Bartholomew Fair fan (1721)

Charles Wriothesley wrote in his “Chronicle of England during the Reigns of the Tudors …”  that on this day in 1538:

 “At Clerkenwell, where the wrestling is kept, after the wrestling was done, there was hanged … the hangman of London [Cratwell] … for robbinge a booth in Bartlemewe fayre, which said hangman had done execution in London since the Holy Maid of Kent [*] was hanged, and was a conninge butcher in quartering of men”.

[*] The “Holy Maid of Kent”, incidentally, was Elizabeth Barton, who was executed in 1534.