The History of Halifax in Yorkshire, 12mo. 1712, sets forth “a true
account of their ancient, odd, customary gibbet-law; and their
particular form of trying and executing of criminals, the like not us’d
in any other place in Great Britain.” The Halifax gibbet was in the form
of the guillotine, and its gibbet-law quite as remarkable. The work
referred to, which is more curious than rare, painfully endeavours to
prove this law wise and salutary. It prevailed only within the forest of
Hardwick, which was subject to the lord of the manor of Wakefield, a
part of the duchy of Lancaster. If a felon were taken within the liberty
of the forest with cloth, or other commodity, of the value of
thirteen-pence halfpenny, he was, after three market-days from his
apprehension and condemnation, to be carried to the gibbet, and there
have his head cut off from his body. When first taken, he was brought to
the lord’s bailiff in Halifax, who kept the town, had also the keeping
of the axe, and was the executioner at the gibbet. This officer summoned
a jury of frith-burghers to try him on the evidence of witnesses not
upon oath: if acquitted, he was set at liberty, upon payment of his
fees; if convicted, he was set in the stocks on each of the three
subsequent market-days in Halifax, with the stolen goods on his back, if
they were portable; if not, they were placed before his face. This was
for a terror to others, and to engage any who had aught against him, to
bring accusations, although after the three market-days he was sure to
be executed for the offence already proved upon him. But the convict had
the satisfaction of knowing, that after he was put to death, it was the
duty of the coroner to summon a jury, “and sometimes the same jury that
condemned him,” to inquire into the cause of his death, and that a
return thereof would be made into the Crown-office; “which gracious and
sage proceedings of the coroner in that matter ought, one would think,
to abate, in all considering minds, that edge of acrimony which hath
provoked malicious and prejudiced persons to debase this laudable and
necessary custom.” So says the book. In April, 1650, Abraham Wilkinson
and Anthony Mitchell were found guilty of stealing nine yards of cloth
and two colts, and on the 30th of the month received sentence, “to
suffer death, by having their heads severed and cut off from their
bodies at Halifax gibbet,” and they suffered accordingly. These were the
last persons executed under Halifax gibbet-law.
The execution was in this manner:--The prisoner being brought to the
scaffold by the bailiff, the axe was drawn up by a pulley, and fastened
with a pin to the side of the scaffold. “The bailiff, the jurors, and
the minister chosen by the prisoner, being always upon the scaffold with
the prisoner, in most solemn manner, after the minister had finished his
ministerial office and christian duty, if it was a horse, an ox, or cow,
&c. that was taken with the prisoner, it was thither brought along with
him to the place of execution, and fastened by a cord to the pin that
stay’d the block, so that when the time of the execution came, (which
was known by the jurors holding up one of their hands,) the bailiff, or
his servant, whipping the beast, the pin was pluck’d out, and execution
done; but if there were no beast in the case, then the bailiff, or his
servant, cut the rope.”
[Illustration: ~The Halifax Gibbet.~]
But if the felon, after his apprehension, or in his going to execution,
happened to make his escape out of the forest of Hardwick, which
liberty, on the east end of the town, doth not extend above the breadth
of a small river; on the north about six hundred paces; on the south
about a mile; but on the west about ten miles;--if such an escape were
made, then the bailiff of Halifax had no power to apprehend him out of
his liberty; but if ever the felon came again into the liberty of
Hardwick, and were taken, he was certainly executed. One Lacy, who made
his escape, and lived seven years out of the liberty, after that time
coming boldly within the liberty of Hardwick, was retaken, and executed
upon his former verdict of condemnation.
The records of executions by the Halifax gibbet, before the time of
Elizabeth, are lost; but during her reign twenty-five persons suffered
under it, and from 1623 to 1650 there were twelve executions. The
machine is destroyed. The engraving placed above, represents the
instrument, from a figure of it in an old map of Yorkshire, which is
altogether better than the print of it in the work before cited.
* * * * *
The worthy author of the Halifax gibbet-book seems by his title to be
well assured, that the machine was limited to, and to the sole use and
behoof of, his district; but in this, as in some other particulars, he
is mistaken.
A small print by Aldegraver, one of the little German masters, in 1553,
now lying before the writer, represents the execution of Manlius, the
Roman, by the same instrument; and he has a similar print by Pens, an
early engraver of that school. There are engravings of it in books
printed so early as 1510. In Hollinshed’s Chronicle there is a cut of a
man who had attempted the life of Henry III. suffering by this
instrument. In Fox’s “Acts and Monuments,” there is another execution in
the same manner.
The “maiden” by which James, earl of Morton, the regent of Scotland, was
put to death for high treason in 1581, was of this form, and is said to
have been constructed by his order from a model of one that he had seen
in England: he was the first and last person who suffered by it in
Scotland; and it still exists in the parliament-house at Edinburgh. In
“The Cloud of Witnesses; or the last Speeches of Scottish Martyrs since
1680,” there is a print of an execution in Scotland by a similar
instrument. The construction of such a machine was in contemplation for
the beheading of lord Lovat in 1747: he approved the notion--“My neck is
very short,” he said, “and the executioner will be puzzled to find it
out with his axe: if they make the machine, I suppose they will call it
lord Lovat’s maiden.”
* * * * *
Randle Holme in his “Armory” describes an heraldic quartering thus:--“He
beareth _gules_, a heading-block fixed between two supporters, with an
axe placed therein; on the _sinister_ side a maule, all _proper_.” This
agreeable bearing he figures as the reader sees it.
[Illustration]
Holme observes, that “this was the Jews’ and Romans’ way of beheading
offenders, as some write, though others say they used to cut off the
heads of such, with a sharp, two-handed sword: however, this way of
decollation was by laying the neck of the malefactor on the block, and
then setting the axe upon it, which lay in a rigget in the two
side-posts or supporters; the executioner with the violence of a blow
on the head of the axe, with his heavy maul, forced it through the man’s
neck into the block. I have seen the draught of the like
heading-instrument, where the weighty axe (made heavy for that purpose)
was raised up and fell down in such a riggetted frame, which being
suddenly let to fall, the weight of it was sufficient to cut off a man’s
head at one blow.”