Hence, as we have seen, gradually arose, side by side with the capital
punishment of hanging on the gallows in its simplicity--which may be
almost said to be as old as the world itself--the custom of publicly
exposing human bodies upon gibbets as warnings to others.
We gather from the “Vocabulary of Archbishop Alfric,” of the tenth
century, and from early illuminated MSS., that the gallows (galga)
was the usual mode of capital punishment with the Anglo-Saxons. It
can hardly be doubted that in certain cases, as with the Romans, the
body of the “fordemed”--in the case of decapitation the “heafedleas
bodi”--remained _in terrorem_ upon the gibbet, as Robert of Gloucester,
_circa_ 1280, has it, referring to his own times:--
“In gibet hii were an honge,”
though not necessarily as part of the sentence, as appears always to
have been the case in England. An obscure poet, Robert Brunne, has:--
“First was he drawen for his felonie,
& as a thefe than on galwes hanged hie.”
In the numerous enactments concerning the administration of the
criminal law, from the “Statute of Westminster the First,” in 1277, to
the Act of George II. in 1752, no cognizance is taken of the hanging
of bodies of criminals in chains. Such a treatment of the carcass was,
like the rack, rather an engine of state than of law.
In Chauncy’s “History of Hertfordshire” it is stated:--
“Soon after the King came to Easthampstead, to recreate himself with
hunting, where he heard that the bodies which were hanged here were
taken down from the gallowes, and removed a great way from the same;
this so incensed the King that he sent a writ, tested the 3rd of
August, Anno 1381, to the bailiffs of this borrough, commanding them
upon sight thereof, to cause chains to be made, and to hang the bodies
in them upon the same gallowes, there to remain so long as one piece
might stick to another, according to the judgement; but the townsmen,
not daring to disobey the King’s command, hanged the dead bodies of
their neighbours again, to their great shame and reproach, when they
could not get any other for any wages to come near the stinking
carcasses, but they themselves were compelled to do so vile an office.”
This is an early record of a judgment to hang _in terrorem_, and of
chains for the purpose.[22]
Gower, a contemporary poet, says:--
“And so after by the Lawe
He was into the gibbet drawe,
Where he above all other hongeth,
As to a traitor it belongeth.”
Again, during the second Northern Rising, in 1536, the Duke of
Norfolk hung and quartered, as the usual punishment for high treason,
seventy-four men at Carlisle, but the bodies of Sir Robert Constable
and Ashe were hung in chains at Hull and York respectively, as special
cases. And the Duke blames the Earl of Cumberland for not having hung
certain persons in chains, as he had directed; he airily adds, speaking
of other examples in Yorkshire, that “they all hang still in chains,
notwithstanding that I have had no small intercession for many of
them.”[23]
We gather from these items that, although the public exposure of the
body entire formed no legal part of the punishment for high treason, it
was sometimes added to it for the increase of the shame. Whether the
ensanguined, quivering quarter of a man, uplifted high on a gateway,
had a more deterrent effect than a whole body slowly wasting away in
chains, we are, fortunately, not now called upon curiously to determine.
It may here be mentioned that the punishment for high treason differs
in one important particular from that for murder. The head must be
severed from the body after the hanging. The man must be drawn to the
gallows, and may not walk; he must be cut down alive; his entrails
taken out and burnt before his face. Then the head cut off--“headed,”
and finally the body quartered, and the head and quarters remaining
at the king’s disposal. This was the English law, as finally settled
by the Statute of Treason of 25 Edward III. (1351). Such a sentence
had been first carried out, as it appears, upon a pirate named William
Marise, in 1241. Notable examples are those of Wallace, 1305;[24]
the elder and the younger Despencers, 1326;[25] Hotspur, 1403;[26]
and they are notable examples of shocking barbarity; and not least
memorable though, happily, last, the executions after “the --45,” in
exact accordance with the ancient statute of four centuries before. It
is recorded that one of these last victims struggled for a few moments
with William Stout of Hexham, the fiend who, for twenty guineas and
the clothes, did the bloody business, when he opened his bosom and
plucked out his heart.[27] It is a dreadful subject, which one almost
shrinks from touching; but it may be added that none of the thirty-two
sufferers at Carlisle for “the --45” were hung in chains; they died the
ferocious death for high treason.[28]
As a curiously mitigated example we may mention the case of the five
gentlemen attached to the Duke of Gloucester, who were arraigned and
condemned for treason in 1447. They were hung and immediately cut down
alive, stripped naked, their bodies marked for quartering, and then, no
doubt very much to their surprise, pardoned.
In Jersey, during the administration of the Duke of Somerset, uncle of
Edward VI., two pirates were condemned and hung in chains, as appears
from the following extract from the registers of the island:--
“Placita Catallia cum justicia reallis ten’ die xviij^o Mensis Januarii
An’o Domini Mille^o quinm^o l^o coram Ballj in p’na Clement Lemp’re,
Jo’his de Carteret, Ricardi Dumaresq, Nicoll’ Lemp’re, Jo’his Lemp’re,
Edwardii Dumaresq, Edwardii de Carteret, Laurentii Hamptoune, Georgii
de Carteret, Jo’his de Soullemont.
“John Wyte, Bernabé Le Quesne, Sébastian Alexandre, criminels pour
leur démérites de cas de crime pirates et larons de mer accordant
leur confessions sont condampnés à estre pendus et estranglés de cy
a ce que mort en ensuyve savoir est ledit John Wyte sur une potence
hault eslevée à la pointe de devers S^te Katherine et ledit Bernabey
Le Quesne sur une potence hault élevée p’eillement sur le bec et
pointe de Noirmont aux lieux les plus eminens desdites Montaignes
et la leurs corps demeurer enchâinés po^r y estre consumés et
pourrys, et le dit Sebastien est respité par certaines considerations
prises et considérées en Justice, et to^s leurs biens meubles et
héritages confisqués en la maison du Roi ou des Seigneurs aux q’ls il
app’tiennent” (Cour du Catel).[29]
In Hakluyt’s “Voyages” we find the following:--“Hereupon the souldiers
besought me not to hang them, but rather let them be shot throw, and
then afterwards, if I thought good, their bodies might be hanged upon
gibbets along the haven’s mouth.”[30]
The numerous allusions to gibbets by Shakespeare show how common they
were in his day.
It will have been observed in the foregoing remarks that the words
“gallows” and “gibbet” have been used indifferently in the quotations
both for hanging a man from, and for exposing him upon. It would appear
that, at least with us at the present day, _gallows_ is the thing
upon which men suffer, and _gibbet_ the object upon which they are
set forth. Hence the expression to gibbet a man by calling attention
publicly to nefarious deeds, and, as the one thing has given us the
verb, so the other furnishes the language with an adjective equally
expressive, and a person by his “gallous” conduct stands a fair chance
of reaching the gallows at last. A gallows may by particular use become
a gibbet, but not contrariwise, and the same remark may be said to
apply to Potence and Gibbet.