(Vol. ix., p. 174.)
Two instances of criminals being restored to life after having been hanged
are recorded, on good authority, to have occurred in this town. Henry of
Knighton (who was a Canon of Leicester Abbey) relates in his _Chronicle_
(col. 2627), under the year 1363, that--
"One Walter Wynkeburn having been hanged at Leicester, on the
prosecution of Brother John Dingley, Master of Dalby, of the order of
Knights Hospitallers, after having been taken down from the gallows as
a dead man, was being carried to the cemetery of the Holy Sepulchre of
Leicester, to be buried, began to revive in the cart, and was taken
into the church of the Holy Sepulchre by an ecclesiastic, and there
diligently guarded by this Leicester ecclesiastic to prevent his being
seized for the purpose of being hanged a second time. To this man King
Edward granted pardon in Leicester Abbey, and gave him a charter of
pardon, thus saying in my hearing, 'Deus tibi dedit vitam, et nos
dabimus tibi Cartam?"
We learn, on the authority of a cotemporary record, preserved in the
archives of this borough, and quoted in Thompson's _History of Leicester_,
p. 110., that in June, 1313, Matthew of Enderby, a thief, was apprehended
and imprisoned in the king's gaol at Leicester; and that being afterwards
convicted, he was sentenced by Sir John Digby and Sir John Daungervill, the
king's justices, to be hanged; that he was led to the gallows by the
frankpledges of Birstall and Belgrave, and by them suspended; but on his
body being taken down, and carried to the cemetery of St. John's Hospital
for interment, he revived and was subsequently exiled. Three instances are
narrated in Wanley's _Wonders of Man_, vol. i. pp. 125, 126., and another
will be found in Seward's _Spirit of Anecdote and Wit_, vol. iii. p. 88.,
quoted from Gamble's _Views of Society, &c. in the North of Ireland_;
whilst in vol. ii. p. 220. of the same work, another restoration to life is
stated to have taken place in the dissecting-room of Professor Junker, of
Halle: but I know not how far these last-mentioned anecdotes are
susceptible of proof.