Alfred Marks

Looking back down the long vista of six hundred years, we see an innumerable crowd faring to their death from the Tower of London or from the prison of Newgate to the chief of English Aceldamas, the field of blood known as Tyburn. Of this crowd there exists no census, we can but make a rough estimate of the number of those who suffered a violent death at Tyburn: a moderate computation would place the number at fifty thousand. It is composed of all sorts and conditions of men, of peers and populace, of priests and coiners, of murderers and of boys who have stolen a few pence, of clergymen and forgers—sometimes of men who in their person unite the two characters—of men versed in the literature of Greece and Rome, of men knowing no language but the jargon of thieves. Cheek by jowl are men convicted of the most hideous crimes—men whose only offence it is that they have refused to renounce their most cherished beliefs at the bidding of tyrant king or tyrant mob. As a final touch of grim humour the ex-hangman sometimes figures in the procession, on the way to be hanged by his successor.

They fare along their Via Dolorosa in many ways. Some bound and laid on their back are dragged by horses over the rough and miry way, three miles long; a few are on horseback; some walk between guards; the most are borne in carts which carry also due provision of coffins presently to receive their bodies. All make a halt at the Hospital of Saint Giles-in-the-Fields, where they are “presented with a great bowl of ale, thereof to drink at their pleasure, as to be their last refreshment in this life.”

It is for the most part a nameless, unrecorded crowd. For hundreds of years only a single figure emerges here and there from the throng. During a few decades only of the history of Tyburn do we see clearly and in detail the figures in these dismal processions. They go, in batches of ten, fifteen, twenty, laughing boys, women with children at the breast, highwaymen decked out in gay clothes for this last scene of glory; men and women drunk, cursing, praying. Some of the women are to be burnt alive; of the men, some are to be simply hanged; others, first half-hanged, are to have their bowels torn out and burnt before their eyes; some are to be swung aloft till famine cling them. The long road is thronged with spectators flocking in answer to the invitation of the State to attend these spectacles, designed to cleanse the heart by means of pity and terror. To-day Tyburn—what Tyburn means—is, in spite of the jurists, at its last gasp. After a struggle of a hundred years hanging is all but abolished. The State has renounced its attempt to improve our morals by the public spectacle of violent deaths. The knell of capital punishment was rung when Charles Dickens compelled the State to do its hanging in holes and corners.

The “Histories of England” do not tell us much about Tyburn. “The far greater part of those books which are called ‘Histories of England,’” writes Cobbett, “are little better than romances. They treat of battles, negotiations, intrigues of courts, amours of kings, queens, and nobles; they contain the gossip and scandal of former times, and very little else.” Nor do we find much more in those most dismal of books called “Constitutional Histories.” They mention Tyburn only in connection with the execution of some one who infringed the rules as at the time understood, of The Game played at Westminster, before the establishment of the present perfect accord between the Ins and the Outs, between those whom Cobbett irreverently calls the rooks at the top of the tree and the daws on the lower branches.

The story of Tyburn is one of the strangest, surely one also of the saddest, in the history of the people. To understand it, we must consider the social and legal conditions which found their outcome at Tyburn.

---

WHOM TO EXECUTE? WHO IS TO EXECUTE? HOW TO EXECUTE?

These questions have, after much experimenting, been so completely answered that it is to-day difficult to realise that each question has presented serious problems. We hang only those found guilty of murder, to the regret of jurists like Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, who thought that the punishment of death ought to be inflicted in many other cases.[1] But in times not very remote there were on the Statute Book, as has been reckoned, no fewer than two hundred capital offences. No man is now hanged except after trial and conviction by a Court of Assize, or by the Central Criminal Court. A person so convicted is executed by the common hangman in the simple manner invented long ago by some one who discovered that a rope tied about a man’s neck is held in position by the projecting mass of the head.

In old times the country swarmed with courts of inferior jurisdiction, each, however, with the power of hanging thieves. There is a satirical story telling how a man who had suffered shipwreck scrambled up a cliff, and, seeing a gallows, fell on his knees, and thanked God that he found himself in a Christian country. In the England of the thirteenth century he would not have had to travel far into the interior to find this mark of Christian civilisation. The right to erect a gallows was frequently granted, and perhaps even more frequently assumed without legal right. In the grants of franchises to monasteries we find, together with the concession of assize of bread and beer, and judgment of fire and water—together with these we find franchise of “swa full and swa forth,” &c., of sac and soc, tol and theam, flem and fleth, blodwith, grithbrith, flemensferd, infangethef and utfangethef. And among such franchises, some of which are a puzzle to the learned, we find a franchise easily understood, of “furca et fossa,” of gallows and pit, gallows for men, pit, full of water, for women.[2] All these numerous franchises were rights of the crown—jura regalia—often granted to monasteries and to individuals. In a record of which more will have to be said, we read that at the end of the thirteenth century there were no fewer than fifteen gallows in the hundred of Newbury alone, mostly belonging to religious. Among them we find one belonging to a prioress, a not uncommon case. It is distressing to think that Chaucer’s tender-hearted prioress, who “wolde weepe if that sche sawe a mous caught in a trappe, if it were deed or bledde,” had a gallows on which—by the hands of her bailiff—she hanged thieves. There is little doubt that she had her gallows.

But one’s first surprise at the enormous number of gallows subsides when we consider the conditions of life in early times. The country was thickly wooded: immense forests gave shelter to robbers, thieves, to all under the ban of the law. One of the laws of Ina runs, “If a far-coming man, or a stranger, journey through a wood, out of the highway, and neither shout nor blow his horn, he is to be held for a thief, either to be slain, or redeemed.” To come to later times—there is a tradition that the stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds was instituted for the purpose of putting down thieves. Tradition it may be called, for the conjecture is not supported by evidence. Thus, in a Parliamentary paper issued in 1894, there are some notes on the history of the stewardship. As to its origin, these notes do not go behind Wharton’s Law Dictionary, and Chambers’s EncyclopÆdia. Here is the story of the origin of the stewardship, or as it would be more properly called, the wardenship. Leofstan, the abbat here named, was a friend of Edward the Confessor; it is known from an old record that he was abbat in 1047. In reading the narrative we must remember that the “Ciltria” of the story was a wider district than that to which we now give the name of Chiltern.

“THE STORY OF THE CHILTERN HUNDREDS.

“This same abbat Leofstan, also called Plumstan, being a simple and pious man, full of compassion for all persons in peril, in order to make the roads safer for travellers, merchants and pilgrims faring to the church of the Blessed Alban, whether for the expiation of their sins, or for their worldly profit, caused to be cut down, chiefly along the royal road called Watling Street, the dense forests stretching from the border of Ciltria almost as far as to the north side of London: he also cleared the rough places, made bridges and levelled the way. For there were at that time all over Ciltria vast, dense forests, giving shelter to many different kinds of wild beasts, namely, wolves, wild boars, wild bulls, and stags, and, more dangerous still, to robbers, thieves by day and thieves by night, men banished from the realm, fugitives from justice. Wherefore abbat Leofstan—not to the loss, but to the good of this church—made over to a certain most stout and valiant knight, Turnot by name, and to two of his companions, Waldef and Thurman, the manor of Flamstude [Flamstead lies a little to the west of Watling Street], for which Turnot gave privately to the abbat five ounces of gold, a most beautiful palfrey, and a desirable greyhound. Which was done on these conditions—that the said Turnot, with his fellow-knights before named, and their followers, should protect the western parts, most haunted by robbers, and effectually guard the same, with the stipulation that they should make good any loss arising from their negligence. And if a general war should break out in the kingdom, they should use their utmost diligence, and do all in their power to protect the church of St. Alban. And these covenants Turnot and his companions faithfully observed, as did also their heirs up to the time when King William conquered England. Then, because they disdained to come under the yoke of the Normans, the manor was taken from them. Refusing to submit, they chose rather to betake themselves to the forest, and laid ambushes for the Normans who had taken possession of their lands, burnt their houses, and killed many of them. But, the king’s affairs going well, some made their peace with him, some were captured and punished.… However, a certain noble, Roger de Thoni by name, who, in the distribution of lands, came into possession of the manor, did not refuse to acknowledge the right of St. Alban’s, and zealously performed the before-mentioned duty. He was highly renowned in arms, a Norman by race, of the stock of those famous soldiers who are called after the Swan.”[3]

As the chronicler, who is supposed to have written before 1259, says nothing of any lapse of the agreement, it seems probable that it was still in force in his day, and that the wardenship has existed continuously from the eleventh century to our own days.

About a century later matters had got from bad to worse:—

About 1160. A kind of robbers not before heard of began to infest the country. Disguised as monks, these men joined travellers, and when they reached the spot where their fellows were lying in ambush, they gave a signal, and, turning on the deluded wayfarers, robbed and murdered them.[4]

Still a century later, in 1249, bitter complaints were made by certain merchants of Brabant of the unsafe state of the roads in the neighbourhood of Winchester. These merchants had been robbed of two hundred marks by men whose faces they had seen about the court. They threatened reprisals on the goods of English merchants in Brabant. The king, greatly moved, took strong measures. Twelve persons were selected and sworn to give up the names of robbers known to them, but after deliberation they refused to inculpate any one. They were thrown into prison, and twelve others were chosen. These, finding that the first twelve were condemned to be hanged, gave up the names of many men, of whom some thirty were hanged, an equal number being thrown into prison. It is clear that there existed a widespread organisation in which were involved some belonging to the king’s household. These put the blame on the king himself: they had not received their pay, and were compelled to rob in order to maintain themselves.

The severe measures taken on this occasion did not cure the disease. Four years later, the king, acting on the advice of certain Savoyards, decreed that if any one was robbed or injured on a journey, compensation should be made, according to the custom of Savoy, by those responsible for the safety of the district. But the new plan came to nothing.[5]

On a calm review of the facts it is difficult to resist the conclusion that civilisation has been immeasurably more favourable to the predatory classes than to any other class whatsoever. The coarse, rude methods of early times have given place to vastly improved ways of “conveying” a neighbour’s goods. In the Paston Letters we read of nobles and great men laying siege with an armed force to a coveted house. The appropriation of “unearned increment” is at once more scientific and more productive. The arts of engraving and printing have been turned to the greatest advantage. A design, more or less elaborate, is produced, purporting to represent a certain value expressed by numerals, as L. 1, L. 50, or L. 100. Persons of high social position are found to assure the public that the pieces of paper on which these designs are printed are worth much more than the expressed amount (known as the “face value”). Accomplices pretend to buy these pieces of paper at an enhanced price, the public follows suit, and in this way “shares,” as they are called, which will never bring sixpence of revenue to the holder, have been known to be eagerly bought at many times the “face value.” Many are the paths opened by civilisation to rapid accumulation. In addition to the company-monger, we have the “bucket-shop” keeper, the betting man, the army contractor, the loan-monger, the owner of yellow and blackmailing journals. Each of these, if only his operations are on a sufficiently large scale, may and does rise to high social position. Each generation sees a vast extension and improvement of method. A man who was in his day the greatest of the tribe of company-mongers is said to have shed tears of bitter self-reproach for lost opportunities as he surveyed the operations of his successors.

It must, in fairness, be admitted that the public finds its account in the new arts of relieving it of its money. Of old time Dunning, operating in the forests of Ciltria, too often took the life as well as the money of his victims. There is to-day no need of violence, and as all that a man has will he give for his life, the improvement of method is beneficial to the community generally. Thus all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

Little could the pioneers foresee of the triumphs of their successors. “William the Sacrist,” if William it was who planned the robbery of the King’s treasury in 1303, perhaps the greatest burglary ever attempted, must have been a man of the highest genius. Had he lived in the nineteenth century he would have adopted more finished methods. He fell upon evil times, and his skin illustrates a door in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey (see p. 25).

Yes, William, you and your like lived in cruel times! You were called harsh names, fures, latrones, vespiliones, raptores, grassatores, robatores. To extirpate these old-time thieves, to bring them to the gallows, was, if not the whole duty of man, at least the first duty of the citizen. “Theft,” writes Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, “seems to have been the crime of crimes. The laws are inexorable towards it. They assume everywhere that thieves are to be pursued, taken and put to death then and there.” Bracton[6] gives instructions for the swearing-in of the whole male population over fifteen years of age for the purpose of hunting down malefactors. The justiciaries on their circuits are to call before them the greater men of the county, and to explain to them how it has been provided by the king and his council that all, as well knights as others of fifteen years of age and upwards, ought to swear that they will not harbour outlaws and murderers, robbers or burglars, nor hold converse either with them or their harbourers: that if they come to know any such, they will declare it to the sheriff or his bailiffs. And if they shall hear the Hutesium—the Hue and Cry—they shall immediately follow with their household and the men of their land. Let them follow the track to the boundary of their land, and show it to the lord of the adjoining land, so that pursuit may be made with all diligence from land to land till the malefactors are captured. There must be no delay in following the track; it must be continued till nightfall. Such was the famous Hutesium—the Hue and Cry—the name of which remains with us to the present day. One of the old chroniclers tells how, in 1212, the Hue and Cry was raised causelessly, in a panic, and spread over almost the whole of England.[7]

The truth is that in the simple life of those days no robber nor thief had the smallest chance of posing as a great man. The field, too, was limited. Thieves and robbers could but operate on movable property or clip the coin. It was the misfortune of the depredators living in “the dark ages,” that a thief not only was a thief, but was of all men known to be one.

One begins to understand the fury with which robbers and thieves were pursued. Mr. Freeman says most justly, “In our settled times we hardly understand how rigour, often barbarous rigour, against thieves and murderers, should have been looked on as the first merit of a governor, one which was always enough to cover a multitude of sins.”[8] To the same cause we may, no doubt, ascribe the singular fact that ecclesiastics, forbidden to shed blood, yet hanged men by the hands of their bailiffs.[9] An abbat, for example, had two parts to fulfil. As an ecclesiastic he gave shelter to thieves, as lord of the manor he hanged them. The abbat of Westminster had his servants waiting in Thieving Lane to show thieves the way to sanctuary: on the other hand, he had sixteen gallows in Middlesex alone.[10] The contradiction is placed in the strongest light by the charter of Glastonbury, granted by Edgar (A.D. 958-975). The charter concedes “infangethef and utfangethef,” the right to try and assuredly to hang thieves. But the very same charter grants that, if anywhere in the kingdom, the abbat or one of his monks should meet a thief being taken to the gallows, or otherwise in danger of his life, he could stay the execution of the sentence.[11]

The insight into the state of the country in the late thirteenth century, given by the two publications of the Records Commission, Rotuli Hundredorum, and Placita de Quo Waranto, is so valuable that it may be permitted to glance at them. The preliminary to the first of these is the Act of the fourth of Edward I. (1276), the statute for assigning justices to the work. The statute, called “Rageman,” a term of doubtful etymology, enacted that justices should go through the land inquiring into, hearing, and determining all complaints and suits for trespasses within twenty-five years last past, as well by the king’s bailiffs as by all other persons whomsoever. These commissioners did their work with a thoroughness amazing when we consider the difficulty of travel in the times. The results are recorded in the Rotuli Hundredorum. On the evidence furnished by the Rotuli Hundredorum was passed the statute of Gloucester, in the sixth of Edward I. (1278). This Act put the burden of proof of lawful claim to franchises on the persons exercising them. The statute enacts that whereas prelates, earls, barons, and others of the kingdom claim to have divers franchises, persons may continue to exercise these franchises without prejudice to the king’s rights until the next coming of the king into the county, or the next coming of the justices in Eyre, or until the king otherwise order. The sheriffs are to make proclamation that all who claim to have any franchise by charter or otherwise shall come at a certain day to a place assigned, to state what franchises they claim and by what title.

In 1281 was issued, according to the annals of Waverley, a mandate “called by the people Quo Waranto, directed to certain justices, for inquiring respecting lands, tenements, rents, alleged to be alienated from the king, as well as regarding franchises held from him: by reason of which mandate archbishops, bishops, abbats, priors, earls, barons, and others holding franchises, as well religious as others, were subjected to trouble and expense, although the king got little profit thereby.”[12]

The statements found in the presentments of jurors in the Rotuli Hundredorum are, as might be surmised, somewhat in the nature of hearsay. They have not the value, as material for investigating the social condition of the time, of the more formal charges contained in the Placita de Quo Waranto. Thus we find, in the Rotuli Hundredorum, that the abbat of Westminster was presented by the jurors of three several wards of the City of London as having gallows at Tyburn: in other cases gallows are mentioned as erected by the abbat in Middlesex, two places only being specified. But when we come to the Placita de Quo Waranto, we find that the abbat had gallows in fifteen places in Middlesex in addition to one in the ville of Westminster. These places were, Eye (a district of Westminster), Teddington, Knightsbridge, Greenford, Chelsea, Brentford, Paddington, Iveney, Laleham, Hampstead, Ecclesford, Staines, Halliford, Westbourne, and Shepperton.[13]

This inquisition is not to be confounded with another, singularly called “Trailbaston,” relating to criminal matters, as the other related to civil affairs. “Trailbaston,” which may be rendered “Bludgeon-men,” has sometimes been supposed to be so called from the justices themselves; but it is more probable that, as we find the word in the earliest mention of the subject, the bludgeon-men were those against whom operations were directed, just as we might to-day speak of a “hooligan Act” if an Act were specially devoted to these gentry.

The first official mention of Trailbaston is found in Rotuli Parliamentorum, under date 1305, when it already bore the nickname “Ordination de Trailbastons.” Justices were then assigned to inquire as to murders and felonies committed during the last eight years. In 1306 the inquisition, as would seem, had not got to work, as the king ordered that if the justices assigned are not sufficient for the duty, “a parfaire les busoignes qe touchent les pledz de Traillebaston,” more are to be assigned to the work. Five days later he sent a list of twenty-one justices, and the thirty-eight counties allotted to them severally. The inquisition of Trailbaston was found to work mainly as a great engine of oppression. In 1377 the Commons petitioned that there may be no manner of Trailbaston held in the realm during the war nor for twenty years. It is alleged that both civil and criminal inquisitions had for object to bring money into the exchequer by means of fines.[14]

To return to the subject of the multiplicity of courts. It is to be supposed that, in the circumstances, there were frequently conflicts between courts as to their respective jurisdiction. Of this conflict we find curious instances in the chronicles. Thus, in 1249, a thief was caught on the land of the abbat of Tewkesbury, but was suffered by the abbat’s bailiffs to be taken to the court of the Earl of Gloucester. After trial by this court the thief was hanged. On learning this, the abbat was greatly incensed, seeing that the franchise of his church had been invaded. Shortly after another case arose. John Milksop stole thirty-one pence from Walter Wymund, of Bristol. As soon as Walter discovered his loss, he raised the hue and cry, followed Milksop, traced him to a wood, captured him, and brought him into the abbat’s court. The earl’s bailiff protested: the abbat complained to the earl, who ordered inquiry. As nothing came of this, a second order was issued, and twelve persons were chosen to investigate the question. The abbat, finding the inquiry going against him, protested against the manner of proceeding, and went in person to the earl, then at some distance. The earl suggested that the abbat should keep the accused in prison till the earl’s return home. The abbat objected that he had neither castle nor prison in which to keep the man for so long a time. Then the earl ordered a fresh inquiry to be made against his return, the abbat meanwhile to try the man in his own court, and to hang him on the earl’s gallows. Milksop was tried accordingly, could make no good defence, and was hanged. The chronicle does not tell the end of the dispute.[15]

In the twelfth century the district near Dunstable, where Watling Street meets Icknield Street, was so infested by robbers that hardly could “a lawful man” pass that way. The chronicler, whose etymology is not above suspicion, states that Dunstable came by its name from one Dunning, a famous robber who haunted the region. Henry I., towards the end of his reign—say about 1130—founded Dunstable Priory, making over to it all his rights, including a free gallows for hanging thieves outside the town of Dunstable, in a place called Edescote.[16] The prior’s right was clear; nevertheless, in 1274, Eudo la Suche threw down the prior’s gallows and put up his own.[17]

Another instance. In 1290 Bogo de Knowill, the king’s bailiff of Montgomery, complained to our lord the king that Edmund Mortimer had laid hands upon a king’s man who had committed murder, had imprisoned him, in spite of the bailiff’s demands, had refused to give him up, had tried him in his own court, and hanged him, to the hurt of the franchise of the town of Montgomery, and against the crown and its dignity, etc. The king declared that Mortimer had forfeited his franchise of Wygemore, but agreed to restore it on payment of a fine. But, in addition, Mortimer must hand over to Bogo, the bailiff, an effigy, in the name and place of the man who had been hanged, the bailiff to hang the effigy, and to let it hang as long as may be. After a while, Mortimer complained that the bailiff unjustly retained the franchise in the king’s hand. Whereunto Bogo replied that the effigy had not been handed over to him, wherefore he held the franchise aforesaid until, etc. And the king ordered that the franchise should be held till the effigy should be handed over. This is the last heard of Bogo, Mortimer, and the effigy.[18]

In such cases more was touched than the dignity of the lord of the franchise. The concession of a franchise to hang generally included the right to “catalla felonum,” the goods of felons and of fugitives. “These courts,” says Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, “were a regular source of income to the lord of the franchise.” Irregularities and tyrannies of these petty courts, quarrelling over the right to imprison and hang, may be assumed: we understand how it was that in popular risings the lawyers were always singled out for vengeance.

How to execute? Even in regard to the way of mere hanging, the problem presented difficulties. In France, a rigid etiquette guarded the method of hanging. A franchise might give the right to hang upon trees only.[19] Some gallows had two pillars, some three, four, six, eight, according to the rank of the person erecting the gallows.[20] These nice distinctions are not to be discovered in English customs. There are, however, traces of strange practices. Four several bailiffs took part in the execution of a man hanged on the gallows of the prior of Spalding. The bailiff of Spalding brought the man to the gallows, the bailiff of Weston brought the ladder to the gallows, the bailiff of Pyncebecke found the rope, the rest was done by the bailiff of Multon.[21]

But hanging was one only out of numerous methods of carrying out a capital sentence: ingenuity seems to have exhausted itself in devising ways of putting a man to death. A law of Æthelstan decrees, “Let him be smitten so that his neck break.”[22] When leaving England for Palestine, Richard I. commanded that he who killed a man on board ship should be tied to the corpse and thrown into the sea: if the murder was committed on land, the murderer was to be buried alive with the body.[23] Boroughs had their own several customs. In one place any man taking another who had stolen to the value of 2s. 8½d., might forthwith hang him: for a second offence the amount was reduced to 8¼d. In Romney, at the end of the fifteenth century, the bailiff found the rope, the prosecutor was bound to find a hangman. Failing this he must himself do the hanging, or be put in prison with the felon till such time as he could find a hangman, or resolve to hang the man with his own hands. In another place a miller stealing flour to the value of 4d. was to be hanged from the beam of his mill.[24] At Sandwich a murderer was buried alive on Thief Down, where perhaps golf is now played.[25] In London, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, a man convicted of treason in the court of the mayor, was bound to a stake in the Thames during two flows and two ebbs of the tide.[26] Two centuries later “pirats and robbers by sea are condemned in the court of the admeraltie, and hanged on the shore at lowe water marke, where they are left till three tides haue ouerwashed them.”[27] At Fordwich, in the fifteenth century, a man condemned to death was carried to a place called Thieves’ Well, there bound hand and foot and thrown in by the prosecutor.[28] At Dover, the condemned man was led to a cliff called Sharpnesse, and there executed by “infalistation,” a word which puzzled the learned Selden. It means that the offender was thrown over the cliff (falaise) on to the beach below.[29] Elsewhere the criminal was thrown into the harbour at high tide; elsewhere, again, he was burnt.[30]

In his “Description of England,” forming part of Holinshed’s Chronicle, Harrison tells of ways of execution in practice when he wrote, about 1580: “He that poisoneth a man is to be boiled to death in water or lead, although the party die not of the practise.” Harrison is here mistaken. The enactment of boiling to death was due to one malefactor, who achieved the rare distinction of having an Act of Parliament directed against himself. The Act, 22 Henry VIII. (1530-1) c. 9, tells the story. It begins by stating that the crime of poisoning has in this realm been most rare, and continues thus:—

“And now in the tyme of this presente parliament, that is to saye in the xviij?? daye of Februarye in the xxij yere of his moste victorious reygn, one Richarde Roose late of Rouchester in the Countie of Kente coke, otherwyse called Richarde Coke, of his moste wyked and dampnable dysposicyon dyd caste a certeyne venym or poyson into a vessell replenysshed with yeste or barme stondyng in the Kechyn of the Reverende Father in God John Bysshopp of Rochester at his place in Lamehyth Marsshe, wyth whych Yeste or Barme and other thynges convenyent porrage or gruell was forthwyth made for his famylye there beyng, whereby nat only the nombre of xvij persons of his said famylie whych dyd eate of that porrage were mortally enfected and poysoned and one of them that is to say, Benett Curwen gentylman thereof ys decessed, but also certeyne pore people which resorted to the sayde Bysshops place and were there charytably fedde with the remayne of the saide porrage and other vytayles, were in lyke wyse infected, and one pore Woman of them that is to saye, Alyce Tryppytt wydowe is also thereof nowe deceased: Our Sayde Sovereign Lorde the Kynge of hys blessed disposicion inwardly abhorryng all such abhomynable offences because that in no maner no persone can lyve in suretye out of daunger of death by that meane yf practyse thereof shulde not be exchued, hath ordeyned and enacted by auctorytie of thys presente parlyament that the sayde poysonyng be adjudged and demed as high treason, And that the sayde Richarde Roose for the sayd murder and poysonynge of the sayde two persons as is aforesayde by auctorite of thys presente parlyament shall stande and be attaynted of highe treason: And by cause that detestable offence nowe newly practysed and commytted requyreth condigne punysshemente for the same: It is ordeyned and enacted by auctoritie of this presente parliament that the said Richard Roose shalbe therfore boyled to deathe withoute havynge any advauntage of his clargie.”

The Act goes on to declare that in future murder by poisoning shall be deemed to be high treason, punishable by boiling to death.

This was the sequel:—

“1531. The 5. of Aprill one Richard Rose a cooke, was boiled in Smithfielde, for poisoning of diuers persons, to the number of 16, or more, at y? bishop of Rochesters place, amongst the which Benet Curwine Gentleman was one, and hee intended to haue poisoned the Bishop himselfe but hee eate no pottage that day whereby hee escaped: marie the poore people that eate of them, many of them died” (Stow’s Annals, ed. 1615, p. 559).

Stow records another case in 1542, March 17, when Margaret Davy, a maid-servant, was boiled in Smithfield for poisoning three households in which she had lived.[31]

To continue with Harrison: If one “be conuicted of wilfull murther, doone either vpon pretended malice, or in anie notable robberie, he is either hanged aliue in chaines neere the place where the fact was committed (or else vpon compassion taken first strangled with a rope) and so continueth till his bones consume to nothing.”

“Such as hauing wals and banks neere vnto the sea, and doo suffer the same to decaie (after conuenient admonition) whereby the water entereth and drowneth vp the countrie, are by a certeine custome apprehended, condemned, and staken in the breach, where they remaine for euer as parcell of the foundation of the new wall that is to be made vpon them, as I haue heard reported.” This also is strange, showing that a machine practically identical with the guillotine was in use in England centuries before the re-invention of the machine by Dr. Guillotin:—

“There is and hath beene of ancient time a law or rather a custome in Halifax, that who soeuer dooth commit anie fellonie, and is taken with the same, or confesse the fact vpon examination: if it be valued by foure constables to amount to the sum of thirteene pence halfe penie, he is foorthwith beheaded upon one of the next market daies.… The engine wherewith the execution is doone, is a square block of wood of the length of foure foote and an halfe, which dooth ride vp and downe in a slot, rabet, or regall betweene two peeces of timber, that are framed and set vpright of fiue yardes in height. In the neather end of the sliding blocke is an ax keied or fastened with an iron into the wood, which being drawne vp to the top of the frame is there fastned by a wooden pin (with a notch made into the same after the manner of a Samsons post) vnto the middest of which pin also there is a long rope fastened that commeth downe among the people, so that when the offendor hath made his confession, and hath laid his necke ouer the neathermost blocke, euerie man there present dooth either take hold of the rope (or putteth foorth his arme so neere to the same as he can get, in token that he is willing to see true iustice executed) and pulling out the pin in this maner, the head blocke wherein the ax is fastened dooth fall downe with such a violence, that if the necke of the transgressor were so big as that of a bull, it should be cut in sunder at a stroke, and roll from the bodie by an huge distance. If it be so that the offendor be apprehended for an ox, oxen, sheepe, kine, horsse, or anie such cattell: the selfe beast or other of the same kind shall haue the end of the rope tied somewhere vnto them, so that they being driuen doo draw out the pin wherby the offendor is executed.”[32]

Harrison says that “we have vse neither of the wheele nor of the barre, as in other countries,” and these punishments are not to be found in the chronicles.

A favourite story of the Middle Ages is that of the unjust judge, Sisamnes, flayed alive by order of Cambyses. This punishment is one not likely to have been overlooked. In the “Laws of Henry I.” (so called), we find scalping and flaying mentioned as punishments (comacio and excoriacio[33]). It is certain that the punishment was not absent from men’s minds. In 1176, the secretary of the young king was discovered to be in correspondence with Henry II. He was thought worthy of death; some proposed that he should be hanged, others that he should be flayed alive (vivum excoriari[34]). I have not found a written record of execution in England by flaying alive, but there exists singular and terrible indirect evidence of the infliction of the punishment in a very remarkable case.

In 1303 was successfully carried out a burglary which after six centuries remains the greatest burglary on record, the amount involved being £100,000, equal to £2,000,000 in money of the present day. The palace of the king at Westminster was contiguous to the abbey. In the King’s treasury were lodged at the time in question not only the regalia, but a large sum of money destined to the carrying on of the war in Scotland. Edward I. left Westminster on March 14th and travelled towards Scotland, reaching Newcastle on May 6th. Shortly before this date the treasury was broken into and its treasure carried off. The robbery being discovered, forty-one friars and thirty-four monks were committed to the Tower. The burglary had been skilfully planned. Early in the spring the cemetery—the plot enclosed by the cloisters—was sown with hemp, so that the hemp should grow high enough by the time fixed for the robbery to hide the treasure. Mr. Joseph Burtt, who has told the story at length, came to the conclusion that “the affair was evidently got up between William, the sacrist of Westminster, Richard de Podlicote, a merchant, and the keeper of the palace, with the aid of their immediate servants and friends.”[35]

Ten monks and one cleric were arraigned, but, refusing to be tried by secular judges, were remanded to the Tower. But the judges “condemned the sacrist of Westminster for receiving and concealing jewels of our lord the king.” Strangely enough, there is no record of his sentence.[36] But certain doors giving access to the treasury were found to be covered, inside and outside, with skin. Sir Gilbert Scott submitted a piece to an eminent microscopist, Mr. Quekett, who pronounced it to be human skin. There has been vague talk of “the skins of Danes” in connection with the lining of these doors, but Dean Stanley, who says that the skin is that of “a fair-haired, ruddy-complexioned man,” is of opinion that there is no period to which these fragments of skin can be so naturally referred as to that of the burglary.[37]

Here is the record of a punishment, the only one of its kind I have found recorded:—

“1222. A Prouinciall councell was holden at Oxforde, by Stephen Langton Archbyshoppe of Canterburie, and his suffragane bishops and others.… There was also a young man and two women brought before them, the yoong man would not come in any church, nor be partaker of the Sacraments, but had suffered himselfe to be crucified, in whom the scars of all y? wounds were to be seene, in his hands, head, side and feete, and he reioyced to bee called Jesus of these women and other. One of the women being olde, was accused for bewitching the young man vnto such madnes, and also (altering her owne name) procured her selfe to bee called Mary the mother of Christ: They being conuict of these crimes and other, were adiudged to bee closed vp betweene two walles of stone, where they ended their liues in misery. The other woman being sister to the young man, was let goe, because shee reuealed the wicked fact” (Stow, Annals, p. 178).

There is another story, of about the same time, telling of a religious maniac, done to death in an abnormal way:—

“A man that faynyd hym selfe Cryste at Oxynforde, he was cursyde at Aldermanbery at London, the yere of oure Lorde M?ccxxij.”

So we read in Gregory’s Chronicle. In the Grey Friars’ Chronicle we find this:—

“A man of Oxenford faynyd hym to be Cryst, and was crucified at Addurbury.”

This explains the meaning of “cursyde” in the other chronicle.

The Chronicle of London (1827) says:—

“A man of Alderbery feynd hym Cryst, whiche was brought to Oxon’ and there he was crucifyed” (p. 11).

Capgrave, who wrote much later, but no doubt had before him some old writer, tells of a similar case of religious mania:—

“1221. There was accused eke a carl that procured men to nayle him on a crosse: for in handis and feet were seyn the woundes of the nayles, and in his side a wound eke: and in his fonnednesse he wold sey that he was so arayed for savacion of the world. He was put in prison for evyr, and nevyr to have othir repast but bread and watir.”

It will be seen that these cases occurred about the same time.[38] Was there an epidemic of religious mania, or is it possible that the different records are all versions of the same story?

---

DRAWN, HANGED, AND QUARTERED.

There has been much confusion as to the punishment of “drawing,” forming down to times comparatively recent a portion of the punishment awarded to those found guilty of high treason. The correct order of the several punishments in such cases is drawing, hanging, and quartering. But to-day every one inverts the order, putting hanging first. Even the old chroniclers sometimes make this mistake. The proper order is inverted by Capgrave, the Grey Friars’ Chronicler, and by Latimer in his third sermon. Owing to this mistake it has not infrequently been assumed that drawing was a process following hanging, and consisted in drawing out the bowels of the victim. In fact, drawing meant dragging along the ground. There were three kinds of drawing. In the vast majority of cases drawing means dragging to the place of execution, where hanging, disembowelling and quartering followed. But drawing sometimes means dragging till the sufferer died of the mere dragging. In some cases drawing means tugging by horses in opposite directions till the sufferer was torn to pieces. It is not in all cases easy to say what punishment is indicated by the chroniclers, who use indifferently the words “tractus,” “detractus,” and “distractus.”[39]

Examples of the first kind of drawing, dragging to the foot of the gallows, for execution, are superabundant. There were degrees in this. In the earliest times the victim, stripped to his shirt, with his arms tied behind his back, was thus dragged along the rough and miry road—how rough and miry it is almost impossible for us at this day to realise.[40] That any human being could survive such a drawing from Newgate to Tyburn is marvellous. But the way was not uncommonly longer, from the Tower to Tyburn, or even longer still, from Westminster to the Tower, and then from the Tower to Tyburn. In the case of William Longbeard,[41] it would appear that sharp stones were placed on the road to be followed. But, apart from any such aggravation, the sufferer would probably in most cases be found at the end of the journey incapable of further suffering.

In 1295 Tuberville was drawn on a fresh ox-hide (sur un quir de bof fres), and one of the chroniclers expressly states that he was so drawn that he might not die too quickly.[42] Something was also due to sentiments of humanity. There is a case recorded from which it is clear that “humanitarianism” was as odious to the judges of old time as it is to-day to the advocates of flogging. The case finds a record in the old books, because in it the judge evidently strained the law. A man was arraigned in 1340, before Justice Shard, on an indictment charging him with the murder of “his master.” It was found that murder had indeed been done by the man, who, however, had for a year ceased to be the murdered man’s servant. Shard inquired whether the servant had not a grudge against his master, and did he watch him? The questions were answered affirmatively, and Shard sentenced the man to death as guilty of petty treason—the punishment due to a servant who killed his master. Shard ordered that the man should be drawn by horses from the court in which he was tried, and forbade, under pain of imprisonment, that any friars or other persons should place a hurdle or anything else under him.[43]

Whether owing to compassion or to the ferocity of judges who had discovered that the drawing as at first practised rendered a victim insensible to the spectacle of the burning of his own bowels, it is certain that the ox-hide became an established institution, for in a case later than Turberville we hear of “the common ox-hide.” This in its turn gave place to the hurdle, and this to the sledge—no doubt to the infinite disgust of judges like Shard.

The following is a case in which drawing was carried out till the death of the sufferers from mere dragging:—

There were frequent and bitter disputes between the citizens of Norwich and the prior. These disputes came to a head in 1271, when, in a quarrel at the gates of the priory, two citizens were killed. The townsmen flew to arms. The men of the priory retreated within the walls and prepared for a siege. The citizens, unable to force the gates of the priory, tore down the doors of the church. The prior threatened excommunication: the citizens demanded redress for the killing of two of their number. Finally, the prior put in execution his threat of excommunication: the citizens retorted by seizing provisions on their way to the priory. The prior now disposed his men in the belfry, and fighting went on for some days. At last the citizens set fire to the belfry: the fire spread till almost all the conventual buildings were destroyed. The citizens rushed in, killing all, monks and laymen, they could find; they destroyed everything on which they could lay hands. The bishop and other priests gathered together outside Norwich, excommunicated nine men by name, and all others who had taken part in the matter. The case was grave: the king came down, and spent twelve days in investigating the case, with the aid of his justices, and forty knights as jurors. The finding was that the prior was the cause of the burning of the church, and the king therefore took the manors of the priory into his own hands. But a terrible penalty was exacted from the citizens, thirty-three of whom were put to death: some were hanged, some burnt, others were drawn by horses (equis distracti). What is meant in this case is revealed by one chronicler, who gives details of the drawing: “Attached to horses by the feet, they were dragged through the streets of the city till, after great suffering, they ended their lives and expired.”[44]

The chroniclers record only, I think, one case in which it is made clear the victim was actually dragged to pieces, as we see in old pictures of the martyrdom of St. Hippolytus:—

“In 1238, King Henry III., being at Woodstock, a certain learned squire came to the court. He feigned madness, and demanded of the king that he should give up the crown. The king’s attendants sought to drive him away, but the king forbade this. In the middle of the night the man came again, bearing an open knife. He made his way into the king’s bed-chamber, but the king was not there, being with the queen. But one of the queen’s maids, Margaret Bisseth, was awake, and, sitting by the light of a candle, sang psalms (for she was a holy maid, and one devoted to the service of God). Margaret gave the alarm, and the man was secured. He declared that he had been sent by William Marsh on purpose to kill the king. On learning this, the king ordered that, as one guilty of an attempt to kill the king’s majesty, he should be torn by horses limb from limb, a terrible example, and a lamentable spectacle to all who should dare to plot such crimes. In the first place he was drawn asunder, then beheaded, and his body was divided into three parts, each of which was dragged through one of the greatest cities of England, and afterwards hung on the robbers’ gibbet.”[45]

We come now to the question of the punishment for high treason, regarded as the greatest of all crimes, one therefore to be punished with all possible severity. Treason was elaborately defined by 25 Edward III., st. 5. c. 2, but the statute does not prescribe punishment for the offence. Treason seems to have been held to include a number of distinct crimes, to each of which a distinct punishment was allotted. This is the sentence when it had been settled in a form which, with an alteration to be noted presently, endured for centuries:—

“1. That the aforesaid … be drawn to the gallows of …

2. He is there to be hanged by the neck, and let down alive.

3. His bowels are to be taken out,

4. And, he being alive, to be burnt.

5. His head is to be cut off.

6. His body is to be divided into four parts,

7. And his head and quarters are to be placed where our lord the king shall direct.”

There is no doubt that, originally, the prisoner was drawn to the gallows immediately after trial, but later, the first clause was made to run that the prisoner should be taken from the court to the place whence he came (the prison), and from thence to the place of execution. The sentence is given in this later form by Sir William Stanford in his work, “Les Plees del Coron.” 1560, fols. 182, 182b.

It is difficult to say when the sentence, as given above, was first carried out. In relating the execution in 1283 of David, Prince of Wales, the chroniclers give the several punishments in this order: drawing, hanging, beheading, disembowelling, quartering.[46] This is not quite conclusive, as will be seen by the next instance.

In 1305 we come to the condemnation and execution of Sir William Wallace. The sentence, in a highly rhetorical form, states the punishments in the order in which they are given in the case of Prince David, making beheading precede disembowelling. But accounts of the execution given by chroniclers leave no doubt that the punishments followed in what became the usual order, namely, that Wallace, being let down alive, was first disembowelled, beheading following, not preceding this.[47] It may well be, therefore, that in the execution of David the order of punishments, as carried out, differed from their order in the sentence. But we have no evidence of this. Going on the evidence, we may say that in the case of Wallace we have the first recorded instance in which what became the usual punishment for treason was carried out.

It will be observed that the execution of Wallace (see footnote), included ementulation (abscisis genitalibus) which was not prescribed by the sentence. There is a mystery about this clause. It does not appear in the form of sentence as given by Coke in his “Institutes,” yet in passing sentence in 1615 on John Owen, alias Collins, he expressly includes ementulation, and gives elaborate reasons why this should form part of the sentence. Again, taking a group of sentences passed in connection with the Popish Plot, we find that ementulation forms part of the sentence in the cases of Ireland, Pickering, and Grove, the “Five Jesuits” and Langhorn, Lord Stafford, Lionel Anderson and others tried with him. It is not found in the sentences passed on Stayley, Coleman, Fitzharris, and Plunket. The law books throw no light on the point; one only mentions the difference without attempting to explain it.[48]

It would seem that a Scot was the first on whom this horrible series of punishments is recorded to have been inflicted. Scots were the last to suffer the penalties of high treason, inflicted in their greatest rigour: these were the men condemned for the Rebellion of 1745.

In July, 1746, seventeen were sentenced according to the usual form: of these, eight were reprieved, the other nine being executed on Kennington Common on July 30th. One of these was Townley:—

“After he had hung six minutes, he was cut down, and, having life in him, as he lay upon the block to be quartered, the executioner gave him several blows on his breast, which not having the effect designed, he immediately cut his throat: after which he took his head off: then ripped him open, and took out his bowels and heart, and threw them into a fire which consumed them: then he slashed his four quarters, and put them with the head into a coffin, and they were carried to the new gaol in Southwark, where they were deposited till Saturday, August 2, when his head was put on Temple Bar, and his body and limbs suffered to be buried.”[49]

The last exhibition of this kind was in 1820, when Thistlewood and four others, some of them victims of a plot fostered by the Government, were hanged outside Newgate, their heads being afterwards publicly cut off by a masked man suspected to be a surgeon. The bodies were not quartered. The thing had by this time degenerated into a brutal and bloody farce.

---

TORTURE AND PEINE FORTE ET DURE.

Sir Thomas Smith (1513-77), Secretary of State to Elizabeth, wrote a book, “De Republica Anglorum,” not published till 1583. In it the author says: “Torment or question, which is vsed by the order of the ciuill lawe and custome of other countries, to put a malefactor to excessiue paine, to make him confesse of him selfe, or of his fellowes or complices, is not vsed in England, it is taken for seruile.… The nature of our nation is free, stout, haulte, prodigall of life and bloud: but contumelie, beatings, seruitude, and seruile torment and punishment it will not abide.”

The statement that torture was not used in England is amazing, as it is beyond doubt that Smith himself racked prisoners in 1571.[50] It is, however, true that he expressed extreme reluctance to be put on such work. Hallam is undoubtedly correct in saying that “the rack seldom stood idle in the Tower for all the latter part of Elizabeth’s reign.”[51] Indeed, there is a tract, attributed to Lord Burghley, defending the manner in which torture had been applied to prisoners.[52] It was published about the same time as Sir Thomas Smith’s book. But torture, frequently as it was practised, never had the sanction of the law of England. Coke, in the Third Part of his “Institutes,” written in 1628 (first published in 1644), declares: “There is no one opinion in our books, or judiciall Record (that we have seen or remember) for the maintenance of tortures or torments.” “So as there is no law to warrant tortures in this land, nor can they be justified by any prescription, being so lately brought in.”

It would be idle to speculate as to the amount of alleviation the reflection that torture was illegal may have brought to Southwell, for instance, who was racked ten several times.

A kind of torture, not however applied for the purpose of extracting confessions, was recognised by the law. This was the Peine Forte et Dure, “one of the most singular circumstances,” writes Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, “in the whole of the criminal law.” It certainly is this: it is moreover, a practice as to which even writers on our criminal law have gone astray, not excepting Sir James himself.

It is a most remarkable example of judge-made law; the successive stages of its growth can in some measure be traced. Its very name betrays the change made in the punishment, as it is agreed that peine forte et dure was originally “prison forte et dure.” The statutory basis of the punishment is found in an Act, 3 Edward I. (1275), c. 12:—

“It is provided also, That notorious Felons, which openly be of evil name, and will not put themselves in Enquests of Felonies that Men shall charge them with before the Justices at the King’s suit, shall have strong and hard Imprisonment (prison forte et dure), as they which refuse to stand to the common Law of the Land: But this is not to be understood of such prisoners as be taken of light suspicion.”

Britton, supposed to have written about sixteen years later than the statute, in 1291 or 1292, thus states the punishment:—

“And if they will not put themselves upon their acquittal, let them be put to their penance until they pray to do it: and let their penance be this, that they be barefooted, ungirt and bareheaded, in the worst place in the prison, upon the bare ground continually, night and day; that they eat only bread made of barley or bran, and that they drink not the day they eat, nor eat the day they drink, nor drink anything but water, and that they be put in irons.”[53]

“Fleta,” written about the same time, contains similar details, expressly stating that the punishment is to continue till those who refuse the law “seek what they before contemned.”[54]

An actual case, not mentioned in the law books, is recorded in the Chronicle of Bartholomew Cotton. In 1293, for the murder of some Dutch sailors at Sniterleye, thirteen persons were hanged, and the bailiff of the hundred, because he would not put himself upon the inquest (se supponere inquisitioni), was sentenced to prison in this form, viz., that on the day when he ate he should not drink, and the bread which he had should be the worst bread, and the drink that he should have should be putrid water, and that he should remain naked except for a linen garment, and upon the naked ground, and that he should be loaded with iron from the hands to the elbows, and from the feet to the knees, until he should make his submission.[55]

That the “penance” was intended not to kill, but to induce the prisoner to plead, is shown by cases in the Year Book of Edward I. In 1302 one condemned to “the great penance” brought his charter of pardon into court, by means of his friends, ten days after the judgment.[56] In 1357 Cecilia, wife of John de Rygeway, indicted for the murder of her husband, stood mute, and was sentenced to imprisonment accordingly. In this case it was reported to the king “on trustworthy testimony” that Cecilia had lived without food or drink for forty days. This was regarded as miraculous, and Cecilia was in consequence pardoned. Here, in intention at least, the punishment went to the length of depriving of all food.[57]

In a case recorded in the Year Book of Henry IV. (1406) the court ordered that, in addition to the punishment of being fed on the worst bread and stagnant water, two thieves condemned to penance for standing mute should have put upon them as great a weight as they could bear and more, and should so remain till they were dead. But as Chief Justice Gascoigne, who passed the sentence, afterwards said that the prisoners might live for many years, the words “more than they can bear” cannot be supposed to mean that the prisoners were to be pressed to death.[58]

The punishment reached its most terrible form in the reign of Elizabeth. Harrison, in his “Description of England,” says:—

“Such fellons as stand mute and speake not at their arraignement are pressed to death by huge weights laid vpon a boord, that lieth ouer their brest, and a sharpe stone vnder their backs, and these commonlie hold their peace, thereby to saue their goods vnto their wiues and children, which if they were condemned should be confiscated to the prince.”[59]

Here is another addition, the sharp stone under the back.

Harrison’s account is confirmed by two recorded cases. In 1586 Margaret Clitherow was indicted at York for harbouring or relieving priests, a capital offence. Refusing to plead, she was condemned by the judge to the peine forte et dure, “so to continue for three days,” without food or drink except barley bread and puddle water, “and a sharp stone under your back.” The execution of the sentence is thus described: Her hands and feet were tied to posts so that her body and arms made a cross. A door was laid upon her. “After this they laid weight upon her, which when she first felt, she said ‘Jesu! Jesu! Jesu! have mercy upon me!’ which were the last words she was heard to speak. She was in dying one quarter of an hour. A sharp stone, as much as a man’s fist, put under her back: upon her was laid to the quantity of seven or eight hundredweight at the least, which, breaking her ribs, caused them to burst forth of the skin.”[60]

The other case is that of Major Strangewayes, indicted at the Old Bailey on February 24, 1658-9, for the murder of his brother-in-law. He refused to plead, and was sentenced to the peine forte et dure in the usual terms. The press employed on this occasion was triangular in form, the acute angle resting above the region of the heart. “He was prohibited that usuall Favour in that kind, to have a sharp piece of Timber layed under his Back to Accellerate its penetration.” The assistants “laid on at first Weight, which finding too light for a sudden Execution, many of those standing by, added their Burthens to disburthen him of his pain.… In the space of eight or ten Minutes at the most, his unfettered Soul left her tortur’d Mansion. And he from that violent Paroxisme falls into the quiet sleep of Death.”[61]

From these two narratives and Harrison’s statement, in agreement with them, it is clear that the punishment of peine forte et dure, originally severe imprisonment, inflicted to induce a prisoner to plead, had in the hands of the judges become a sentence of death far more painful than hanging, so that one standing mute was more severely punished than if he had been found guilty of the crime for which he was indicted. The clauses of the sentence show a disordered growth in this severity. If a man was to have laid upon him as great a weight as he could bear “and more,” it was superfluous to make provision in the sentence for feeding on alternate days a person who was destined to be pressed to death in a few minutes. Sir William Staunforde, or Stanford, indeed, whose book, “Les Plees del Coron,” was published in 1560, expressly contends that the punishment was to continue, not until the prisoner would plead, but till he was dead.

It appears from the cases recorded and from the passage quoted from Harrison, that standing mute was a practice not uncommon. What was the motive for refusing to plead? It is here that those who have written on the subject have been mistaken. It has been generally assumed that the object was to save the forfeiture of goods which would have followed on a condemnation. This is incorrect. It is true that by standing mute the accused could escape corruption of blood and forfeiture of lands, but he did not thus avert forfeiture of goods and chattels. Sir William Stanford says, after citing a sentence, “Observe that the judge does not say, as Britton formerly said, that the punishment should continue till the prisoner makes a direct answer, but that this shall be his diet till he is dead, absolutely, without any condition in the sentence, express or implied, that he shall be released from penance if he consents to plead. For such a release has never at any time been seen, nor is it reasonable that by such repentance the king should be deprived of the forfeiture of the felon’s goods, to which he is entitled by the said judgment of peine forte et dure.”[62] When, in 1721, Phillips and Spiggott stood mute, the court gave orders that the sentence on such as refuse to plead should be read to them. It concludes, “And he against whom the judgment shall be given forfeits his goods to the king.”

Where the accused was not possessed of land, the practice can be explained by either of two suppositions: either the prisoner refused to recognise the authority of the tribunal, or he desired to save his family from the reproach of a public execution of one of its members. This was the reason alleged to the ordinary of Newgate by Spiggott. A few years earlier, in 1721, Nathaniel Hawes, a highwayman, refused to plead because a handsome suit of clothes had been taken from him, and he was resolved not to go to the gallows in a shabby suit. He gave in when he had borne a weight of 250 lbs. for about seven minutes.[63]

Spiggott, as has been said, bore 350 lbs. for half an hour, and gave way when a further weight of 50 lbs. was put upon him. These cases show that the judges had reverted to the old view that the punishment was inflicted for the purpose of inducing the prisoner to plead.

Another milder form of torture was practised in connection with the peine forte et dure. It is first revealed in the report of a case which was tried at the Newgate Sessions in 1663:—

“At the same Sessions, George Thorely, being indicted for Robbery, refused to plead, and his two Thumbs were tyed together with Whipcord, that the pain of that might compel him to Plead, and he was sent away so tyed, and a Minister perswaded to go to him to perswade him: And an Hour after he was brought again and pleaded. And this was said to be the constant practice at Newgate.”[64]

There was no legal authority whatsoever for this punishment.

By 12 George III. (1772), c. 20, it was enacted that persons thereafter arraigned for felony or piracy, standing mute, should be convicted of the crime charged against them. Such a case occurred in 1777.

Francis Mercier was arraigned at the Old Bailey sessions, beginning on December 3, 1777, for the murder of David Samuel Moudrey. He stood mute. A jury was immediately impannelled by the sheriff to inquire whether he stood mute fraudulently, wilfully, and obstinately, or by the providence and act of God. This jury found that he stood mute fraudulently, upon which Mr. Justice Aston (in the absence of the Recorder) at once passed sentence upon him that he should be executed and his body be afterwards dissected and anatomised. He was hanged at the end of Princes Street, Swallow Street (now Princes Street, Hanover Square).

By 7 and 8 George IV. (1827), c. 28, it was enacted that if a prisoner refused to plead, the court might order a plea of “Not Guilty” to be entered.

It had taken five and a half centuries to discover this simple solution of the difficulty.

---

THE HANGMAN.

Something must be said about that useful public servant, the executioner. Selected by the State to carry out its decrees, it would seem that he should have been invested with a dignity but little inferior to that of the judges who pronounced the sentence carried out by him in co-partnership. Without the practical assistance of the executioner, the solemn sentence of the robed, ermined, and full-bottom-wigged judge would be of no effect. Nevertheless, this officer of the State, practically inculcating on the scaffold the great truths of morality impressed on the public from the bench, this great public officer has never received the homage due to him. In France the executioner is—or was—“the executor of high works,” with us he has always been merely “the common hangman.” Of the many instances of public ingratitude, this is perhaps the most scandalous. Nor have posthumous honours in the smallest degree compensated for want of respect during life. The statues of London are, with few exceptions, and these recent, almost wholly devoted to royal personages, to soldiers, and to ground landlords. Among them we seek in vain monuments to the executive officer, without whose aid law and order would have been mere empty names. That great work, the Dictionary of National Biography, has done something to redeem this neglect by recording such rare facts as may be discovered in the biographies of hangmen. For this we may be grateful: it is at least a beginning.

Cunningham, in his “Handbook of London,” a compilation displaying marvellous industry, says that “the earliest hangman whose name is known was called Derrick.” This is a mistake. There are two, or perhaps three, predecessors whose names have been recorded. Of these predecessors of Derrick, the first is Cratwell, whose execution was witnessed by the chronicler Hall in 1538. Then comes an officer whose name a careless country has omitted to preserve, “the hangman with the stump-leg,” who, alas! was also hanged, reaching this end to his career in 1556.[65] A third possible predecessor of Derrick is known only by name. At the trial of Garnet, in 1606, the Earl of Northampton made a speech of which he thought so highly that he afterwards amplified and enlarged it for publication. Here is a specimen of what he would have liked to say had he been permitted:—

“The bulls which by the practice of you and your Catiline, the lively image of your heart, should by loud lowing, have called all his calves together with a preparation to band against our sovereign, at the first break of day, and to have cropped those sweet olive-buds that environ the regal seat, did more good than hurt, as it happened, by calling in a third bull, which was Bull the hangman, to make a speedy riddance and dispatch of this forlorn fellowship.”[66]

Bull is also mentioned in “Tarlton’s Jests.”

Either before or after Bull came Derrick, hangman in the reign of James I. He is mentioned in Dekker’s “Bellman of London,” 1608, and was famous; for half a century later his name was a term of abuse.[67] It is said that in some way, not clear, he gave his name to the form of crane known as a derrick.

According to the Dictionary of National Biography, Derrick was succeeded by Gregory Brandon. When Cunningham wrote there was a tradition that Brandon was of good family, and had a grant of arms. But it has since been found that the story had no better foundation than a practical joke:—

January, 1617. “York Herald played a trick on Garter King-at-Arms, by sending him a coat of arms drawn up for Gregory Brandon, said to be a merchant of London, and well-descended, which Garter subscribed, and then found that Brandon was the hangman; Garter and York are both imprisoned, one for foolery, the other for knavery.”[68]

Gregory was succeeded by his son Richard, famous as the executioner of Charles I.

After him came Lowen, an obscure hangman, known only by mention in the account of an execution.[69]

Later came Edward Dun, known as “Esquire Dun,” mentioned in Butler’s “Hudibras” (pt. iii. c. ii. l. 1534). He was followed by the most famous of all the hangmen of Tyburn, Jack Ketch, hangman from about 1663 to 1686. In January of this year he was for a time superseded by Pascha Rose, a butcher, who was hanged at Tyburn, on May 28th, when Ketch resumed office. Ketch is twice mentioned in Dryden, in the epilogue to the Duke of Guise:—

and again in “The Original and Progress of Satire”:—

Dr. Murray’s Dictionary attributes something of Ketch’s fame to his introduction into the “puppet-play of Punchinello introduced from Italy shortly after his death”: but Cunningham quotes from the Overseers’ Books of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields entries of sums “received of Punchinello the Italian popet player, for his Booth at Charing-cross,” in March, 1666. But something of his notoriety was due to his bungling in the executions of Lord Russell in 1683, and of the Duke of Monmouth in 1685. As to Lord Russell, “Ketch the executioner severed his head from his body at three strokes, very barbarously.”[70] It was worse with Monmouth:—

As recorded in the Annals, John Price, the Tyburn hangman, was executed in Bunhill-Fields for murder in 1718.

In August, 1721, John Meff was executed at Tyburn. At a previous date, not mentioned, he had been condemned to death for housebreaking, but, as he was going to Tyburn, the hangman, bearing the generic name of “Jack Ketch,” was arrested. What became of him is not told, but he probably came to a bad end.

In May, 1736, “Jack Ketch,” on his return from doing his office at Tyburn, robbed a woman of 3s. 6d., for which he was committed to Newgate. History is silent as to his fate.

In 1750, the hangman, John Thrift, was condemned for killing a man in a quarrel. His sentence was commuted to one of transportation for fourteen years. He was finally pardoned, and in September “resumed the exercise of his office.” “‘Old England,’ September 22, hints, that having become obnoxious to the Jacobites, for his celebrated operations on Tower-Hill and Kennington-Common, he was pardoned in terrorem, and to mortify them.”[72]

In 1780, Edward Dennis, the hangman, was condemned for taking part in the No Popery riots. He was respited. Dickens has introduced Dennis as a personage in his story of “Barnaby Rudge.”

It will be seen that out of the few hangmen of Tyburn whose names have come down to us, several ended their useful lives on the gallows, having failed to profit personally by the lessons they were employed by the State to teach.

There was a strange superstition connected with the gallows: what it was will be understood from the following:—

This case is not the only one of its kind on record.[73]

Tyburn is responsible for a few slang expressions. “A Tyburn ticket” was a certificate exempting from parish duties the successful prosecutor of a malefactor. “A Tyburn blossom” was a young pickpocket. “A Tyburn check” was a rope. “A Tyburn tippet” was a halter. Latimer did not disdain to use this word in his great sermons.

The gallows was known as “Deadly Never-green,” the “Three-legged Mare,” the “Three-legged Stool.”

AFTER TYBURN.

What became of the bodies of those done to death at Tyburn? Some were quartered, parboiled, and stuck up on the gates of the city or elsewhere, as the king might direct. These would be but few out of the great total. For two centuries there was regular provision for the decent burial of executed persons, in the circumstances mentioned by Stow.

Stow tells how, in 1348, Ralph Stratford, Bishop of London, bought a piece of ground, called “No Man’s Land,” which he enclosed with a wall of brick, and dedicated for burial of the dead: this was Pardon churchyard. In the following year Sir Walter Manny bought thirteen acres of land adjoining, and here were buried more than fifty thousand persons who died of the frightful pestilence then raging, known as the Black Death. In 1371 Sir Walter founded here the Charterhouse, giving to the monastery the thirteen acres, and also the three acres adjoining, which “remained till our time by the name of Pardon churchyard, and served for burying of such as desperately ended their lives, or were executed for felonies, who were fetched thither usually in a close cart, bailed over and covered with black, having a plain white cross thwarting, and at the fore end a St. John’s cross without, and within a bell ringing by shaking of the cart, whereby the same might be heard when it passed: and this was called the friary cart, which belonged to St. John’s, and had the privilege of sanctuary.”[74]

“It remained till our time,” says Stow, and this is one of those passages telling what Stow had seen—passages that give so vivid an interest to his story of London.

In the Grey Friars’ Chronicle we find an instance of the burial in Pardon churchyard of persons executed at Tyburn:—

From Stow’s account of the execution, quoted in the Annals, we learn that the number of Lincolnshire men executed on this occasion was twelve.

The priory of St. John’s was dissolved in 1540, and with it went the friary cart.

After this, and also before the suppression of the friary cart, bodies were brought back by friends for interment in the parish churchyard. Here is a case in which a body so brought back was refused burial:—

One Awfield had been condemned and executed at Tyburn for “sparcing abrood certen lewed, sedicious, and traytorous bookes. His body was brought into St. Pulchers to be buryed, but the parishioners would not suffer a Traytor’s corpes to be layed in the earthe where theire parents, wyeffs, chyldren, kynred, maisters, and old neighbors did rest: and so his carcase was retourned to the buryall grounde neere Tyborne, and there I leave yt.”[76]

But many of the poor wretches hanged had no friends who would be at the charge of interment. The demands of the surgeons would be soon satisfied; with how little ceremony the residue would be treated we may learn from the narrative of Richardson, given in the Annals (1741).

We read of two priests and sixteen felons executed at the same time, in 1610, being all thrown together into a pit. The stories of bones found in the neighbourhood of the gallows may probably be referred to forgotten burial places or to pits into which, after a busy day’s work, a score of bodies would be tumbled.[77]

Strype, in his edition of Stow’s “Survey,” has a weird story of the finding of four embalmed heads in Blackfriars, in clearing away rubbish after the Great Fire of 1666:—

Through the later researches of Dr. Challoner, we now know the story relating to one of these heads. John Cornelius, or Mohun, was born of Irish parents in Bodmin. He studied at Oxford, but not adopting the new religion, went afterwards to Rheims, and later to Rome. He was sent upon the English mission, in which he laboured for about ten years. He was apprehended in April, 1594, in the house of the widow of Sir John Arundel, on the information of a servant of the house. Mr. Bosgrave, a kinsman of Sir John Arundel, seeing him hurried away without a hat, put his own hat on the priest’s head; for this he was arrested. Two servants of the family, Terence Carey and Patrick Salmon, were also arrested. Cornelius was sent to London, and there racked to make him give up the names of Catholics who had harboured him. Refusing to make any discovery, he was sent back into the country, tried, and, with his three companions, executed at Dorchester on July 2, 1594. The three were simply hanged: Cornelius, as guilty of high treason, was drawn, hanged, and quartered. His head was nailed to the gallows, but afterwards removed at the instance of the town. His quarters were buried together with the bodies of his companions. Dr. Challoner does not tell how the head of Cornelius was recovered by friends, nor does he say anything more of the others. It is probable that the three other heads of Strype’s account were those of the companions of Cornelius (“Memoirs of Missionary Priests,” part i., pp. 157-60).

The Times of May 9, 1860, contained a letter from Mr. A. J. Beresford Hope, living in the house at the south-west corner of Edgware Road, stating that in the course of excavations made close to the foot-pavement along the garden of his house, “numerous human bones” were discovered. He says: “These are obviously the relics of the unhappy persons buried under the gallows.” If this was so, they must have been the bones of Cromwell, Ireton, or Bradshaw, buried under the gallows.

ORIGIN AND SITE OF THE TYBURN GALLOWS

As has already been said, the earliest mention of Tyburn in connection with executions is in 1196, when William FitzOsbert, known as “Longbeard,” was hanged here: with probability we can refer to the site an execution taking place a few years earlier. How far back can we, in the absence of records, conjecturally place the dedication of Tyburn to executions? We can say, with a high degree of probability, that Tyburn was not established till after the Conquest, and, further, not till after the death of the Conqueror.

Hanging was not greatly in favour with those whom we must, in spite of objections, call the Anglo-Saxons. Various fanciful definitions of Time have been given. According to Goethe, it is on the roaring loom of Time that the Earth-Spirit weaves the living garments of God. According to Carlyle, Time is the outer veil of Eternity. These poetical definitions seem to have little or no practical value. They would convey nothing, for instance, to the time-keeper of a wharf or great warehouse. It has been reserved for our race to give a definition of real solid value: “Time is money.” The phrase, revealing in three words the soul of a people, has gone the round of the world in its native tongue, hailed from pole to pole as the final definition of Time. We might look with confidence to find in the origins of a people alone capable of making this supreme discovery instances of this practical outlook on the universe. We shall not be disappointed. The laws of our forefathers, based on this commercial view, were administered, with a strict eye to business, on the joint-stock or co-operative principle. To kill a man was mere waste, if money could be screwed out of him or out of those who could be made responsible for him. “Business is Business.” Every man—in a sense different from that in which Walpole used the words—every man had his price. Men, according to rank, were carefully appraised: a man’s “were” was so much, his “wite” so much. A murderer must pay these sums, or they must be paid by those responsible for him. And not only every man, but every part of each man had its price. One sees in encyclopÆdias of domestic economy, prepared for the instruction of young and thrifty housekeepers, diagrams setting out the differences in value of such and such parts of an ox, a sheep, or of “a side” of bacon. Such a chart for use by an Anglo-Saxon dispenser of justice would have had to be executed on a large scale. The human body was divided into thirty-four parts, upon each of which was placed a fixed value. It is needless to give here all the thirty-four categories; it will be sufficient to set out the prices to be paid for injuries to the arm and hand:—

The authors of a code so thoroughly commercial in spirit naturally regarded theft as the worst of crimes, and hanging was probably common for this offence, if the thief could not redeem himself. Thus we read in the laws of Æthelstan: “That no thief be spared over xii pence, and no person over xii years, who we learn, according to folk-right, that he is guilty, and can make no denial: that we slay him and take all that he has.”[79]

William the Conqueror abolished capital punishment. For this he has been highly eulogised by Mr. J. R. Green, who writes of “strange touches of a humanity far in advance of his age,” of “his aversion to shed blood by process of law.” But he omits to tell us that for the punishment of death William substituted punishments which, as Mr. Freeman justly says, “according to modern ideas were worse than death.” It is indeed “a strange touch of humanity” which prescribed the tearing out of a man’s eyes and the lopping off of his limbs. A terrible picture of a land haunted by sightless and maimed trunks is conjured up by the words of William’s law, “so that the trunk may remain alive as a sign of its crimes.”[80]

The penalty for breach of this law, confiscation of all the offender’s property, was so severe that we may well believe that capital punishment was actually abolished during the reign of William.

It appears that capital punishment was re-instituted by Henry I. in 1108, and there seems no reason for doubting the statement, though the evidence was not wholly accepted by Sir James Fitzjames Stephen.

The institution of the gallows of Tyburn probably dates from this time. The origin of Tyburn is certainly Norman; its early name, “The Elms,” testifies to this, for among the Normans the elm was the tree of justice. Here is the record of a symbolic elm so famous that its fall awakened an echo in the distant scriptorium of Peterborough:—

Something of this symbolical character was retained by the elm in France long after the name “The Elms” had been forgotten here. Rabelais (1483?-1553) speaks of “juges sous l’orme,” and, later, Loyseau (1556-1627) has a great deal to say of these “judges under the elm-tree.”[83]

“The Elms” of Smithfield came by the name in the same way, as, there is little doubt, did also “The Elms,” now Dean’s Yard, in the precincts of Westminster Abbey; “The Elms” in the abbey lands at Covent Garden, and “Homors” in the precincts of Canterbury Cathedral, derived, no doubt correctly, by Professor Willis, from a corruption of Ormeaux, Ormayes, Ormoies, or Ormerie, plantations of elms.[84] In like manner Elms Lane, now Elms Mews, a turning out of the Bayswater or Uxbridge Road, probably preserves the name given to the gallows which the abbat of Westminster had at “Westburn” towards the end of the thirteenth century.[85]

It would not be surprising to find more of such names, in form more or less corrupt, in connection with places in the precincts of old monastic foundations. It may even be hoped that some of the gallows of the abbat of Westminster, in addition to the gallows of “Westburn,” have bequeathed place-names still surviving.

Before introducing further evidence as to the establishment of gallows at Tyburn, reference must be made to the confusion existing between “The Elms” of Tyburn and “The Elms” of Smithfield. Maitland, and after him Parton,[86] maintained, in ignorance or oblivion of the facts, that the gallows (presumably for Middlesex) formerly stood at “The Elms” of Smithfield; that, at some date before 1413, the gallows was removed to St. Giles’s, where it continued till its removal to Tyburn. But this ignores the fact that a gallows did undoubtedly exist at Tyburn at the end of the twelfth century. There is, besides, no evidence whatever that a royal gallows ever existed at St. Giles’s, except when a gallows was erected here for a special case.[87] There may possibly have been here a local, manorial gallows, for, as has been shown, such gallows abounded. There was even another gallows at Tyburn, set up by the Earl of Oxford, who, when challenged, seems to have admitted that he had no right to erect a gallows here.[88]

The confusion will cease if we keep firm hold of the fact that Smithfield was within the liberty of the city, and that the civic gallows was here erected. There is not, so far as I know, any evidence as to the suppression of the civic gallows at Smithfield. There were in late times executions here, but so there were in many other places. Smithfield comes into notice in the second year of the fifteenth century as the place of execution, by burning, for heresy, a character which it retained so long as the punishment was inflicted.[89]

It is not at all probable that the first execution recorded as having taken place at Tyburn in 1196 was actually the first execution there. I have ventured to allot to Tyburn an execution which took place in London in 1177, nineteen years before the execution of William Longbeard. There is evidence of the existence of a gallows at Tyburn at an uncertain date, but going in probability still further back. In 1220 the king, Henry III., ordered the immediate erection of two good gibbets of the best and strongest material, for hanging thieves and other malefactors, in the place where gallows were formerly erected, namely, at “The Elms” (ad Ulmellos).[90] Strype, in his edition of Stow’s “Survey,” and, seemingly, Peter le Neve, whom he quotes in the margin, refer this order to “The Elms” of Smithfield, but this is clearly a mistake, as the order evidently concerns the royal gallows, not the gallows in the jurisdiction of the City of London.[91]

The order refers to “the place where gallows were formerly erected, namely, the Elms.” It must be taken to be an order to replace decayed gallows. We may safely allow a life of at least fifty years to the old gallows, and it results that gallows had been here from at least as early as 1170.

There is no need to follow further in this place the course of executions at Tyburn. We come now to the question of the site of the gallows.

In one of the most recent books in which reference is made to the site we find this: “It was customary to vary the position of the gallows of Tyburn from time to time, but we may roughly put its approximate position where the Marble Arch now stands.” It is to be feared that the writer would be sorely puzzled if he were asked to produce either evidence that the gallows ever stood “where the Marble Arch now stands,” or evidence of so much as a single change of position. But statements of the kind, unsupported by evidence, are constantly found in books upon London. Those who make these statements are probably misled by knowledge of the fact that in our times a gallows is brought out for the purpose of a rare execution, and then laid up against the time when it will be again required. But of old the gallows—of Tyburn, at least—was in constant requisition, and, till a date which is well known, was a permanent structure—permanent, that is, having regard to its material. The gallows of Tyburn was permanent, subject to renewal from time to time, till the year 1759, when, as will be shown, the permanent gallows gave place to a movable gallows. It is in no degree probable that the site of a fixed gallows in frequent and continuous use should be changed without some good reason.

The first information of the site of the gallows other than the vague indication “Tyburn” is found in one of the old chronicles, which tells that, in 1330, Mortimer was executed at “The Elms, about a league outside the city.”[92] The distance thus vaguely stated would apply about equally to any one of the conjectured sites from Marylebone Lane to the head of the Serpentine, at which writers have severally placed the gallows.

At first sight it may seem strange that a site so remote from the prisons of Newgate and the Tower should have been chosen. But it was usual, for a reason which will appear, to place the gallows at a considerable distance from the town. The gallows for the county of Surrey was at St. Thomas-a-Waterings, near the second milestone on the Kent Road. Loyseau shows that while the pillory, used for non-capital punishment, was always set up in the principal place or street of a town, capital punishments were carried out at a distance—“le gibet est tousiours emmy les champs.”[93] He refers to Lipsius, who in his turn cites ancient authors to prove the practice. There is, of course, good reason why the place of execution should have been fixed far from the abodes of men. In addition to its gallows, Tyburn had its gibbets, on which bodies of men hanged alive were suffered to hang till they fell to pieces. In other cases bodies were transferred, after hanging, to a gibbet—

In a lease granted by the Prior of the Knights Hospitallers mention is made of Great Gibbet Field and Little Gibbet Field, parcel of the manor of Lilleston.[94] Mr. Loftie says, “We cannot be far wrong in supposing that the gibbets stood near the highway.” The word gibbet was formerly used so loosely that we cannot be sure that the fields did not take their name from the gallows. But Tyburn certainly had, as well as its gallows, gibbets on which were exposed bodies. But this page in the early history of Tyburn is almost a blank. The subjects on which it is most difficult to find information are precisely those of occurrence so common that it has not entered the head of contemporaries to notice them. That gibbets, as distinct from gallows, did exist in early times, there is no doubt; their use continued down to the eighteenth century or later. The old writers do not clearly distinguish between gibbet and gallows, but there is a passage in which Matthew Paris certainly means to speak of a gibbet. In writing of the execution of William Marsh, Matthew Paris leaves it doubtful whether Marsh was or was not at once fixed to a gibbet. But from Gregory’s chronicle we learn that Marsh was first hanged; from Matthew Paris we learn that the body was afterwards hung “on one of the hooks” of a gibbet.[95] In 1306 the body of Simon Fraser was hung on a gibbet for twenty days. In 1324 the king granted a petition of the prelates to permit burial of the bodies of the six barons hanged (not at Tyburn) in 1322.[96] Bodies would hang together for a much longer time. Jean Marteilhe saw, hanging on a gibbet in 1713, the body of Captain Smith, hanged at Execution Dock in 1708.[97]

Thus there must have been an accumulation of bodies swinging from the gibbets of Tyburn and poisoning the air. The French have always been more lavish in public monuments than we. The great gibbet of Montfaucon in the outskirts of Paris was a solid stone structure, with provision for hanging thereon—if we may trust the pictures given of it—at least sixty bodies; it is said that the bodies not unfrequently numbered from sixty to eighty. Under cover of the pestilential air, MaÎtre FranÇois Villon, poet of the gibbet, and the cut-purses, his friends, rioted in security from intrusion.[98]

There is very good reason to suppose that a single gallows would not be sufficient for the work to be done at Tyburn. A gallows in the ordinary form, two uprights and a cross-beam, could hardly take more than ten victims at a time. We must suppose that the equipment of Tyburn demanded at least two such gallows. We have seen that in 1220 the king ordered two gallows. But in 1571, just in time for Elizabeth’s penal laws, a great improvement was made in the form of the gallows; a triangular gallows was introduced, capable of hanging at one time at least twenty-four men. This is the highest number recorded as being hanged at one time, but it does not follow that the capacity of the gallows was exhausted by this number. The evidence for the introduction of the triangular gallows at this time is contained in the account of the execution of Dr. Story:—

There is no earlier account of a triangular gallows. My friend, Mr. P. A. Daniel, tells me that he knows of no reference in the old drama to the triangular form of the gallows of date prior to 1571.

The earliest allusion to this form seems to be in 1589:—

Of about the same date is an allusion in Tarlton’s “Newes out of Purgatorie,” 1590:—

A third reference is found in Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labour Lost,” one of his early plays:—

These references are followed at a short distance in date by a delineation showing not only the triangular form of the gallows but, roughly, its position. This is in a map of Middlesex, engraved by John Norden for Camden’s “Britannia.” It was first given in the folio edition of 1607, and reappears in the editions of 1610 and 1637. In this last it bears the number 17 in the left-hand corner. In the edition of 1695, Norden’s map is replaced by one by Robert Morden.

In the three maps of the respective editions of 1607, 1610, and 1637, the triangular gallows is shown impinging on the north-east corner of Hyde Park, with the word “Tyborne” against it. Here, then, we have evidence that thirty-six years after the introduction of the triangular gallows it still remained here, clearly a permanent structure, probably the very gallows erected in 1571.[103]

The next piece of evidence is furnished by a representation of the gallows given in the frontispiece of “The Life and Death of Edmund Geninges” published in 1614.

Twelve years later, in 1626, we find evidence fixing for the first time the exact site of the gallows. On June 26th of this year, Henrietta Maria, after a day spent in devotion, went with her attendants through St. James’s Park to Hyde Park. Whether by accident or design she went towards Tyburn. Charles hated the Queen’s French suite, secured to her by treaty. Within six months of the marriage he had resolved to be rid of them. The courtiers made the most of the visit to Tyburn; it was averred that the Queen’s confessor had made her walk barefoot to the gallows, “thereby to honour the saint of the day in visiting that holy place, where so many martyrs (forsooth) had shed their blood in the Catholic cause.” The incident, thus exaggerated, brought matters to a head. Sixty of the Queen’s attendants were compelled to embark for France. The French King was naturally indignant at this violation of his sister’s rights: a war might have arisen out of the quarrel. This was averted by the skill of MarÉchal de Bassompierre, sent over as Ambassador Extraordinary. Charles appointed Commissioners to discuss matters with the Marshal. The Commissioners expressed the charge in these terms: The Queen’s attendants abused the influence they had over the susceptible and religious mind of the Queen to lead her by a long road, across a park, which the Comte de Tilliers, her chamberlain, had taken measures to keep open, in order to take her to the place where it is the custom to execute the most infamous malefactors and criminals of all kinds, the place being at the entrance of a high road; an act which tended to bring shame and ridicule not only on the Queen herself, but also reproach and evil speaking against former kings of glorious memory, as though accusing them of tyranny in having put to death innocent persons that those people regard as martyrs, whereas, on the contrary, not one of them was executed on account of religion, but for treason in the highest degree.

Marshal de Bassompierre replied with remarkable frankness: “I know of a surety,” he said, “that you do not believe that which you publish to others.” He declared that the Queen had not been within fifty paces of the gallows. He repeats the description of the place as at the entrance of a high road. It is not necessary to follow the discussion further.[104]

The words “the entrance of a high road” fix definitely the spot indicated, approximately, by Norden’s map. Even without the map, then unknown to me, I felt abundantly justified in writing that the words applied to a road leading out of the road bounding Hyde Park: “This can be no other than the road now known as Edgeware Road: along the whole length of the park there is no other road to which the words could apply.”[105]

In 1626 we have also the mention of “the three wooden stilts” of Tyburn, in Shirley’s “The Wedding,” published in 1629.

In 1649, in an account of the hanging of a batch of twenty-four persons, it is said that eight were hanged “unto each Triangle.”[106]

In 1660 the bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw were “hanged at the several angles of the Triple-tree.”[107]

1680. Seller’s map of Middlesex shows the gallows, its form not recognisable, near the angle formed by the junction of the roads.

1697. Defoe, in his Essay upon Projects, refers to Watling Street: “The same High Way or Street called Watling Street … went on West to that spot where Tyburn now stands, and there turn’d North-West … to St. Alban’s.”[108]

1712. Beginning with this date the accounts published by Lorrain, the Ordinary of Newgate, of the behaviour of condemned criminals, show the prison of Newgate at the top, on one side, and on the other the gallows of Tyburn. The illustration is taken from the broadsheet of September 19, 1712.

1725. In this year a large map of the newly constituted parish of St. George, Hanover Square, was drawn by John Mackay. We have in it the first exact location of the gallows, shown as a triangular structure. In detailed notes on the map, describing the first “beating the bounds” of the parish on Ascension Day, 1725, it is stated that the parish boundary to the west was marked “on the S.E. Leg of Tyburn,” fully proving the permanence of the structure. The map was reproduced on a small scale in the Builder of July 6, 1901, and was described by Mr. Herbert Sieveking in the Daily Graphic of March 11, 1908.

1746 to 1757. In 1746 was published Rocque’s beautiful map of London in twenty-four sheets; this was followed by his maps of Middlesex in 1754 and 1757. In all the gallows is shown in the open space formed by the junction of the roads near the Marble Arch.

1747. In the last plate of Hogarth’s series of “Industry and Idleness,” is shown an execution at Tyburn. The gallows, a triangular structure, is in the same position (approximately) as in Rocque’s maps.

1756. In Seale’s map, published this year, the triangular gallows is shown in the same position as in Rocque’s maps.[109]

Tyburn had ceased to be “emmy les champs”; the advance of the town is shown by the inclusion of Tyburn in maps of London. So early as 1719 it was proposed to move the gallows to Stamford Hill:—

Strype, in his edition of Stow’s “Survey” (book iv. p. 120) mentions another report, but Tyburn defied these threats for many years to come.[111] Only in 1759, after an existence of near six hundred and fifty years, did the permanent gallows of Tyburn give place to a movable gallows, put up on the day of an execution and afterwards taken down. It is not a little strange that a monument of great antiquity, so well known, recalling so many tragedies, so intimately connected with the history and life of the people, should have been allowed to disappear without a word or a curse. I have not been able to find any direct reference to the removal of the triple-tree. The date of its removal must fall between June 18 and October 3, 1759. Under the earlier date we find, in the usual terms, the record of an execution at Tyburn. The Whitehall Evening Post of October 4, 1759, has the following:—

“Yesterday morning, about Half an Hour after Nine o’clock, the four malefactors were carried in two carts from Newgate, and executed on the new Moving Gallows at Tyburn.… The Gallows, after the Bodies were cut down, was carried off in a cart.”