About the year 1800 a man named Watson was executed at Lynn for the murder of his wife and child. The body was taken to Bradenham Heath, and there gibbeted in irons. Some few years ago the gibbet was still standing, and at the foot of it Mr. H. Rider Haggard and his brother found, imbedded in the sod, the upper portion of the iron framing, including the headpiece, with a portion of the skull remaining in it. So it had been withdrawn from sight by kindly nature, in her pitying mood, and covered by the greensward. A lady of that neighbourhood, who died a few years ago, aged ninety-four, used to relate, that when she was a girl, she once crossed the gibbet common, and noticed that a starling had built her nest in the man’s ribs; later on some lovers of nature came from Shipdam and stole away the young birds. The remains of Watson’s irons are now deposited in the Norwich Gaol, among a very interesting collection of chains, gyves, irons, gang-chains, and burning girths for the “pale martyrs in their shirts of fire.”

A noteworthy feature in this case was, as in that of John Whitfield, before mentioned, that it got about, in latter days, in the neighbourhood, that the man had been hung up alive, and watched till he died. Similarly, we have a story from Durham, showing that one Andrew Mills, gibbeted alive in 1684, for murdering his master’s three children, was kept in existence for some time by his sweetheart (of course), who, until she was prevented, gave him milk in a sponge at the end of a stick.[81]

These kind of stories usually fall to pieces when they are examined, and it so happens that on the tombstone of the three unfortunate little children, in Merrington churchyard, are the words:—“He was executed and afterwards hung in chains”; but “executed and” have been nearly obliterated by deep chisel marks,[82] thus forming at once both the post hoc and the propter hoc of the story. As to the milk, and the sweetheart, this part of the fable is nothing but a free rendering—necessary under the circumstances—of the classical legends of Euphrasia and Evander, of Xantippe and Cimonos.[83] Tradition often does, but just as often—or oftener does not justify itself.[84]

This suggests a few words upon the question of hanging alive in chains. Hollingshed, in his “Description of England”[85] says:—“In wilful murder done upon pretended (premeditated) malice, or in anie notable robbery,” the criminal “is either hanged alive in chains near the place where the fact was committed, or else, upon compassion taken, first strangled with a rope, and so continueth till his bones come to nothing.” Chettle, in “England’s Mourning Garment,”[86] speaking of the clemency of Elizabeth, says:—“Where-as before time there was extraordinary torture, as hanging wilfull murderers alive in chaines; she having compassion ... said their death satisfied for death.”

These, and many other similar arbitrary statements, might seem conclusive evidence; but, on the other hand, the “Statutes at Large” may be vainly searched to find one directing the punishment of gibbeting alive. And when we recall the calm language in which persons are directed by statute to be boiled, disembowelled, or burnt alive, we may be quite sure that, if the English law had ever contemplated the infliction upon a subject of such lingering torture as gibbeting alive, it would have been as coldly and legally set forth, and, by this time, as legally repealed,—which is perhaps, more to the point still. And, further, it is difficult to believe that any English official would, at any time,—whether under the pressure of the hardening influences of religious intolerance, or politics,—have taken upon himself so serious a responsibility, or that any section of the English people would have suffered such wanton barbarity. The conclusion we are happily driven to is that both Hollingshed, Chettle, and all the old and modern hare-brained irresponsible chatterers have been carried away by a superstitious belief in a poor, vulgar fiction, “a vain thing fondly imagined,” and to which the multitude of to-day still appear to cling with a fatuous devotion which, probably, no amount of education or refutation will ever entirely eradicate. This shows the strong vitality of fiction.

With regard to the punishment of hanging and boiling, alluded to above, a single example will suffice. After the suppression of the Northern Rising the king attacked the Friars. Their popularity and poverty alike had saved them when the lesser monasteries fell; but their independence and boldness, in preaching against the Marriage question and the Supremacy, proved their ruin. Those who had not fled the country were treated with the utmost harshness. Thus Father Stone, an Austin Friar of Canterbury, for obstinately maintaining his opinion that the king may not be head of the Church of England, was hung, cut down, and his body boiled and quartered, as appears from the following very curious document preserved among the records of the city of Canterbury:—“A.D. 1538-9. Paid for half a ton of timber to make a pair of gallaces to hang Father Stone. For a carpenter for making the same gallows and the dray. For a labourer who digged the holes. To four men who helped to set up the gallows. For drink to them. For carriage of the timber from stable gate to the dungeon.[87] For a hurdle. For a load of wood, and for a horse to draw him to the dungeon. For two men who set the kettle and parboiled him. To two men who carried his quarters to the gate and set them up. For a halter to hang him. For two half-penny halters. For Sandwich cord. For straw. To the women that scoured the kettle. To him that did execution.”[88]

An obliging correspondent tells us that he remembers riding with his father, in 1819, under a gibbet near Evesham, and the creaking of the irons as they were swayed by the wind.