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Italic text has been marked with _underscores_.
Letters preceded by a ^caret appeared as superscripts to the end of
the word.
[Illustration: PIRATE’S CHAINS.
(_From the Thames._)]
HANGING IN CHAINS
BY
ALBERT HARTSHORNE, F.S.A.
“No, no; let them hang, and their names rot, and their
crimes live for ever against them” (Mercy to Greatheart:
_The Pilgrim’s Progress_, Chapter iv.).
New York
THE CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY
104 & 106 FOURTH AVENUE
MDCCCXCIII
_PREFACE._
Of the twelve regular methods of proceeding in the courts of criminal
jurisdiction in England, the last--that of execution--is the only one
that is particularly treated of in the following pages. “Sus. per
col.” has been, as it were, the only warrant; but in attempting to
trace some items in a record that runs like a scarlet thread through
the long course of events that constitutes history, it has not been
possible, on the one hand, to avoid touching upon other modes and
details of capital punishment in England, or, on the other, to escape
from straying somewhat into the catalogue of what Blackstone calls
“the shocking apparatus of death and punishment” to be met with in the
criminal codes of other European nations. And while this course has
been pursued,--certainly rather by way of comment and illustration,
than with any desire to “accumulate horrors on horror’s head,”--an
endeavour has also been made, in carrying down the pitiful story, to
dissipate some of the clouds of mystery and fable that have clustered
round the Gibbet. Removed, as we happily are by time, from a period
when it was lawful, and even accepted as fitting, that men who bore the
brand of Cain should be made the subject of a revolting and disgraceful
spectacle, we can approach the matter without prejudice, and with
proper calmness; but it is, perhaps, not so easy at once to realize
how great is the change that has taken place in national feeling and
sympathy since George the Third was king. And if humanity would recoil
to-day with abhorrence from the actual gibbet, sensation itself would
be stunned at the punishment for High Treason,--at the drawing and
quartering of patriots, whose names may shine in history “through their
tears like wrinkled pebbles in a glassy stream.” It will be borne in
mind that the gallows and the gibbet are the most ancient instruments
of capital punishment in the world; as such they have a distinct
archæological as well as a legal interest; and, inasmuch as it appears
that the custom of exposing human bodies in irons and chains is almost
peculiar to this country, doubtless no further motive need be adduced
for now bringing together these scattered English notices. And it is
thought that what may be lacking in other respects may be somewhat
compensated for by the historical and antiquarian features, so that, in
spite of its rather ominous title, the book may be found not entirely
repellent.
BRADBOURNE HALL, ASHBOURNE.
_April, 1891._
_TABLE OF CONTENTS._
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Gibbeting and exposure with the ancient Jews; their
strong desire for burial, and abhorrence at being cast
out,--exemplified from the Scriptures,--David, Jotham,
Azariah; Jehoiakim. Gibbeting with the Egyptians; the
Chief Baker. The watches of Rizpah; the seven crosses.
Desire of the Greeks for interment; examples from the
Iliad; the Æneid. Gibbeting with the Etruscans, Pliny;
the Cross. Gibbeting with the Romans; their dread
of exposure, Ovid; the Cross, the Gibbet. The Great
Sacrifice. Gibbeting of Saints 1-12
CHAPTER II.
Gibbeting with the Anglo-Saxons; Hanging in Chains. High
Treason,--punishment for,--examples in fourteenth,
fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. Drawing and
Quartering. Wallace; the Despencers; Hotspur.
Executions for “the --45.” Gibbeting in Jersey. Gallows
and Gibbet,--difference between, in England; in France 13-25
CHAPTER III.
Punishments and gibbeting in Germany; in England, in
seventeenth century; in Scotland,--Treason and Chains.
The Gibbet in France; _Fourches Patibulaires_ of
Montfaucon,--La Grande Justice,--description of; mode
of operation; allusions to in early poetry; Gibbet of
Montigny; Gibbeting of animals 26-41
CHAPTER IV.
The Gallows and Gibbet in Spain. Gibbeting of animals in
Holland 42-48
CHAPTER V.
The “Pilgrim’s Progress.” Entry of Charles V. into Douai.
Punishment of women in England; in France. Examples of
Hangings in Chains, 1671-1717 49-59
CHAPTER VI.
Piracy, 1725. Sir Walter Scott. “Standing Mute.” Squeezing
the Thumbs. _Peine forte et dure_, example of, 1674.
The Rack. Burning alive. High Treason,--defined.
Petition for Hanging in Chains. Examples of Gibbeting,
1742, 1751. The Smugglers; death from horror of irons.
Witchcraft 60-69
CHAPTER VII.
Gibbeting in Chains first legally recognized, 1752;
but not part of the sentence. Roman law concerning
Gibbeting. Its rapid increase in England. Terror
at prospect of Gibbet and Chains. Preparation and
treatment of the body. Effect of Gibbeting on
spectators and traffic. Hogarth. Thames Pirates
gibbeted,--attraction for holiday-makers. Behaviour at
Northampton 70-77
CHAPTER VIII.
Examples of Hangings in Chains, 1752-1777. Jemmy Dawson.
Double Gibbet,--Mr. Kerrich’s sketches. Robbing the
mail,--triple gibbet. Robbing the mail and gibbeting,
1788; Robbing the mail and murdering the post-boy, and
gibbeting. Double Gibbet, 1796. Robbing the mail and
hanging in irons, 1799 78-86
CHAPTER IX.
Bewick’s illustrations of the Gibbet 87-92
CHAPTER X.
Example of Hanging in Chains, 1800. Tradition of Hanging
alive in Chains,--Hollingshed, Chettle,--considered,
and set aside. Ambrose Gwinnett, 1709. Hanging,
Boiling, and Quartering 93-101
CHAPTER XI.
Example of Hanging in Chains, 1808. Gibbet riddle. Spence
Broughton. Hanging in Chains at Malta. A Hand gibbeted.
Supposed Gibbeting alive in Bengal, and in Jamaica.
The Chapter House at Lincoln a criminal court, 1827;
the gibbeting remitted. Example in 1832; severance of
last personal link with the Gibbet (April 14, 1891).
Last example of Hanging in Chains, 1834. Its abolition
by Statute. Gibbet with Wooden Head, _in memoriam_.
Conclusion.--The Halifax Gibbet 102-114
LIST OF GIBBETING IRONS AND CHAINS.
Ashmolean Museum.--Eight separate portions of Irons found in various
parts of Oxford. Some have cylindrical padlocks attached to them.
Chester Museum.--A leg-piece.
Doddington Hall, Lincoln.--Parts of Tommy Otter’s Irons. _See_ p. 104.
Leicester Gaol.--Cook’s Irons. _See_ p. 111.
Norwich Gaol.--Watson’s Irons. _See_ p. 94.
Norwich Museum.--A Head-piece.
Preston.--Irons.
Rye, Court Hall.--Breeds’s Irons. _See_ p. 66. _Illustrated._
Skegness Museum.--Irons.
Warrington Museum.--Miles’s Irons. _See_ p. 85. _Illustrated._
Winchester.--Irons.
In the possession of Lady Dorothy Nevill.--A leg-piece of Carter’s
Irons. _See_ p. 68.
In the possession of the Rev. J. W. Tottenham.--Two sets of Pirate’s
Chains from the Thames. _See_ p. 75. _Illustrated._
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
1. PIRATE’S CHAINS FROM THE THAMES _Frontispiece_
2. DECAPITATION }
}
3. IMPALEMENT } _Facing page_ 26
}
4. BURNING AT THE STAKE }
5. GIBBET OF MONTFAUCON " 34
6. BREEDS’S IRONS " 66
7. A THAMES PIRATE " 76
8. GIBBET ON BRANDON SANDS " 82
9. MILES’S IRONS " 85
10. GIBBET FROM BEWICK " 91
11. IRON CAGE FROM BENGAL " 106
HANGING IN CHAINS.
Chapter I.
To rest at last in the ground, to be buried in the sepulchre of
their fathers, was accounted by the Jews as the greatest honour and
happiness, and throughout the Old Testament the expression for death is
sleeping, implying lying tranquil and undisturbed. Thus David, Azariah,
and Jotham “slept with their fathers, and were buried in the city of
David”--“for so He giveth His beloved sleep.”[1]
On the other hand, to die an unnatural or violent death, to be cast
out of the grave like an abominable branch, to be as a carcass exposed
in the sight of the sun, or trodden under foot, and not to be joined
with their fathers in burial, was ever esteemed a note of infamy, and
a kind of curse. “And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death,
and he be to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree: his body
shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise
bury him that day (for he that is hanged is accursed of God); that thy
land be not defiled.”[2] So Jehoiakim was threatened with the want
of even ordinary burial, and to be cast out like carrion into some
remote and sordid place. It was a severe sentence, “He shall be buried
with the burial of an ass, drawn and cast forth beyond the gates of
Jerusalem.”[3]
Again, Jeremiah foretelling the desolation of the Jews, “Their
carcasses will I give to be meat for the fowls of the heaven, and for
the beasts of the earth,”[4] “and no man shall fray them away;”[5] and
in another place we are told that their bones shall be “spread before
the sun, and the moon, and all the host of heaven, ... they shall not
be gathered, nor be buried.”[6]
In the denunciation of Jehoiakim, in that picturesque and striking
scene, when the king burnt the roll of Baruch, it is recorded against
him: “His dead body shall be cast out in the day to the heat, and in
the night to the frost.”[7] So great, indeed, was the dread among
the ancient Jews that the dead body should be treated with derision
or contumely, that the Preacher expressed and summed up the general
sentiment in these words: “If a man ... have no burial, I say that an
untimely birth is better than he.”[8]
As with the Jews so it was with the Egyptians. They refused burial to
executed criminals and gave their bodies to the birds and beasts. For
instance, Joseph said to the chief baker, “Yet within three days shall
Pharaoh lift up thine head from off thee, and shall hang thee on a
tree; and the birds shall eat thy flesh from off thee.”[9] And so it
came to pass.
We may gather, again, from the short and touching story of the long
watches of Rizpah, how deep was the solicitude that the dead should not
be polluted by birds and beasts,[10] or from the ghastly fate of Amasa,
whose mangled corpse was covered with a cloth by a mere bystander--one
of Joab’s men[11]--in order that the people might not be shocked by
looking upon it--how strong was the feeling in those days against the
wanton exposure of the divine image.
It would be easy to multiply examples from these sources, but with
further regard to the seven sons of Saul it may be mentioned that “the
victims were not, as the Authorized Version implies, hung, they were
crucified. The seven crosses were planted in the rock on the top of the
sacred hill of Gibeah.... The victims were sacrificed at the beginning
of barley harvest,--the sacred and festal time of the Passover--and
in the full blaze of the summer sun they hung till the fall of the
periodical rain in October.... She spread on the rocky floor the thick
mourning garment of black sackcloth, which as a widow she wore, and
crouching there she watched that neither vulture nor jackal should
molest the bodies.”[12] Thus the practice of gibbeting on a cross was
in use at least as early as in the days of King David.
The misery of having no burial, of rendering neither justice to the
earth nor mercy to the dead, was recognized by the refined nature
of the Greeks, and, while they refused decent sepulture to infamous
persons and prisoners, they yearned both in peace and war for quiet
burial in the ground, for they were dismayed at the thought of burial
at sea.[13]
Thus Mezentius, in the Æneid of Virgil, asks not Æneas to spare his
life,
“but let my body have
The last retreat of human kind, a grave.”[14]
And Turnus--
“Or if thy vowed revenge pursue my death,
Give to my friends my body void of breath.”[15]
And, to take another and a notable example, Hector, in his last hour,
beseeched Achilles to take the ransom and suffer not his body to be
devoured by the dogs of the Greeks, but to let the sons and daughters
of Troy give him burial rites.[16]
It is said that a certain Achæus, who disputed sovereign power with
Antiochus, was betrayed by a Cretan, his limbs cut off, and his body
wrapped in the skin of an ass, and exposed on a gibbet.
Pliny, in his “Natural History,”[17] tells us that Tarquinius Priscus,
who died 578 B.C., ordered the dead bodies of suicides to be exposed on
a cross. He was a powerful ruler, and an Etruscan, and made his mark on
Rome. He came from Etruria when it was in a high state of development,
and, no doubt, the practice of gibbeting on a cross was early in use
with that ancient and gifted race.
The Romans dreaded the public exposure of their bodies, and shipwreck,
no less than did the Greeks; thus Ovid--
“I fear not death, nor value how I die;
Free me from seas, no matter where I lie.
’Tis somewhat, howsoe’er one’s breath depart,
In solid earth to lay one’s meaner part;
’Tis somewhat after death to gain a grave,
And not be food to fish, or sport to every wave.”[18]
They refused sepulture to suicides, for they thought it unreasonable
that any hands should bury him whose own had destroyed himself, and
they withheld decent burial from criminals.
Albertus Leoninus, from the Low Countries, one of the ablest lawyers of
the sixteenth century, says, speaking of the Romans, “If any one killed
himself his body was cast out upon a dunghill to have common sepulture
with dogs, &c.; but, however, it was more customary to have his goods
confiscated, and his body hung on the _furca_, or gibbet. All such
persons as hung upon this gibbet were, by the laws, denied sepulture;
and a sentry, says Petronius, was set to watch them, lest anybody
should come by night and steal them away.”[19] The memorable words,
“and sitting down they watched Him there,” cannot fail to occur to the
mind.
Our Saviour, with all reverence be it said, was gibbeted--“nail’d, for
our advantage, on the bitter cross,”[20] and it was not until long
after that great Sacrifice--perhaps not until the fifth century--that
the cross became the generally recognized Christian sign, and
gradually took the place of the Chi Rho ☧ emblem.
The number of Saints who suffered, and were exposed upon the cross or
gibbet, is larger than that of those who died the death in any other
way. Saint Ferreolus, martyred in 212, is shown in “Die Iconographie
der Heiligen” with a gibbet proper near him; Saint Anastatius, martyred
in 628, is represented in a fresco in the church of SS. Vincent and
Anastatius, in Rome, upon a gibbet, and pierced with many arrows; and
the martyr Saint Colman, who suffered in the year 1012, is shown in
“Das Passional” of 1480 hanging on a gibbet; in “Die Attribute der
Heiligen” he stands in the _sclavine_ of a pilgrim, with a rope in his
hand, indicating the manner of his death.[21]