It will be recollected that one of the most interesting of Sir Walter
Scott’s novels, “The Pirate,” is founded upon a case of piracy in
the Orkneys, in 1725.[48] The captain, John Gow, and his crew, were
secured, with much courage and address, by a patriotic inhabitant,
James Fea, and the prisoners were prosecuted by the High Court
of Admiralty. The remarkable part of this affair was that, on Gow
“standing mute,” that is, refusing to plead, the judge ordered that
he should be brought to the bar and his thumbs squeezed by two men
with a whipcord until it broke; that it should be doubled, and then
trebled, and that the operators should pull with their whole strength.
This discipline Gow endured with much fortitude, but when he had
seen the preparations for pressing him to death--the _peine forte et
dure_,--until he died, or pleaded, his courage gave way,--few men,
especially bad ones, can look unflinchingly into the dark valley,--and
he said he would not have given so much trouble if he could have been
assured of not being hung in chains. He was convicted, hung, and
gibbeted in the chains he so much dreaded.
Apropos of the _peine forte et dure_, in March, 1674, a man living at
Cannock was arraigned at the Stafford Assizes for the murder of his
father, mother, and wife. He refused to plead, but was adjudged guilty.
For his contumacy he was sentenced to undergo the _peine forte et
dure_, or, in other words to be pressed to death. This was carried out,
as appears from a picture in the Salt Library at Stafford, showing the
unhappy wretch lying on the floor, with a board on his chest covered
with a number of heavy weights.[49]
This must have been a more dreadful agony, while it lasted, than the
“little ease” or the “rack.” The severity of the latter engine is
sufficiently attested by the signatures of Guy Fawkes before and after
that ordeal.[50]
In 1726 Mrs. Catherine Hayes was burnt alive, doubtless for high or
petit treason.[51]
We gather from Howell’s _State_ Trials that when the English Regency
made an order, in 1742, to hang the body of the murderer of Mr. Penny
in chains, they inserted therein that it was on the petition of the
relatives of the deceased.[52]
In 1742 John Breeds a butcher of Rye, conceived a violent animosity
against Mr. Thomas Lamb of the same place, and, as the old Statute of
High Treason would put it, “compassed and imagined” his death. The
opportunity seemed to present itself on the night of March 17th, on
the occasion of Mr. Lamb being about to see a friend off by ship to
France. But, changing his mind at the last moment, he requested his
neighbour, Mr. Grebble, to take his place, which he did. Breeds, or,
as he is called on Mr. Grebble’s tombstone, the “sanguinary butcher,”
sharpened his knife and took his station in the shadowy churchyard,
and soon rushed on the unsuspecting Mr. Grebble, and mortally stabbed
him. The unfortunate victim had strength enough to reach his house, and
sit himself in a chair, out of which he very soon fell, and died, to
the great consternation of his servant, who was at once suspected of
being the murderer. The conduct of Breeds, however, soon cleared up all
doubts upon this point. He was tried, and found guilty, and condemned
to death, and to be hung in chains. For this purpose a gibbet was set
up in a marsh at the west end of the town now called “Gibbet Marsh.”
The carcass of Breeds swung for many years on the morass, and when all
but the upper part of the skull had dropped away, the chains and frame
were rescued by the Corporation of Rye, and have, by lapse of time,
acquired a kind of grim interest, if not exactly to “adorn a tale,” at
least “to point a moral.”
[Illustration: BREEDS’S IRONS, 1742.
(_From a photograph._)]
In 1747 Christopher Holliday was beaten to death with his own staff
by a cold-blooded savage, Adam Graham, on Beck Moor, near Balenbush,
on the English side of the Border. Graham was executed at Carlisle,
and his body hung in chains upon a gibbet twelve yards high, on
Kingmoor, with twelve thousand nails driven into it to prevent it being
swarmed, or cut down, and the body carried off. The murderer left a
confession of several other crimes, which was published at the time in
pamphlet form, and had a large sale.
The smugglers also fell into the dire clutches of the law for the good
reason that their vulgar atrocities deserved the highest punishment.
They were not graceful villains like Claud Duval, that hero of the mob,
who is said--but by disinterested witnesses--to have quite charmed the
victims while he broke two of the commandments. Thus William Carter,
smuggler and murderer, was executed and hung up in chains near Rake, on
the Portsmouth road, in 1749.[53] Four others, concerned in the same
crime, were similarly gibbeted. One of the leg pieces of Carter’s
irons is in the collection of Lady Dorothy Nevill. Implicated in this
affair--namely, the robbery of the Custom House at Poole, and the
murder of Mr. Galley and Mr. Chater--was William Jackson. He, also, was
condemned to be hung, and gibbeted in chains; but the poor wretch was
so ill, and horror-struck when they measured him for his irons, that he
died of fright. His body was thrown into a hole near Carter’s gibbet. A
memorial stone, with a long inscription recording the crime in which so
many suffered, was set up on the spot in 1749, and still remains.
Under the pressure of a belief in the extraordinary delusion of
witchcraft, a harmless and aged couple at Tring,--who had been removed
from the workhouse to the church for safety,--were seized and so
shockingly handled and ducked by a mob at Long Marston, near Tring, in
1751, that the woman, Ruth Osborne, died on the spot. The ringleader,
Thomas Colley, was tried at Hertford, when the revolting particulars of
the barbarities were proved. He was taken for execution to Gubblecote
Cross, in Long Marston parish, thirty miles from Hertford, and so great
was the infatuation, and sympathy for the man who had “destroyed an old
wicked woman that had done so much mischief by her witchcraft,” that a
strong escort of horse was necessary. The body of Colley was afterwards
hung in chains on the same gallows, the people of Long Marston, many
of whom were present at the murder, having petitioned against the
gibbeting near their houses.[54]