contemptuous nickname to the holders of the office throughout the country. In the days of James I., and long afterwards, hangmen went by the name of "Gregory," after Gregory Brandon, the London executioner in the reign of that monarch. Brandon succeeded Derrick, with whose name all readers of the "Fortunes of Nigel" will be familiar.
I had better to have lived in beggary says a ballad of 1617. |
” |
The Brandons were also responsible for the epithet "Squire" used by hangmen (including Jack Ketch) as Gregory acquired a coat of arms and became an esquire, which passed down to his son and their successors.
The two also appeared in satire and works of fiction at the time, like the print "Portrait of Archbishop Laud and Mr. Henry Burton".
Read more about this topic: Richard Brandon
Famous quotes containing the word notoriety:
“Our books are false by being fragmentary: their sentences are bon mots, and not parts of natural discourse; childish expressions of surprise or pleasure in nature; or, worse, owing a brief notoriety to their petulance, or aversion from the order of nature,—being some curiosity or oddity, designedly not in harmony with nature, and purposely framed to excite surprise, as jugglers do by concealing their means.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)