What a sombre and striking figure in the deeply coloured background
of history is the headsman, that passive agent of strange tyrannies,
that masked executor of laws which were often but the expression of
man’s violence! He stands aloof from the brilliant web of life, yet,
turn where we will, his shadow falls across the scene. In the little
walled towns of mediæval Europe, in the splendid cities, in the broad
lands held by feudal lord or stately monastery, wherever the struggle
for freedom and power was sharpest and sternest, the headsman played
his part. An unreasoning and richly imaginative fear wrapped him in
a mantle of romance, as deeply stained as the scarlet cloak which
was his badge of office. Banished from the cheerful society of men
(de Maistre tells us that if other houses surrounded his abode, they
were deserted, and left to crumble and decay), he enjoyed privileges
that compensated him for his isolation. His tithes were exacted as
ruthlessly as were those of prince or baron; and if his wife chattered
little on summer days with friendly gossips, she was sought in secret
after nightfall for hideous amulets that blessed--or cursed--the
wearer. From father to son, from son to grandson, the right was handed
down; and the young boy was taught to lift and swing the heavy sword,
that his hand might be as sure as his eye, his muscles as hard as his
heart.
Much of life’s brilliant panorama was seen from the elevation of
the scaffold in the days when men had no chance nor leisure to die
lingeringly in their beds. They fell fighting, or by the assassin’s
hand, or by the help of what was then termed law; and the headsman,
standing ever ready for his rôle, beheld human nature in its worst and
noblest aspects, in moments of stern endurance and supreme emotion, of
heroic ecstasy and blank despair. Had he a turn for the marvellous, it
was gratified. He saw Saint Denis arise and carry his severed head from
Montmartre to the site of the church which bears his name to-day. He
saw Saint Felix and Saint Alban repeat the miracle. He heard Lucretia
of Ancona pronounce the sacred name three times after decapitation.
Ordericus Vitalis, that most engaging of historians, tells us the
story of the fair Lucretia; and also of the Count de Galles, who
asked upon the scaffold for time in which to say his _Pater Noster_.
When he reached the words, _Et ne nos inducas in tentationem_, the
headsman--all unworthy of his office--grew impatient, and brought down
his shining sword. The Count’s head rolled on the ground, but from his
open lips came with terrible distinctness the final supplication, _Sed
libera nos a malo_.
These were not trivial experiences. What a tale to tell o’ nights was
that of Théodoric Schawembourg, whose headless trunk arose and walked
thirty paces from the block! Auberive, who has preserved this famous
legend, embroiders it with so many fantastic details that the salient
point of the narrative is well-nigh lost; but the dead and forgotten
headsman beheld the deed in all its crude simplicity. Had he, on the
other hand, a taste for experimental science, it was given him to watch
the surgeons of Prague, who in 1679 replaced a severed head upon a
young criminal’s shoulders, and kept the lad alive for half an hour.
Panurge, it will be remembered, was permanently successful in a similar
operation; but Panurge was a man of genius. We should hardly expect to
find his like among the doctors of Prague.
Strange and unreasonable laws guaranteed to the headsman his full share
of emoluments. He was well paid for his work, and never suffered from
a dull season. From the towns he received poultry and fodder, from the
monasteries, fish and game. The Abbaye de Saint-Germain gave him every
year a pig’s head; the Abbaye de Saint-Martin five loaves of bread and
five bottles of wine. Cakes were baked for him on the eve of Epiphany.
From each leper in the community he exacted--Heaven knows why!--a tax
at Christmastime. _Les filles de joie_ were his vassals, and paid him
tribute. He had the power to save from death any woman on her way to
the scaffold, provided he were able and willing to marry her. He was
the first official summoned to the body of a suicide; and standing on
the dead man’s breast, he claimed as his own everything he could touch
with the point of his long sword. He might, if he chose, arrest the
little pigs that strayed in freedom through the streets of Paris,--like
the happy Plantagenet pigs of London,--and carry them as prisoners
to the Hôtel Dieu. Here, unless it could be shown that they belonged
to the monks of Saint Anthony, and so, for the sake of the good pig
that loved the blessed hermit, were free from molestation, their
captor demanded their heads, or a fine of five sous for every ransomed
innocent. It was his privilege to snatch in the market-place as much
corn as he could carry away in his hands, and the peasants thus freely
robbed submitted without a murmur, crossing themselves with fervour
as he passed. The representative of law and order was not unlike a
licensed libertine in the easy day of old.
The element of picturesqueness entered into this life, sombre
traditions enriched it, terror steeped it in gloom, the power for which
it stood lent to it dignity and weight. In Spain the headsman wore a
distinctive dress, and his house was painted a deep and ominous red.
In France the ancient title “_Exécuteur de la haute justice_” had a
full-blown majesty of sound. In Germany superstition grew like a fungus
beneath the scaffold’s shade, until even the sword was believed to be a
sentient thing with strange powers of its own. Who can forget the story
of the child Annerl, whose mother took her to the headsman’s house,
whereupon the great weapon stirred uneasily in its cupboard, thirsting
for her blood. Then the headsman besought the mother to allow him to
cut the little girl very lightly, that the sword might be appeased;
but she shudderingly refused, and Annerl, abandoned to her destiny,
was led thirty years later to the block. Executions at night were long
in favour, and by the flare of torches the scaffold stood revealed
to a great and gaping crowd. For centuries _la place de Grève_ was
the theatre for this ghastly drama, until every foot of the soil was
saturated with blood. Only in 1633 were these torchlight decapitations
forbidden throughout France. They had grown too turbulently
entertaining.
The headsman’s office was hereditary, and if there were no sons, a
son-in-law succeeded to the post. Henri Sanson, the last of his dread
name, claimed that he was of good blood, and that the far-off ancestor
who handed down his sword to nine generations had been betrayed by
love to this dark destiny. He had married a headsman’s daughter, and
could not escape the terrible dowry she brought him. It is not possible
to attach much weight to the Sanson memoirs,--they are so plainly
apocryphal; but we know that the family plied its craft for nearly two
hundred years, and that one woman of the race bore seven sons, who all
became executioners. In 1726 Charles Sanson died, leaving a little boy,
Jean Baptiste, only seven years old. Upon him devolved his father’s
office; but, in view of his tender infancy, an assistant was appointed
to do the work until he came of age. It was required, however, that the
child should stand upon the scaffold at every execution, sanctioning
it with his presence.
The pride of the headsman lay in his dexterity. The sword was heavy,
the stroke was sure. Capeluche, who during the furious struggle between
the Armagnacs and the Burgundians severed many a noble head, was a
true enthusiast, practising his art _con amore_, and with incredible
delicacy and skill. When the fortunes of war brought him in turn upon
the scaffold, he proved no craven; but took a lively and intelligent
interest in his own decapitation. His last moments were spent in giving
a practical lesson to the executioner; showing him where to stand,
where to place the block, and how best to handle his weapon.
The vast audience that assembled so often to witness a drama never
staled by repetition was wont to be exceedingly critical. Bungling
work drew down upon the headsman the execrations of the mob, and not
infrequently placed his own life in danger. De Thou’s head fell only
at the eleventh stroke, the Duke of Monmouth was mangled piteously,
and in both these instances the fury of the mob rose to murder
point. It was ostensibly to save such sufferings and such scenes that
the guillotine was adopted in France; but for the guillotine it is
impossible to cherish any sentiment save abhorrence. Vile, vulgar, and
brutalizing, its only merit was the hideous speed with which it did its
work; a speed which the despots of the Terror never found fast enough.
In October, 1792, twenty-one Girondists were beheaded in thirty-one
minutes; but as practice made perfect, these figures were soon
outdistanced. The highest record reached was sixty-two decapitations in
forty-five minutes, which sounds like the work of the shambles.
Charles Henri Sanson, the presiding genius of the guillotine, has
been lifted to notoriety by the torrents of blood he shed; but his
is a contemptible figure, without any of the dark distinction that
marked his predecessors. His pages of the family memoirs are probably
mendacious, and certainly, as M. Loye pathetically laments, “insipid.”
He poses as a physiologist, and tells strange tales of the condemned
who long survived beheading, as though sixty-two executions in
forty-five minutes left leisure for the study of such phenomena. He
also affects the tone of a philanthropist, commiserates the king who
died by his hands, and is careful to assure us that it was an assistant
named Legros who, holding up the severed head of Charlotte Corday,
struck the fair cheek which blushed beneath the blow. We are even
asked to believe that he, Sanson, whispered to Marie Antoinette as she
descended from the cart, “Have courage, Madame!”--counsel of which that
daughter of the Cæsars stood in little need.
The contrast is sharp between this business-like butchery, where the
condemned were begrudged the time it took to die, and the earlier
executions, so full of dignity and composure. The vilest criminals
felt intuitively that the fulness of their atonement consecrated those
last sad moments, and behaved often with unexpected propriety and
grace. Mme. de Brinvilliers was a full half hour upon the scaffold. The
headsman prepared her for death, untying her cap-strings, cutting off
her hair, baring her shoulders, and binding her hands. She was composed
without bravado, contrite without sanctimoniousness. “I doubt,” wrote
her confessor, the Abbé Piron, “whether in all her life she had ever
been so patient under the hands of her maid.” Some natural scorn she
expressed at sight of the crowd straining with curiosity to see her
die: “Un beau spectacle, Mesdames et Messieurs!”--but this was all. The
executioner swept off her head with one swift stroke; then, hastily
opening a flask, took a deep draught of wine. “That was a good blow,”
he said to the Abbé. “At these times I always recommend myself to God,
and He has never failed me. This lady has been on my mind for a week
past. I will have six Masses said for her soul.” Surely such a headsman
ennobled in some degree the direful post he bore.
If a murderess, inconceivably callous and cruel, could die with
dignity, what of the countless scenes where innocence was sacrificed to
ambition, and where the best and noblest blood of Europe was shed upon
the block? What of the death of Conradin on a Neapolitan scaffold? In
the thirteenth century, boys grew quickly into manhood, and Conradin
was seventeen. He had embarked early upon that desperate game, of
which the prize was a throne, and the forfeit, life. He had missed his
throw, and earned his penalty. But he was the grandson of an emperor,
the heir of an imperial crown, and the last of a proud race. There was
a pathetic boyishness in the sudden defiance with which he hurled his
glove into the throng, and in the low murmur of his mother’s name. The
headsman had a bitter part to play that day, for Conradin’s death is
one of the world’s tragedies; but there are other scaffolds upon which
we still glance back with a pity fresh enough for pain. When Count
Egmont and Admiral Horn were beheaded in the great square of Brussels,
the executioner wisely hid beneath the black draperies until it was
time for him to do his work. He had no wish to parade himself as part
of that sad show.
In England the rules of etiquette were never more binding than upon
those who were about to be beheaded. When the Duke of Hamilton, the
Earl of Holland, and Lord Capel went to the block together, they were
told they must die in the order of their rank, as though they were
going in to dinner; and upon Lord Capel’s offering to address the
crowd without removing his hat, it was explained to him that this was
incorrect. The scaffold was not the House of Parliament, and those
who graced it were expected to uncover. On a later and very memorable
occasion, the Earl of Kilmarnock, “with a most just mixture of dignity
and submission,” offered the melancholy precedence to Lord Balmerino.
That gallant soldier--“a natural, brave old gentleman,” says Horace
Walpole, though he was but fifty-eight--would have mounted first, but
the headsman interfered. Even upon the scaffold, a belted earl enjoyed
the privileges of his rank.
All this formality must have damped the spirits of the condemned; but
it seems to have been borne with admirable gayety and good temper. Lord
Balmerino, “decently unmoved,” was ready to die first or last, and he
gave the punctilious executioner three guineas, to prove that he was
not impatient. “He looked quite unconcerned,” says an eye-witness, “and
like some one going on a party of pleasure, or upon some business
of little or no importance.” Lord Lovat, beheaded at eighty for his
active share in the Jacobite rising of ‘forty-five, derived much
amusement from the vast concourse of people assembled to witness his
execution;--an amusement agreeably intensified by the giving way of
some scaffolding, which occasioned the unexpected death of several
eager sight-seers. “The more mischief, the better sport,” said the old
lord grimly, and proceeded to quote Ovid and Horace with fine scholarly
zest. If the executioner were seldom a person of education, it was from
no lack of opportunity. He might, had he chosen, have learned at his
post much law and more theology. When Archbishop Laud stood waiting by
the block, Sir John Clotworthy conceived it to be a seasonable occasion
for propounding some knotty points of doctrine. The prelate courteously
answered one or two questions, but time pressed, and controversy had
lost its charms. Even so good a churchman may be pardoned for turning
wearily away from polemics, when his life’s span had narrowed down to
minutes, and the headsman waited by his side.
In the burial registry of Whitechapel, under the year 1649, is the
following entry:--
“June 21st, Richard Brandon, a man out of Rosemary Lane. This Brandon
is held to be the man who beheaded Charles the First.”
“Held to be” only, for the mystery of the King’s executioner was one
which long excited and baffled curiosity. Wild whispers credited the
deed to men of rank and station, among them Viscount Stair, the type
of strategist to whom all manner of odium naturally and reasonably
clings. A less distinguished candidate for the infamy was one William
Hewlett, actually condemned to death after the Restoration for a part
he never played, and saved from the gallows only by the urgent efforts
of a few citizens who swore that Brandon did the deed. Brandon was
not available for retribution. He had died in his bed, five months
after Charles was beheaded, and had been hurried ignominiously into
his grave in Whitechapel churchyard. As public executioner of London,
he could hardly escape his destiny; but it is said that remorse and
horror shortened his life. In his supposed “Confession,” a tract widely
circulated at the time, he claimed that he was “fetched out of bed by
a troup of horse,” and carried against his will to the scaffold. Also
that he was paid thirty pounds, all in half-crowns, for the work; and
had “an orange stuck full of cloves, and a handkerchief out of the
King’s pocket.” The orange he sold for ten shillings in Rosemary Lane.
The shadow that falls across the headsman’s path deepens in horror when
we contemplate the scaffolds of Charles, of Louis, of Marie Antoinette,
and of Mary Stuart. The hand that has shed royal blood is stained
forever, yet the very magnitude of the offence lends to it a painful
and terrible distinction. It is the zenith as well as the nadir of the
headsman’s history; it is the corner-stone of the impassable barrier
which divides the axe and the sword from the hangman’s noose, the death
of Strafford from the death of Jonathan Wild.
If we turn the page, and look for a moment at the “gallows tree,” we
find that it has its romantic and its comic side, but the comedy is
boisterous, the romance savours of melodrama. For centuries one of the
recognized amusements of the English people was to see men hanged,
and the leading features of the entertainment were modified from time
to time to please a popular taste. Dr. Johnson, the sanest as well as
the best man of his day, highly commended these public executions as
“satisfactory to all parties. The public is gratified by a procession,
the criminal is supported by it.” That the enjoyment was often mutual,
it is impossible to deny. There was a world of meaning in the gentle
custom, supported for years by a very ancient benefaction, of giving
a nosegay to the condemned man on his way to Tyburn. Before the cart
climbed Holborn Hill,--“the heavy hill” as it was called, with a
touch of poetry rivalling the “Bridge of Sighs,”--it stopped at Saint
Sepulchre’s church, and on the church steps stood one bearing in his
hands the flowers that were to yield their fresh fragrance to the
dying. Nor were the candidates without their modest pride. When the
noted chimney-sweep, Sam Hall, achieved the honour of a hanging, he
was rudely jostled, and bidden to stand off by a highwayman, stepping
haughtily into the cart, and annoyed at finding himself in such low
company. “Stand off, yourself!” was the indignant answer of the young
sweep. “I have as good a right to be here as you have.”
“Nothing,” says Voltaire, “is so disagreeable as to be obscurely
hanged,” and the loneliness which in this moral age encompasses the
felon’s last hours should be as salutary as it is depressing. Mr.
Housman, who gets closer to the plain thoughts of plain men than any
poet of modern times, has given stern expression to the awful aloofness
of the condemned criminal from his fellow creatures, an aloofness
unknown in the cheerful, brutal days of old.
They hang us now in Shrewsbury jail:
The whistles blow forlorn,
And trains all night groan on the rail
To men who die at morn.
The sociability of Tyburn, if somewhat vehement in character, was a
jocund thing by the side of such solitude as this.
Parish registers make curious reading. They tell so much in words so
scant and bald that they set us wondering on our own accounts over
the unknown details of tragedies which even in their day won no wide
hearing, and which have been wholly forgotten for centuries. Mr. Lang
quotes two entries that are briefly comprehensive; the first from the
register of Saint Nicholas, Durham, August 8, 1592: “Simson, Arington,
Featherston, Fenwick, and Lancaster, were hanged for being Egyptians.”
Featherston and Fenwick might have been hanged on the evidence of their
names, good gypsy names both of them, and famous for years in the dark
annals of the race; but were these men guilty of no other crime, no
indiscretion even, that has escaped recording? Five stalwart rogues
might have served the queen in better fashion than by dangling idly
on a gallows. The second entry, from the parish church of Richmond in
Yorkshire, 1558, is still shorter, a model of conciseness: “Richard
Snell b’rnt, bur. 9 Sept.”
Was Snell a martyr, unglorified by Fox, or a particularly desperate
sinner; and if a sinner, what was the nature of his sin? Warlocks were
commonly hanged in the sixteenth century, even when their sister
witches were burned. “_C’est la loi de l’homme._” In fact, burning
was an unusual, and--save in Queen Mary’s mind--an unpopular mode of
punishment. “You are burnt for heresy,” says Mr. Birrell with great
good humour. “That is right enough. No one would complain of that.
Hanging is a different matter. It is very easy to get hung; but to be
burnt requires a combination of circumstances not always forthcoming.”
Yet Richard Snell, yeoman of Yorkshire, mastered these circumstances;
and a single line in a parish register is his meagre share of fame.