THE WAYSIDE GIBBETS

The dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven, the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the earth.—Psalm lxxix. 2.

The highwaymen were not specifically servants of the Lord, and certainly never numbered a saint in their ranks; but the point to be made here is that, after all, they were human beings, who lived in a supposedly civilised country, and were entitled to be turned off in a gentlemanly way; and, their crimes being thus expiated, to be buried decently and allowed to rest. For a murderer, it may readily be conceded, nothing could be too severe in the way of punishment. Let the bodies of those who profane God's temple be themselves profaned with every offensive circumstance. But for mere robbery upon the highway the methods of the law were too drastic.

When it was considered more than usually desirable to convey a warning to evil-doers in general, and highwaymen in particular, that Justice was still vigilant and ready to punish crime, the bodies of executed malefactors were occasionally set up along the roads on tall gallows and hanged, or "gibbeted," there in chains or in an especially constructed iron framework, so that they might remain for a length of time, to preach an eloquent sermon to some classes of the passers-by, and to disgust others.

Among the features of the country to which the old map-makers especially devoted their attention, the gibbets and the beacons along the roads are most prominent. Ogilby, in his Britannia of 1675, shows a startlingly large "gallows," like a football goal, a mile and a half on the London side of Croydon, and on the Tarporley-Chester Road shows a "Gibbit," two miles and a half from Chester.

There was never any lack of subjects for gibbeting purposes, but it was generally desired to preserve the criminal's body as long as possible, to avoid the trouble and expense of replacing him with a fresh subject; and to that end the practice was either to place the body in a copperful of boiling pitch, or to pour pitch over it. So treated, it would last an almost incredibly long time: always supposing the relatives of that public exhibit did not come by stealth and make away with it.

There are still a few gibbets to be found in England: but rarely, or never, the original posts. A sentiment which we are not quite prepared to declare a perverted one, but which is certainly a sufficiently gruesome manifestation of antiquarian enthusiasm, has led to the old gibbet-posts being renewed from time to time in several places; and there they stand, on hill-tops or by roadsides, reminders of those fearful old times when such things as these could be.

In these pages we are concerned only with those that bear upon the subject of the highwaymen. Among these Caxton Gibbet is prominent, standing as it does on the North Road, between Royston and Alconbury Hill. The particular spot where the gibbet stands is an exceedingly lonely, and, to some minds dismal, stretch of road that winds in the flat, featureless lands, with never a house in sight but the neighbouring wayside alehouse, the "Gibbet" Inn. Only one mile distant is the village of Caxton, but to all appearances the spot might be many miles remote from even a hamlet.

Caxton, according to Cobbett, resembles a Picardy village; "certainly nothing English," he savagely continued, "except some of the rascally rotten boroughs in Cornwall and Devonshire, on which a just Providence seems to have entailed its curse. The land just about here does seem to be really bad. The face of the country is naked. The few scrubbed trees that now and then meet the eye, and even the quick-sets, are covered with a yellow moss. All is bleak and comfortless; and just on the most dreary part of this most dreary scene, stands almost opportunely, 'Caxton Gibbet,' tendering its friendly one arm to the passers-by. It has recently been fresh painted, and written on in conspicuous characters."

And so it remains to-day.

Among the criminals gibbeted on the original Caxton Gibbet was George Atkins, who in 1671 had murdered Richard Foster and his wife and child in the adjoining parish of Bourne. He remained at large for seven years, and was then captured and hanged; his body being afterwards exhibited here. But the most pitiful story connected with it is that of the younger of the two sons of Mrs. Gatward, a widow, who for many years kept the "Red Lion" Inn at Royston. She was assisted by her two sons in the coaching and posting business attached to the inn; but the younger took a sudden fancy to become a highwayman; probably from a mere love of excitement, or dared to do it by companions of his own age. Whatever the compelling cause, he went out and waylaid the postboy carrying the mails between Royston and Huntingdon, and robbed the bags. He was arrested, condemned to death, and hanged, and his body was gibbeted here.

The story of this amateur highwayman is to be met with in the manuscript history of Cambridgeshire, written by Cole, a diligent eighteenth-century antiquary: "About 1753-54, the son of Mrs. Gatward, who kept the 'Red Lion' at Royston, being convicted of robbing the mail, was hanged in chains on the Great Road. I saw him hanging in a scarlet coat, and after he had hung about two or three months it is supposed that the screw was filed which supported him and that he fell in the first high wind after. Mr. Lord, of Trinity, passed by as he lay on the ground, and, trying to open his breast to see what state his body was in, not being offensive but quite dry, a button of brass came off, which he preserves to this day.... It was a great grief to his mother, who bore a good character, and kept the inn for many years after."

The story goes that the mother had the body secretly conveyed to the inn, and gave it decent, if unconsecrated, burial in the cellar.

It is easy to find the excuse that society had to be protected at all costs, to condone the savagery of those who permitted gibbeting for what we in our own age would consider a minor crime; but if we pause a moment, and strive to realise the feelings of the surviving relatives by imagining one of our own belongings so shamefully exposed like carrion, for the ravens and the crows to feed upon, we shall not so readily find excuse for that fearful procedure.

The story of Mrs. Gatward's son very nearly fits that which suggested to Tennyson his gloomy and pitiful poem, "Rizpah"; but the original motive for that poem is usually said to have been a gibbet on the downs between Brighton and Worthing. In that case also, the victim was a lad who had robbed the mail for a mere freak. There was no mercy for him.

There was no consideration for amateurs in that dreadful eighteenth century in which many writers have found a specious glamour of romance, because men and women wore powder and patches and sported silken clothes of amazing colours and styles. Who shall admire the embroidered waistcoat if no feeling heart beats beneath it, and what are manners or deportment if they but mask the tiger.

Rizpah, whose name forms the title of Tennyson's poem, was the concubine of King Saul and mother of Armoni and Mephibosheth, who were hanged and gibbeted, together with the five sons of Michal, on the sacred hill of Gibeah. There they remained from the early days of barley harvest until October. "And Rizpah ... took sackcloth and spread it upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night."—2 Samuel xxii. 10.

The poor old woman of the poem is a sadder figure than Rizpah, for she is nearer, in time and place, to ourselves, and is represented as gathering up the bones of her only son, as they drop from the gibbet. Hers is a figure of terror and for pity:

Robbers of His Majesty's mails had always been hanged on conviction, but this severity had proved no deterrent, and it was not until the Earl of Leicester, Postmaster-General in 1753, prevailed upon the Government to have their bodies afterwards hung in chains, that any diminution of mail-robberies took place. Highwaymen, it is curious to reflect, did not so much mind being hanged, but had the greatest horror of their bodies being afterwards exposed. It is a weakness not readily to be understood, this horror, not of death, but of the desecration of the senseless body after death; but it was a very useful feeling to play upon, by way of deterrent.

That the highwaymen and the murderers were not always dissuaded from their crimes by the prospect of this post-mortem indignity is of course to be readily supposed. There was always the chance of their not being discovered. Thus, although mail-robberies were probably much fewer than they would have been, except for the gibbeting order, they still were a feature of the highwaymen's enterprises: and the midnight roads continued to be awful with pendant bodies, creaking in the wind in their rusted irons.

It is not difficult to mentally reconstruct those times and those wayside incidents, and I can imagine the solitary highwayman proceeding to his shy business. There comes a horseman along the road; he can be heard half a mile away, in the hush of the night when, with the setting of the sun, the cattle have ceased lowing and a distant church clock alone helps to break the stillness. He is in no hurry, this belated cavalier, for the click-clock of his horse's hoofs is measured and he is long in passing.

He is gone, pacing slowly up the hill to where the great road goes by the end of the lane, and as he goes we hear him, under his breath, cursing the rising moon for a false jade. By favour of her light we have seen him as he goes, with a crape mask over his face and pistols in his holsters; and recognise him as Hotposset Dick, the highwayman, whose nickname comes from his fondness for mulled port. They say he always has a tankard for his mare as well as for himself when starting out to speak with the mail at Five-ways Cross.

Five-ways Cross is not a cheerful place for Dick just now, and his mulled port is useful for other purposes than keeping out the cold. It is a spot which most people would find lonely, but Dick has company up there; company of a silent kind, which is apt rather to get on the nerves, unless a man is well primed. It is a friend of Dick's, who used to go shares with him in the risks of robbing on the highway and in the profits of their trade. He was caught ignominiously, when carrying too much liquor; hanged, and gibbeted at the Cross afterwards. There he swings by the roadside in his cage, in a contemplative attitude, as though pondering on the mysteries of life and death. Six months' hanging there has not improved either his manly beauty or his clothes, and although the spot is generally shunned by the villagers, some one, for purposes of evil sorcery, has made away with one of the dead man's hands and most of his hair, to make a Hand of Glory.

A complete set of gibbet irons is nowadays a somewhat rare and curious object. Their pattern varied according to local taste and fancy. There exists a set in the museum at Warrington, Lancashire, which enclosed the body of Edward Miles, who was executed in 1788 for robbing the mail and for murdering the postboy. He was gibbeted near the Twystes, on the road to Manchester, and the iron frame in which he swung for years was buried at the foot of the gibbet-post. When it was found, in 1845, it had become an antiquity bearing upon the obsolete customs of our forefathers, and was carefully preserved. The shape of it quite clearly indicates the outline of a man's body, and there is even a kind of ghastly smartness about the framework that suggests a military bearing, which must have made the awful object a terribly dramatic sight.

In the same neighbourhood in 1796 James Price and Thomas Brown were gibbeted together on Trafford Green, three miles from Chester, for robbing the postboy of the mails; and a pamphlet recounting their trial and execution goes so far as to include a map of the road, and a neat little view of the double gibbet, with Messrs. Price and Brown dangling from it.

The execution of the two brothers, Robert and William Drewett, in 1799, for robbing the Portsmouth mail near Midhurst, was a late example of Post-Office ferocity, and is saddened by the tradition that the younger prisoner was innocent, and that he refused to clear himself because by so doing he would incriminate his father. The bodies were gibbeted on North Heath Common.

The last person to be gibbeted in England was Cook, who had committed a peculiarly atrocious murder at Leicester [4] in 1832. Two years later, the practice was abolished by statute.