A spiky old topic

For the main gateway into the city once served as a gruesome gallery for the severed heads of traitors.

It was a very brutal and public form of justice. Skewered on a pikestaff high above the city, the silenced heads spoke eloquently of the fate awaiting those who dared plot against rulers of city and country.

This week marks the 250th anniversary of the demise of this practice. The last heads to be placed upon Micklegate Bar were stolen between January 28 and 29, 1754.

They had once been attached to two of the Jacobite rebels captured at the Battle of Culloden in 1746.

The Jacobites were supporters of the deposed Catholic king James II and his grandson, known as Bonnie Prince Charlie. Culloden effectively marked the end of the revolt.

Many of the captured Jacobites were brought to York for trial and convicted of high treason. Twenty-two of them were executed at York Tyburn, by the side of Knavesmire, ten on November 1 1746 and 12 seven days later.

For some reason, three of the rebels' bodies were treated differently to the rest. The head of captain James Hamilton was packed in a hat box and dispatched to Carlisle, where it was placed on display. The other two heads, those of William Conolly and James Mayne, were set above Micklegate Bar in accordance with strict orders from the government.

This macabre tradition may have been connected to a widespread belief that you had to be buried with your skull and two major bones of your body to go to heaven. Cutting off a traitor's head and displaying it away from their body supposedly punished them in eternity.

Today Micklegate Bar is home to a fascinating museum tracing the gateway's 800-year history. It includes a lifesize model of James Mayne languishing in his turret cell, awaiting his last journey to the gallows.

Also on display are gory recreations of some of the other heads spiked on the bar down the years, in various states of decomposition.

But from 1196 until 1918 the bar was a private home. Sharing your property with rotting traitors' heads cannot have been conducive to peace of mind.

"It must have been wonderful when you were sitting out having your dinner and someone came up with a couple of heads," says David Mason, curator of the Micklegate Bar Museum.

On the plus side, this grisly exhibition drew visitors. "Saints and traitors were good tourist attractions. If you had a saint, it brought in the pilgrims, and executions were a highlight of the social calendar in Georgian times."

But David says we should not be too confident that those people whose heads looked down from the bar were truly treacherous. "The traitor was the one who lost the battle. The winner always blackens the name of the one he defeats.

"And the nice guys always win - because they write the history."

The heads were usually left out in the open for years. "The women of York used to complain bitterly about pieces of flesh dropping on them when they were promenading underneath," says David. "Somebody had the bright idea of fitting each of the heads with an inverted collar, which was like a feeding trough for birds."

The heads of William Conolly and James Mayne remained on Micklegate Bar for more than seven years. They were the first sight which greeted any visitor from the south.

Then, on the snowy morning of January 29, 1754, the duty watchman discovered that the skulls had gone.

As soon as he was informed, the Lord Mayor of York, Richard Lawson, went immediately to Micklegate Bar and climbed to the very top to confirm the loss.

Clearly, the authorities had intended to keep the heads on display for much longer. Whoever took them was guilty of treason, it was decided. A few days afterwards the mayor issued a notice which stated how the heads had been "wilfully and designedly taken down and carried away".

"If any person or persons (except the person or persons who actually took down and carried away the same) will discover the person or persons who were guilty of so unlawful and audacious an action, or anywise hiding or assisting therein, he, she, or they shall, upon the conviction of the offenders, receive a reward of ten pounds from the Mayor and Commonality of the City of York."

York's leaders, together with the Government and the members of the Rockingham Club, later increased the amount of the reward to £112 10s.

The king, George II, was furious. A message despatched by him to York on February 19 said: "His Majesty is pleased to direct you to make forthwith the strictest inquiry after the person or persons, authors, contrivers, or abettors of this wicked, traitorous, and outrageous proceeding, that the same may be forthwith proceeded against according to law for this their heinous offence".

Soon afterwards a journeyman cooper named Thomas Wake was at a cobbler's shop near the bar when he drunkenly pointed towards the turrets and boasted that he was the man who had taken down the rebels' heads.

He was arrested and committed for trial at York Assizes, but proved he was not the chief offender. Subsequently, the king's most gracious pardon was offered to any one of the persons concerned in the "audacious" act who would confess who was the man that actually removed the heads.

After further investigation another man was arrested. At the assizes in July 1754, the jury found a true bill against William Arundel, a tailor of York, "for traitorously and seditiously taking down from Micklegate Bar the heads of two rebels there affixed".

He was fined £5 and imprisoned for two years, and, until he found sureties of £200 for his good behaviour, for two years more.

Since then, no one's severed head has been placed on display anywhere in York, including on Micklegate Bar, although it remains to this day the royal entrance to the city.

And now we can add a positive modern chapter to the story. Visitors to the Micklegate Bar Museum have taken to throwing coins into James Mayne's prison cell. The money is being collected and donated to the Caroline Stuttle Rainbow Foundation, in memory of the young York woman murdered while backpacking in Australia.

The Micklegate Bar Museum is open seven days a week from 9am-5pm from February 1

Updated: 09:26 Monday, January 26, 2004