2-889-444 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Anti-Papal Demonstration at Salisbury, 1850. '...the sober, peaceful, and respectable city of Salisbury [in Wiltshire] was frightened from the propriety of its stagnation by a grand mock procession of the Pope, his English Cardinal, and the twelve Bishops, all of whom were afterwards doomed to the flames...we believe no member of the Church of England professedly took part in the display. The procession was...attended by a large number of torch-bearers, many of whom were dressed in frocks and cowls...and wore large comic masks...When the Guys, as the mob irreverently termed these splendid figures, had passed through the greater part of the town, they were carried to a scaffold erected in the Green-croft...and there committed to the flames, with fireworks and the usual accompaniments...we believe no mischief was done, even to the extent of a pane of glass'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.