The rhyme was first recorded in the 1840s, but it may have older origins in street cries and verse of the seventeenth century.

It refers to the equestrian statue of King Charles I in Charing Cross, London, and may allude to his death or be a puritan satire on royalist reactions to his execution.

[2] The rhyme is thought to refer to the equestrian statue of Charles I (r. 1625–49), which was erected after the Restoration in 1660 and was moved in 1675 to the site of the old Charing Cross in central London.

[3] A note of a ballad in a seventeenth-century manuscript at Oxford[4] contains the lines: But because I cood not a vine Charlles the furste By my toth my hart was readdy to burst[1] The first part was printed as a children's rhyme in a variation of the more famous "Ride a Cock Horse" in Pretty Tales, published in 1808, with the lyrics: Ride a Cock Horse, To Charing Cross, To see a black man, Upon a black horse.

[1] The modern version, which may combine elements of this rhyme with a reference to the execution of Charles I, was first collected and printed by James Orchard Halliwell in the 1840s.