the corpse was placed in a van and conveyed to Rochester, where, for the sum of six guineas, the widow procured another wagon to carry it to London. On the road they met hundreds of people all inquiring about, and talking of, the fate of "Admiral Parker."
The rude ballad thus relates the carrying away of the body:—
At dead of night, when all was quiet,
And many thousands fast asleep,
I, by two female friends attended,
Into the burial-ground did creep.
Our trembling hands did serve as shovels
With which the mold we moved away,
And then the body of my husband
Was carried off without delay.
At 11 p.m. the van reached London, but there the poor widow had no private house or friends to go to, and was constrained to stop at the "Hoofs and Horseshoe" on Tower Hill, which was full of people. Mrs. Parker got the body into her room, and sat down beside it; but the secret could not long be kept in such a place, more particularly as the news of the exhumation had been brought by express that day to London.
An immense crowd assembled about the house, anxious to see the body of Parker, but this the widow would not permit.
The Lord Mayor heard of the affair, and came to ask the widow what she intended to do with her husband's remains. She replied, "To inter them decently at Exeter or in Scotland." The Lord Mayor assured her that the body would not be taken from her, and eventually prevailed on her to consent to its being decently buried in London. Arrangements were made with this
