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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5333b42 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #55839 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55839) diff --git a/old/55839-0.txt b/old/55839-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index d8b0b8b..0000000 --- a/old/55839-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3826 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Law’s Lumber Room (Second Series), by Francis Watt - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: The Law’s Lumber Room (Second Series) - -Author: Francis Watt - -Release Date: October 28, 2017 [eBook #55839] -[Most recently updated: October 9, 2021] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: deaurider, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAW’S LUMBER ROOM (2ND SERIES) *** - - - - -The Law’s Lumber Room - - - - -The rusty curb of old father antic--the law - - FALSTAFF - - - - - The Law’s - Lumber - Room - - By - Francis - Watt - - Second Series - - John Lane, The Bodley Head - London and New York - mdcccxcviii - - - - - Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. - At the Ballantyne Press - - - - -Prefatory - - -_This is an entirely distinct book from the first series of the Law’s -Lumber Room. The subjects are of more general interest, they are -treated with greater fulness of detail, most are as much literary as -legal; but I have thought it best to retain the old name. No other -seemed so briefly and so truly descriptive of papers which tell what -the law and its ways once were, and what they have ceased, one may -reasonably suppose, for ever to be._ - -_I make two remarks. There is a great deal of hanging in this book; -that is only because those were hanging times. The law had no thought -of mending the criminal; it ended him in the most summary fashion. The -death of the chief actors was as inevitably the finish of the story as -it is in a modern French novel._ - -_Again, in pondering those memories of the past, one realises how much, -in other things than mechanical invention, our time is unlike all that -went before. This is not the commonplace it seems, for not easily do we -realise how far the change has gone._ - - _Under the sway - Of Death, the past’s enormous disarray - Lies hushed and dark._ - -_Details such as make up this volume have this merit: they bring the -antique world before us, and the net result seems to be this: we lead -better lives, we are more just and charitable, perhaps less selfish -than our forefathers, but how to deny that something is lost? for life -is not so exciting, and our annals are anything but picturesque._ - -_These papers were originally published in_ The New Review, The Yellow -Book, _and_ The Ludgate. _I have made very considerable additions to -most of them, and all have been carefully revised._ - - - - -Contents - - - PAGE - - TYBURN TREE 1 - - PILLORY AND CART’S TAIL 45 - - STATE TRIALS FOR WITCHCRAFT 68 - - A PAIR OF PARRICIDES 88 - - SOME DISUSED ROADS TO MATRIMONY 116 - - THE BORDER LAW 152 - - THE SERJEANT-AT-LAW 185 - - - - -Tyburn Tree - - Its Exact Position not known--Near the Marble Arch--Fanciful - Etymologies--The Last Days of the Old-Time Criminal--Robert Dowe’s - Bequest--Execution Eve--St. Sepulchre’s Bell--The Procession--St. - Giles’s Bowl--At Tyburn--Ketch’s Perquisites--The Newgate - Ordinary--The Executioner--Tyburn’s Roll of Fame--Catholic - Martyrs--Cromwell’s Head--The Highwaymen--Lord Ferrers--Dr. - Dodd--James Hackman--Tyburn in English Letters. - - -To-day you cannot fix the exact spot where Tyburn Tree raised its -uncanny form. To the many it was the most noteworthy thing about Old -London, yet while thousands who had gazed thereon in fascinated horror -were still in life, a certain vagueness was evident in men’s thoughts, -and, albeit antiquaries have keenly debated the _locus_, all the mind -is clouded with a doubt, and your carefully worked out conclusion is -but guesswork. There is reason manifold for this. Of old time the -populous district known as Tyburnia was wild heath intersected by -the Tyburn Brook, which, rising near Hampstead, crossed what is now -Oxford Street, hard by the Marble Arch, and so on to Chelsea and the -Thames. Somewhere on its banks was the Middlesex gallows. It may be -that as the tide set westward the site was changed. Again, the wild -heath is now thick with houses; new streets and squares have confused -the ancient landmarks; those who dwelt therein preferred that there -should not be a too nice identification of localities. How startling -the reflection that in the very place of your dining-room, thousands -of fellow-creatures had dangled in their last agonies! How rest at -ease in such a chamber of horrors? The weight of evidence favours (or -disfavours) No. 49 Connaught Square. The Bishop of London is ground -landlord here; and it is said that in the lease of that house granted -by him the fact is recorded that there stood the “Deadly Never-Green.” -Such a record were purely gratuitous, but the draftsman may have -made it to fix the identity of the dwelling. But to-day the Square -runs but to No. 47. Some shuffling of numerals has, you fancy, taken -place to baffle indiscreet research. However, you may be informed (in -confidence) that you have but to stand at the south-east corner of the -Square to be “warm,” as children say in their games. - -Let these minutiæ go. Tyburn Tree stood within a gunshot to the -north-west of the Marble Arch. Its pictured shape is known from -contemporary prints. There were three tall uprights, joined at the -top by three cross-beams, the whole forming a triangle. It could -accommodate many patients at once, and there is some authority for -supposing that the beam towards Paddington was specially used for Roman -Catholics. In the last century the nicer age objected to it as an -eyesore; and it was replaced by a movable structure, fashioned of two -uprights and a cross-beam, which was set up in the Edgware Road at the -corner of Bryanston Street, and which, the grim work done, was stored -in the corner house, from whose windows the sheriffs superintended -executions. To accommodate genteel spectators there were just such -stands as you find on a racecourse, the seats whereof were let at -divers prices, according to the interest excited. In 1758, for Dr. -Henesey’s execution as arch-traitor, the rate rose to two shillings and -two and sixpence a seat. The Doctor was “most provokingly reprieved,” -whereat the mob in righteous indignation arose and wrecked the stands. -Mammy Douglas, a woman who kept the key of one of these stands, was -popularly known as “the Tyburn pew-opener.” - -Fanciful etymologists played mad pranks with the name. In Fuller’s -_Worthies, Tieburne_ is derived on vague authority from “Tie” and -“Burne,” because the “poor Lollards” there “had their necks _tied_ to -the beame and their lower parts _burnt_ in the fire. Others” (he goes -on more sensibly) “will have it called from _Twa_ and _Burne_, that -is two rivulets, which it seems meet near the place.” And then it was -plainly a _Bourn_ whence no traveller returned! Most probably it is a -shortened form of _The_, or _At the Aye Bourne_ (= _’t Aye-bourne_ = -_Tyburn_) or Brook already denoted. Tyburn was not always London’s -sole or even principal place of execution. In early times people were -hanged as well as burned at Smithfield. The elms at St. Giles’s were -far too handy a provision to stay idle. At Tower Green was the chosen -spot for beheading your high-class criminal, and it was common to put -off a malefactor on the very theatre of his malefaction. There are few -spots in Old London which have not carried a gallows at one or other -time. Some think that certain elm-trees suggested the choice of Tyburn. -In the end it proved the most convenient of all, being neither too near -nor too far; and in the end its name came to have (as is common with -such words) a general application, and was applied at York, Liverpool, -Dublin, and elsewhere, to the place of execution. - -To-day the criminal’s progress from cell to gallows is an affair of a -few minutes. To an earlier time this had savoured of indecent haste. -Then, the way to Tyburn, long in itself, was lengthened out by the -observance of a complicated ritual, some of it of ancient origin. Let -us follow “the poor inhabitant below” from the dock to the rope. To -understand what follows one must remember that two distinct sets of -forces acted on his mind:--on the one hand, the gloom of the prison, -the priest’s advice, the memory of mis-spent days, the horror of -doom; on the other, the reaction of a lawless nature against a cruel -code, the resolve to die game, the flattering belief that he was the -observed of all observers, and perhaps a secret conviction that the -unknown could be no worse than the known. According as the one set or -other prevailed he was penitent or brazen, the Ordinary’s darling or -the people’s joy. Well, his Lordship having assumed the black cap and -pronounced sentence of death, the convict was forthwith removed to the -condemned hold in Newgate. There he was heavily fettered, and, if of -any renown as a prison-breaker, chained to a ring in the ground. Escape -was not hopeless. Friends were allowed to visit and supply him with -money, wherewith he might bribe his keepers; and the prison discipline, -though cruel, was incredibly lax (Jack Sheppard’s two escapes from the -condemned hold, carefully described by Ainsworth, are cases in point). -To resume, our felon was now frequently visited by the Ordinary, who -zealously inquired (from the most interested motives) into his past -life, and admonished him of his approaching doom. At chapel o’ Sundays -he sat with his fellows in the condemned pew, a large dock-like -erection painted black, which stood in the centre, right in front of -and close to the ordinary’s desk and pulpit. For his last church-going -the condemned sermon was preached, the burial service was read, and -prayers were put up “especially for those awaiting the awful execution -of the law.” The reprieved also were present, and the chapel was packed -with as many spectators as could squeeze their way in. - -Now, our old law was not so bad as it seemed. True, the death-penalty -was affixed to small offences; but it was comparatively rarely exacted. -In looking over Old Bailey sessions-papers of from one to two centuries -ago, I am struck with the number of acquittals--brought about, I -fancy, by the triviality of the crime, not the innocence of the -prisoner--and jurors constantly appraised the articles at twelve pence -or under to reduce the offence to petty larceny, which was not capital, -and after sentence each case was carefully considered on its merits by -the King in Council (the extraordinary care which George III. gave to -this matter is well known: he was often found pondering sentences late -into the night). Only when the offender was inveterate or his crime -atrocious was the death-penalty exacted. In effect, cases now punished -by long terms of penal servitude were then ordered for execution. -I don’t pretend to say whether or no to-day’s plan may be the more -merciful. We have, on the authority of the Newgate Ordinary, a list -between 1700 and 1711. Of forty-nine condemned in one year, thirty-six -were reprieved and thirteen executed, in another year thirty-eight -were condemned, twenty were reprieved, and eighteen were executed; the -highest annual return of executions during that period was sixty-six, -the lowest five. An Act of 1753 (25 Geo. II., c. 37) provided for the -speedy exit and dissection of murderers; but the fate of other felons -might hang dubious, as weeks often elapsed without a Privy Council -meeting. The Recorder of London brought up the report from Windsor. -When it reached Newgate, usually late at night, the condemned prisoners -were assembled in one ward. The Ordinary entered in full canonicals -and spoke his fateful message to each kneeling wretch. “I am sorry to -tell you it is all against you,” would fall on one man’s trembling -ears; while “Your case has been taken into consideration by the King -and Council and His Majesty has been mercifully pleased to spare your -life,” was the comfortable word for another. The reprieved now returned -thanks to God and the King; the others, all hope gone, must return to -the condemned hold. - -There broke in on them here, during the midnight hours on the eve of -their execution, the sound of twelve strokes of a hand-bell, the while -a doleful voice in doleful rhyme addressed them: - - You prisoners that are within, - Who for wickedness and sin.... - -Here the rhyme failed; but in not less dismal prose the voice -admonished them that on the morrow “the greatest bell of St. Sepulchre -will toll for you in the form and manner of a passing bell”; wherefore -it behoved them to repent. In later years the songster procured himself -this rigmarole:-- - - Prepare you, for to-morrow you shall die. - Watch all and pray, the hour is drawing near - When you before th’ Almighty must appear. - Examine well yourselves; in time repent, - That you may not th’ eternal flames be sent. - And when St. ’Pulcre’s bell to-morrow tolls, - The Lord have mercy on your souls! - Past twelve o’clock. - -Now this iron nightingale was the sexton or his deputy of St. -Sepulchre’s, hard by Newgate; and his chant originated thus. In the -early seventeenth century there flourished a certain Robert Dowe, -“citizen and merchant taylor of London”; he disbursed much of his -estate to various charities, and in especial gave one pound six -shillings and eight pence yearly to the sexton of St. Sepulchre’s to -approach as near as might be to the condemned hold on execution eve, -and admonish malefactors of their approaching end, as if they were -likely to forget it, or as if “Men in their Condition cou’d have any -stomach to Unseasonable Poetry,” so pertinently observes John Hall -(executed about 1708), “the late famous and notorious robber,” or -rather the Grub Street hack who compiled his _Memoirs_. The rhymes -were, so the same veracious authority assures us, “set to the Tune -of the Bar-Bell at the Black Dog,” and their reception varied. Hall -and his companions (but again you suspect Grub Street) paid in kind -with verse equally edifying, and, if possible, still more atrocious. -Most, you fancy, turned again to their uneasy slumbers with muttered -curses. Not so Sarah Malcolm, condemned in 1733 for the cruel murder of -old Mrs. Duncombe, her mistress. An unseasonable pity for the sexton -croaking his platitudes in the raw midnight possessed her mad soul. -“D’ye hear, Mr. Bellman?” she bawled, “call for a Pint of Wine, and -I’ll throw you a Shilling to pay for it.” How instant his changed note -as the coin clinked on the pavement! Alas! no record reports him thus -again refreshed. - -But _Venit summa dies et ineluctabile fatum_ (a tag you may be sure the -Ordinary rolled off to any broken-down scholar he had in hand); and -our felon’s last day dawns. He is taken to the Stone Hall, where his -irons are struck off; then he is pinioned by the yeoman of the halter, -who performs that service for the moderate fee of five shillings (rope -thrown in). At the gate he is delivered over to the Hangman (who is not -free of the prison), and by him he is set in the cart (a sorry vehicle -drawn by a sorry nag in sorry harness), his coffin oft at his feet, and -the Ordinary at his side, and so, amidst the yells of a huge mob and to -the sad accompaniment of St. Sepulchre’s bell, the cart moves westward. -Almost immediately a halt is called. The road is bounded by the wall -of St. Sepulchre’s Churchyard, over the which there peers our vocalist -of yester-eve, who takes up his lugubrious whine anew:--“All good -people pray heartily with God for the poor sinners who are now going -to their death,” with more to the same effect, for all which the poor -passenger must once more bless or curse the name of the inconsiderately -considerate Dowe. He gave his endowment in 1605, seven years before -his death: had some mad turn of fate made him an object of his own -charity you had scarce grieved. But now the sexton has done his office -to the satisfaction of the beadle of Merchant Tailors’ Hall, who “hath -an honest stipend allowed him to see that this is duly done,” and the -cart is again under weigh, when, if the principal subject be popular, -a lady (you assume her beauty, and you need not rake the rubbish of -two centuries for witness against her character) trips down the steps -of St. Sepulchre’s Church and presents him with a huge nosegay. If -nosegays be not in season, “why, then,” as the conjuror assured Timothy -Crabshaw, squire to Sir Launcelot Greaves, “an orange will do as well.” -And now the cart rumbles down steep and strait Snow Hill, crosses -the Fleet Ditch by narrow Holborn Bridge, creaks up Holborn Hill (the -“Heavy Hill,” men named it with sinister twin-meaning), and so through -Holborn Bars, whilst the bells, first of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, and -then of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, knell sadly as it passes. In the -High Street of the ancient village of that name, Halt! is again the -word. Of old time a famous Lazar-House stood here, and hard by those -elms of St. Giles, already noted as a place of execution. The simple -piety of mediæval times would dispatch no wretch on so long a journey -without sustenance. Hence at the Lazar-House gate he was given a huge -bowl of ale, his “last refreshing in this life,” whereof he might -drink at will. The most gallant of the Elizabethans has phrased for -us the felon’s thoughts as he quaffed the strange draught. On that -chill October morning when Raleigh went to his doom at Westminster, -some one handed him “a cup of excellent sack,” courteously inquiring -how he liked it? “As the fellow,” he answered with a last touch of -Elizabethan wit, “that drinking of St. Giles’s bowl as he went to -Tyburn, said:--‘That were good drink if a man might tarry by it.’” The -Lazar went, but the St. Giles’s bowl lingered, only no longer a shaven -monk, but the landlord of the Bowl or the Crown, or what not, handed up -the liquor. - -Bowl Yard, which vanished into Endell Street, long preserved the memory -of this “last refreshing.” At York a like custom prevailed, whereof -local tradition recorded a quaint apologue. The saddler of Bawtry -needs must hang--why and wherefore no man knoweth. To the amazement -and horror of all he most churlishly refused the proffered bowl. Pity -was but wasted (so our forefathers thought) on such a fellow. Before -a dry-eyed crowd he was strung up with the utmost dispatch, but a -reprieve arriving, was cut down just as quickly. All too late, however! -He was done with this world. Had he but reasonably tarried, as others -did, for his draught, he had died in his bed like many a better man. -Hence the rustic moralist taught how the saddler of Bawtry was hanged -for leaving of his ale. The compilers of the Sunday school treatises -have scandalously neglected this leading case of lost opportunities. -Nay, though a pearl “richer than all his tribe,” you shall search the -works of Dr. Smiles for it in vain. - -But the day wears on, and our procession must farther westward along -Tyburn Road (now Oxford Street). It is soon quit of houses; yet the -crowd grows ever denser, and, though Tyburn Tree stands out grim and -gaunt in our view, it is some time ere the cart pulls up under the -beam. Soon the halter is fixed, and the parson says his last words -to the trembling wretch. And now it is proper for him to address the -crowd, confessing his crimes, and warning others to amend their ways. -If a broken-down cleric or the like, his last devotions and dying -speech are apt to be prosy and inordinate; so that the mob jeers or -even pelts him and his trusty Ketch himself. Or “some of the Sheriff’s -officers discovering impatience to have the execution dispatched” (thus -Samuel Smith, the Ordinary of a case in 1684), Jack cuts things short -by whipping up his horses and leaves his victim dangling and agape. -More decorously the cap is drawn over his face, and he himself gives -the signal to turn off. The Hangman, if in genial mood, now stretches -the felon’s legs for him, or thumps his breast with the benevolent -design of expelling the last breath; but the brute is usually too lazy -or too careless, and these pious offices are performed by friends. - -The accessories of such a last scene are preserved in Hogarth’s -_Apprentice_ Series. One of the crowd is picking a pocket, and you -foresee him ending here some day soon. (Is it not told of one rascal, -that he urged on the attendants his right to a near view, since, sure -of hanging some day, he naturally wished to see how it was done?) -Another in the crowd is bawling, a trifle prematurely, the last -speech and dying confession of Thomas Idle. Verses commemorative of -the occasion were sold broadcast. “Tyburn’s elegiac lines,” as you -may suppose, were sad doggerel. Here is the concluding portion of a -specimen (_temp. circa_ 1720): - - Fifteen of us you soon will see - Ending our days with misery - At the Tree, at the Tree. - -Even at Tyburn, how hard to renounce all hope! There was ever the -chance of a reprieve. There is at least one well-authenticated case of -a man making a sudden bolt from the cart, and almost escaping; and, -as the _modus_ was simple strangulation, and the Hangman careless or -corrupt, it was just possible that heroic remedies might restore to -animation. On December 12, 1705, John Smith was turned off, and hung -for a quarter of an hour. A reprieve arriving, he was cut down, and -coaxed back to life. More remarkable was the case of William Duell, in -1740. To all appearance thoroughly well hanged, he was carried off for -dissection to Surgeons’ Hall, where he presently recovered himself. -He was, somewhat cruelly, restored to Newgate, but was let off with -transportation. The law was not always so merciful. In another case, -the sheriff’s officers, having heard that their prey was again alive -and kicking, hunted the wretch out, haled him back to Tyburn, and -hanged him beyond the possibility of doubt. The rumour of such marvels -inspired many attempts at resuscitation. I fancy about one per cent. -were successful, but how to tell, since the instance just quoted shows -that such triumphs were better concealed? - -Now, the _corpus_ is essential to the _experimentum_, so half an hour -after the turning off, the friends bring up a deal coffin, borne -across an unhinged coach door or any such make-shift bier. But Ketch -is still in possession: the clothes are Hangman’s perquisites, and -must be purchased. How the greedy rascal appreciates the value of each -button, dwells on the splendour of each sorry ornament, watching the -while and gauging the impatience of the buyers! Never went second-hand -duds at such a figure! Sometimes he overreaches himself, or no one -comes forward to bid. Then the corpse is rudely stripped, “and the -Miscellany of Rags are all crushed into a sack which the Valet de -Chambre carries on purpose, and being digested into Monmouth Street, -Chick Lane, &c., are comfortably worn by many an industrious fellow.” -And sometimes the law claims the body to be removed and hung in chains. - -In cases of treason, the felon was drawn to Tyburn in a sledge tied -to a horse’s tail; he was hanged from the cart; but was cut down and -dismembered alive. His head went to the adornment of Temple Bar or -London Bridge; while his quarters, having been boiled in oil and tar -in a cauldron in Jack Ketch’s Kitchen, as the room above the central -gateway at Newgate was called, were scattered here and there as the -authorities fancied. The complete ritual of disgrace was reserved for -political offenders. After rebellions Ketch had his hands full. He -would tumble out of his sack good store of heads wherewith he and the -Newgate felons made hideous sport, preliminary to parboiling them with -bay salt and cummin seed: the one for preservation, the other sovereign -against the fowls of the air. If the traitor were a woman, she was -burned (till 1790); but usually strangled first. Cases are on record -where, with a fire too quick or a Hangman too clumsy, the choking -proved abortive and----! The sledge so often supplanted the less -ignominious cart, that I ought to explain that a traitor need not be a -political offender. Certain coining offences, the murder of a husband -by his wife, and of a master by his servant, were all ranked a form of -treason, and the criminal was drawn and quartered or burnt accordingly. - -Two of Tyburn’s officials, the Ordinary and the Hangman, to wit, now -claim our attention. The Ordinary, or prison chaplain of Newgate, said -“Amen” to the death sentence, and ministered to the convict thence to -the end. A terrible duty, to usher your fellow-man from this world -into the next! I have heard that one such task near proved fatal to -an honest divine; but the hand of little employment hath the daintier -sense, and too often the Newgate Ordinary was a callous wretch, with a -keen zeal for the profits of his post, and for the rest a mere praying -machine. He needs must be good trencherman. It was one of his strange -duties to say grace at City banquets. Major Griffiths, who collects -so many curious facts in his _Chronicles of Newgate_, alleges him not -seldom required to eat three consecutive dinners without quitting the -table. In post-Tyburn days, when they hanged in front of the prison, -the governor’s daughter used to prepare breakfast for those attending -each execution (the _deid clack_, so they called such festivity in -Old Scotland). Broiled kidneys were her masterpiece, and she noted -that, whilst most of her pale-faced guests could stomach nought save -brandy and water, his reverence attacked the dish as one appetised by a -prosperous morning’s work. Most Ordinaries are clean gone from memory, -unrecorded even by _The Dictionary of National Biography_. One (as fly -in amber!) the chance reference of a classic now and again preserves. - - E’en Guthrie spares half Newgate by a dash, - -sneers Pope, referring to an alleged habit of merely giving initials. -I have turned over a fair number of the Reverend James Guthrie’s -accounts of criminals. In those he always writes the name in full. The -witty though himself forgotten Tom Brown scribbles the epitaph of the -Reverend Samuel Smith, another Ordinary:-- - - Whither he’s gone - Is not certainly known, - But a man may conclude, - Without being rude, - That orthodox Sam - His flock would not shame. - And to show himself to ’em a pastor most civil, - As he led, so he followed ’em on to the d----l. - -And there were the Reverend Thomas Purney, and the Reverend John -Villette, but these be well-nigh empty names. We know most about the -Reverend Paul Lorrain, who was appointed in 1698, and died in 1719, -leaving the respectable fortune of £5000. A typical Ordinary of the -baser sort this; a greedy, gross, sensual wretch, who thrived and grew -fat on the perquisites of his office. Among these was a broadsheet, -published at eight o’clock the morning after a hanging. It was headed, -“The Ordinary of Newgate, his Account of the Behaviour, Confessions, -and Last Speeches of the Malefactors who were executed at Tyburn, -the--.” It gave the names and sentences of the convicts, copious -notes of the sermons (of the most wooden type) he preached at them, -biographies, and confessions, and finally the scenes at the gallows. -Let the up-to-date journalist cherish Lorrain’s name. He was an early -specimen of the personal interviewer: he had the same keen scent for -unsavoury detail, the same total disregard for the feelings or wishes -of his victim, the same readiness to betray confidence; and he had -his subject at such an advantage! You imagine the sanctimonious air -wherewith he produced his notebook and invited the wretch’s statement. -With the scene at Tyburn variety in detail was impossible. “Afterwards -the Cart drew away, and they were turn’d off,” is his formula. You had -a good twopenn’orth, such was his usual modest charge! The first page -top was embellished with two cuts: on the left Old Newgate Archway, on -the right Tyburn Tree. (Gurney affected a quainter design, wherein he -stood, in full canonicals in the centre pointing the way to Heaven, -whilst on his left the Fiend, furnished with a trident, squirmed in a -bed of flames.) The broadsheet was authenticated by his signature. - -Now, two things made the Reverend Paul exceeding wroth. One was the -issue of pirated confessions, which were “a great Cheat and Imposture -upon the World,” and they would not merely forge his name but mis-spell -it to boot! His is “the only true _Account_ of the Dying Criminals,” -he urgently, and no doubt truly, asserts. All this touched his pocket, -hence his ire, which blazed no less against the unrepentant malefactor, -who--a scarce less grievous offence--touched his professional pride. He -did not mince words:--“he was a Notorious and Hard-hearted Criminal,” -or afflicted with brutish ignorance or of an obstinate and hardened -disposition. “There is,” he would pointedly remark, “_a Lake of -Brimstone, a Worm that dies not, and a Fire which shall never be -quenched_. And this I must plainly tell you, that will be your dismal -portion there for ever, unless you truly Repent here in time.” And -after “Behaviour” in the title of his broadsheets, he would insert, in -parentheses, “or rather Misbehaviour.” Most of his flock, stupid with -terror, passively acquiesced in everything he said. These “Lorrain -saints,” as Steele called them, received ready absolution at his hands -and their reported end was most edifying. But in James Sheppard (the -Jacobite), who suffered March 17, 1718, for treason, Lorrain had a -most vexatious subject. A non-juring divine, “that Priest or Jesuit, -or Wolf in Sheep’s clothing,” as the Rev. Paul describes him, attended -the convict, and the Ordinary’s services were quite despised. The -intruder, “e’en at the _Gallows_, had the Presumption to give him -Publick Absolution, tho’ he visibly dy’d without Repentance.” Dr. -Doran assures us that, on the way to Tyburn, Paul and his supplanter -came to fisticuffs, and our Ordinary was unceremoniously kicked from -the cart. One would like to believe this entertaining legend, for “the -great historiographer,” as Pope and Bolingbroke sarcastically dub him, -grows less in your favour the more you scan his sheets. His account -of Sheppard concludes with the most fulsome professions of loyalty -to the King and the Protestant Succession, for which he is ready to -sacrifice his life. You note that he was charged with administering -the sacrament for temporal ends, some scandal apparently of shamful -traffic in the elements. There is no proof--indeed, we have nothing to -go on but his own denial; but it shows the gossip whereof he was the -centre. He had ingenious methods of spreading his sale. Thus he tells -his readers that a fuller account of a special case will be published -along with that of prisoners that go for execution to-morrow. In the -case of Nathaniel Parkhurst, hanged May 20, 1715, for the murder of -Count Lewis Pleuro, he actually reports the convict on the eve of his -execution cracking up in advance the report which his ghostly comforter -will presently publish! Strange advertisements fill up the odd corners -of his broadsheets. Here he puffs a manual of devotion by himself; -there the virtue of a quack medicine, some sovran remedy for colic, -gout, toothache, “The Itch or any Itching Humour.” Again, you have “The -works of Petronius Arbiter, with Cuts and a Key,” or “Apuleius’s Golden -Ass,” or some lewd publication of the day. Even if the advertisements -were Paul’s publishers’, how strange the man and the time that suffered -so incongruous a mixture! Our Ordinary petitioned parliament that his -precious broadsheets might go free of the paper tax, by reason of their -edifying nature! - -Turn we now to the Hangman. No rare figure _his_ in Old England! Only -in later years was he individualised. In James I.’s time a certain -Derrick filled the office. The playwrights keep his memory green, and -the crane so called is said to take its name from him. Then there -came Gregory Brandon, who had “a fair coat of arms,” and the title of -esquire in virtue of his office. This was through a mad practical joke -of York Herald, who, perceiving a solemn ass in Garter King-at-Arms, -sent him in the papers somewhat ambiguously worded, and got the grant -in due form. York and Garter were presently laid by the heels in the -Marshalsea, “one for foolery, the other for knavery.” - -Gregory was succeeded by his son, also called Gregory, though his real -name was Richard. His infantile amusement was the heading of cats and -dogs, his baby fingers seemed ever adjusting imaginary halters on -invisible necks; he was “the destined heir, From his soft cradle, to -his father’s chair”--or rather cart and ladder. The younger Brandon -was, it seems quite certain, the executioner of Charles I. Then -followed Edward, commonly known as Esquire Dun, and then the renowned -Jack Ketch, who went to his ghastly work with so callous a disregard -for human suffering, or, as some fancied, with such monstrous glee, -that his name, becoming the very synonym for hangman, clave to all his -successors. He “flourished” 1663-1686. Dryden calls him an “excellent -physician,” and commemorates him more than once in his full-resounding -line. Some held Catch his true patronymic and Ketch a corruption of -Jacquet, the family name of those who held the Manor of Tyburn during -a great part of the seventeenth century, but this, however ingenious, -seems too far-fetched. The original Jack was ungracious and surly -even beyond the manner of his kind. In January 1686, for insolence -to the sheriffs, “he was deposed and committed to Bridewell.” Pascha -Rose, a butcher, succeeded but getting himself hanged in May Ketch was -reinstated. It is recorded that he struck for higher pay--and got it -too. You might fancy that any one could adjust the “Tyburn Tippet,” -or “the riding knot an inch below the ear.” But the business called -for its own special knack. In the _History of the Press-yard_ the -Hangman is represented, after the suppression of the 1715 Rising, as -cheerfully expectant, “provided the king does not unseasonably spoil -my market by reprieves and pardons.” He will receive ample douceurs -“for civility-money in placing their halters’ knot right under their -left ear, and separating their quarters with all imaginable decency.” -Ketch’s fancy hovered between a noble and a highwayman. My Lord was -never stingy with tips; ’twere unseasonable and quite against the -traditions of his order. And the foppery of the other made him a bird -worth plucking. I do not pretend to give a complete catalogue of these -rascals, yet two others I must mention: John Price (1718) was arrested -for murder as he was escorting, it is said, a felon to Tyburn. It -was a brutal business, and he richly deserved the halter. He got it -too! John Dennis led the attack on Newgate in the Lord George Gordon -No-Popery Riots (_temp._ 1780, but of course you remember your _Barnaby -Rudge_). He was like to have swung himself, but was continued in his -old occupation on condition of stringing up his fellow-rioters. Of old -time the Hangman was (we are assured) sworn on the Book to dispatch -every criminal without favour to father or relative or friend; and he -was then dismissed with this formula:--“Get thee hence, wretch.” I have -noted the unwillingness to admit him into Newgate--his wages were paid -over the gate--and the sorry condition of his equipage. This last gave -a grotesque touch to his progress, readily seized on by the jeering -mob, which had ever a curse or a missile for the scowling wretch. - -In the centuries of its horrible virility, the Tree at Tyburn slew -its tens of thousands. A record of famous cases would fill volumes. -I can but note a very few. The earliest recorded, though they cannot -have been the first, were those of Judge Tressilian and Nicholas -Brembre, in February 1388. Their offence was high treason, which meant -in that primitive time little more than a political difference with -the authorities. This Brembre had been four times Mayor of London. He -proposed some startling innovations in the city, one being to change -its name to New Troy (Geoffrey of Monmouth perchance had turned his -head). Here ended Perkin Warbeck, that “little cockatrice of a king” -on whom Bacon lavishes such wealth of vituperative rhetoric, after -abusing Henry VII.’s generosity more than once. The savagery of Henry -VIII. kept the executioner busy, and he of Tyburn had his full share. -On May 4, 1535, in open defiance to every past tradition, the King -caused hang and quarter Haughton, the last prior of the Charterhouse, -in his sacerdotal robes, without any previous ceremony of degradation, -after which “his arm was hung as a bloody sign over the archway of the -Charterhouse.” In 1581, under Elizabeth, Campion and Harte continued -the long line of catholic martyrs. Campion had been so cruelly racked -that he could not hold up his hand to plead without assistance, yet -he maintained his courage through the raw December morning whereon he -suffered. At Tyburn they vexed him with long discussions; but at last, -while he was yet praying for Elizabeth, the cart drove away. Many of -his disciples stood round. They fought for relics which the authorities -were determined they should not have, so that a young man having dipped -his handkerchief in the blood was forthwith arrested. In the confusion -some one cut off a finger and conveyed it away. Some one else offered -twenty pounds for a finger-joint, but the hangman dared not let it go. -The fevered imagination of Campion’s adorers saw wondrous signs. Some -pause in the flow of the Thames was noted on that day, and was ascribed -thereto. The river - - Awhile astonished stood - To count the drops of Campion’s sacred blood. - -Campion himself had long a presentiment of his fate, which, considering -the desperate nature of his mission, was not wonderful; and when -occasion took him past the Triple Tree he was moved to uncover his -head. Southwell, the “sweet singer” of the Catholic reaction, told the -end of his friend in a little work printed at Douay, but in English, -and of course for English circulation; and in 1595 Southwell followed -his brother priest. His followers noted that, when his heart was torn -out, “it leaped from the dissector’s hand and, by its thrilling, seemed -to repel the flames.” A strange legend--not quite baseless, Mr. Gardner -thinks--shows the effect of such scenes on the Catholic mind. Henrietta -Maria, Charles I.’s queen, walked barefoot to Tyburn, as to a shrine, -at dead of night, and did penance under the gallows for the sins of her -adopted country. A felon of a very different order was Mrs. Turner, who -suffered (November 14, 1615) for complicity in Sir Thomas Overbury’s -murder. She had invented yellow starch, and my Lord Coke with a fine -sense of the picturesque ordained her to hang “in her yellow Tinny -Ruff and Cuff.” She dressed the part gallantly; “her face was highly -rouged, and she wore a cobweb lawn ruff, yellow starched.” The Hangman -had also yellow bands and cuffs, he tied her hands with a black silk -ribbon herself had provided, as well as a black veil for her face. -Being turned off, she seemed to die quietly. But yellow starch went -hopelessly out of fashion! - -After the Restoration, the bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw -were dug up at Westminster, removed at night to the Red Lion Inn, -Holborn, drawn next morning (January 30, 1661), the anniversary of -Charles’s death, to Tyburn, and there hanged in their shrouds on the -three wooden posts of the gallows. At nightfall they were taken down -and beheaded; the bodies being there buried, whilst the heads adorned -Westminster Hall. Noll had his picturesque historians before Carlyle. -A wild tale arose that his original funeral at the Abbey had been but -a mock ceremonial; for his body, according to his own instructions, -had been secretly removed to Naseby, and buried at nightfall on the -scene of that victory. Even if we disregard this legend, the subsequent -adventures of Cromwell’s head have been a matter of as much concern to -antiquaries as ever the Royal Martyr’s was to Mr. Dick. - -Time would fail to narrate the picturesque and even jovial exits of -those “curled darlings” of the _Tyburn Calendar or Malefactors’ Bloody -Register_ (or any other form of the _Newgate Chronicle_), those idols -of the popular imagination, the Caroline and Georgian highwaymen. Swift -pictures the very ideal in _Clever Tom Clinch_, who-- - - ... while the rabble was bawling, - Rode stately through Holborn to die in his calling; - He stopped at the George for a bottle of sack, - And promised to pay for it--when he came back. - His waistcoat and stockings and breeches were white. - His cap had a new cherry-ribbon to tie’t; - And the maids to the doors and the balconies ran, - And cried “Lack-a-day! he’s a proper young man!” - -But how to summarise the infinite variety of detail? To tell how, when -Claude Duval swung (January 21, 1670) Ladies of Quality looked on in -tears and masks; how he lay in more than royal state in Tangier Tavern, -St. Giles’s; and how they carved on his stone “in the centre aisle of -Covent Garden Church,” the pattern of a highwayman’s epitaph: - - Here lies Du Vall: reader, if male thou art, - Look to thy purse; if female, to thy heart. - -How the mob bolted with Jack Sheppard’s body (November 16, 1724) to -save the “bonny corp” from the surgeon’s knife! How Jonathan Wild, -“the Great” (May 24, 1725), during the finishing touches picked the -Ordinary’s pocket of his corkscrew, and was turned off with it still -in his hand (thus Fielding: Purney was the ordinary. _His_ account -is quite different), to the unspeakable delight of that enormous body -of spectators, to which Sheppard’s two hundred thousand onlookers -were (Defoe assures us) no more to be compared than is a regiment to -an army. How Sixteen-string Jack (November 30, 1774), his “bright -pea-green coat” and “immense nosegay” were almost _too_ magnificent -even for so noble an occasion. Alas! not ours to dwell on such details; -let the brave rogues go! - -I cull one instance from the peerage. Earl Ferrers suffered at Tyburn -(May 5, 1760) for the death of Johnson, his land steward. He dressed -in his wedding clothes, “a suit of white and silver”: “as good an -occasion,” he observed, “for putting them on, as that for which they -were first made” (his treatment of his wife had indirectly brought -about the murder). Every consideration was paid to my Lord’s feelings: -“A landau with six horses” was _his_ Tyburn cart, and a silk rope _his_ -“anodyne necklace”; and yet things did not go smoothly. The mob was -so enormous that the journey took three hours. It was far worse than -hanging, he protested to the sheriffs. His very handsome tip of five -guineas was handed by mistake to the Hangman’s man, and an unseemly -altercation ensued. My Lord toed the line with anxious care. “Am I -right?” were his last words. The accurate fall of the drop must have -satisfied him that he was. - -I must not neglect the clergy. Here the leading case is obviously -that of Dr. Dodd, hanged for forgery (June 27, 1777). The strange ups -and down of his life (“he descended so low as to become the editor -of a newspaper”) are not for this page. The maudlin piety of his -last days is no pleasant spectacle. Dr. Newton, Bishop of Bristol, -thought him deserving of pity “because hanged for the least crime -he had committed.” Dr. Samuel Johnson did all he could to save him; -also wrote his address to the judge (sentence had been respited) in -reply to the usual question, as well as the sermon he delivered in -Newgate Chapel three weeks before the end. The King sternly refused a -reprieve. No doubt he was right. The very manner of the deed seems -to argue not a first, only a first discovered, offence. His doggerel -_Thoughts in Prison_ is his chief literary crime. He went in a coach. -His “considerable time in praying,” and “several showers of rain,” -rendered the mob somewhat impatient. He was assisted by two clergymen. -One was very much affected; “the other, I suppose, was the Ordinary, as -he was perfectly indifferent and unfeeling in everything he said and -did.” Villette was then Ordinary. He wrote an account (after the most -approved pattern) of Dodd’s unhappy end. The pair had spent much time -together in Newgate, and one hopes the report of Villette’s behaviour -is mistaken or inaccurate, though it is that of an eye-witness, a -correspondent of George Selwyn himself an enthusiastic amateur of -executions, who, when he had a tooth drawn, let fall his handkerchief -_à la Tyburn_, as a signal for the operation. James Boswell had a like -craze. He went in a mourning coach with the Rev. James Hackman when -that divine was hanged (April 19, 1779) for the murder of Miss Reay. -When Hackman let fall the handkerchief for signal it fell _outside_ -the cart, and Ketch with an eye to small perquisites jumped down to -secure it _before_ he whipped up the horse. These are all names more -or less known. There are hundreds of curious incidents connected with -obscure deaths. Here are a few samples:--In 1598 “some mad knaves took -tobacco all the way as they went to be hanged at Tyburn.” In 1677, a -woman and “a little dog ten inches high” were hanged side by side as -accomplices--“a hideous prospect,” comments our chronicler. In 1684 -Francis Kirk, having murdered his wife, must end at Tyburn. Shortly -before he had seen a fellow hanged there for making away with _his_ -spouse; and this, he confessed, had inspired him! - -One John Austin had the distinction of being the last person executed -at Tyburn (November 7, 1783). Reformers had long denounced the -procession as a public scandal. The sheriffs had some doubts as to -their powers; but the judges, being consulted, assured them they could -end it an they would. A month after (December 9, 1783) the gallows was -at work in front of Newgate, and Old London lost its most exciting -spectacle. Dr. Johnson frankly regretted the change:--“Executions are -intended to draw spectators, if they do not draw spectators they lose -their reason. The old method was more satisfactory to all parties. The -public was gratified by a procession, the criminal was supported by -it. Why is all this to be swept away?” In truth, the change of scene -was an illogical compromise: the picturesque effect was gone--save -for an occasional touch, as after Holling’s execution, when the dead -hand was thrust into a woman’s bosom, to remove a mark or wen--the -disorderly mob remained, nay, was a greater scandal at the centre than -in the suburbs. Dickens is but one of many writers who knowing their -London well described the unedifying walk and talk of the crowd before -Newgate; and in 1868 private was substituted for public execution -throughout the land. I do not criticise any system: I do but point -out that of the two sets of opposing forces noted as working on the -criminal’s mind, the latter, in a private execution, is entirely -suppressed. - -Tyburn and its memories, its criminals, its Hangmen, its Ordinaries, -filled a great space in popular imagination, and have frequent mention -in our great writers. Shakespeare himself has “The shape of Love’s -Tyburn”; and Dryden’s “Like thief and parson in a Tyburn cart” is a -stock quotation. But I cannot string a chaplet of these pearls. Yet two -phrases I must explain. A felon who “prayed his clergy” was during some -centuries branded on the crown of his thumb with the letter T, ere he -was released, to prevent a second use of the plea. This was called, in -popular slang, the Tyburn T. Ben Jonson was so branded (October, 1598) -for killing Gabriel Spencer, the actor, in a duel. Again a statute -of 1698 (10 Will. III. c. 12), provided for those who prosecuted a -felon to conviction a certificate freeing them from certain parochial -duties. This was known as a “Tyburn ticket.” It had a certain money -value, because if unused it could be assigned once. The privilege was -abolished in 1827 (7 and 8 Geo. IV. c. 27), but it was allowed as late -as 1856 to a certain Mr. Pratt, of Bond Street, who by showing his -ticket (which must have been thirty years old) escaped service on an -Old Bailey jury. - - - - -Pillory and Cart’s-Tail - - Hood and Lamb on the Pillory--Its Various Shapes--Butcher and - Baker--Brawler and Scold--Fraudulent Attorneys--End of the Pillory - and of Public Whipping--Literary Martyrs--De Foe--Prynne, Bastwick, - and Burton--Case of Titus Oates--The Tale of a Cart--Some Lesser - Sufferers. - - -Hood has comically told of his pretended experiences in the -Pillory:--“It is a sort of Egg-Premiership: a place above your -fellows, but a place which you have on trial. You are not without the -established political vice, for you are not exempt from turning,”--with -more punning cogitations of a like nature. Of rarer humour is Charles -Lamb’s _Reflections in the Pillory_, with its invocation to them that -once stood therein:--“Shades of Bastwick and of Prynne hover over -thee--Defoe is there, and more greatly daring Shebbeare--from their -(little more elevated) stations they look down with recognitions. -Ketch, turn me!” A century or so earlier these ingenious wits had -possibly stood therein--in fact and not in fancy. It was a way our -old-time rulers had of rewarding ingenious wits. And not wits alone: -since for many centuries it was in daily use throughout the length and -breadth of Merrie England. - -Our treatment of crime is the exact opposite of our forefathers’. Our -criminal toils, is flogged, is hanged in private; the old idea was -to make punishment as public as possible, for so penalty and effect -(it was thought) were heightened and increased. The Pillory was the -completest expression of this idea. A man was exposed for sixty minutes -in the market-place at the busiest hour of the day, and the public -itself was summoned to approve of and aid the punishment. The thing -was known in old Saxon days. In the laws of Withred it is called -_healsfang_. The mediæval Latin name for it was _collistrigium_. Both -terms = a “catch for the neck.” Its form varied. The simplest was a -wooden frame or screen, with three holes in it, elevated some feet -above the ground. The culprit stood behind upon a platform, his -head and hands caught in and stuck through the aforesaid holes. This -was much like the stocks, save that there the patient sat instead of -stood and had his feet enclosed instead of his head and hands. In -popular phrase this was “to peep through the nut-crackers.” Again, -the structure swung on a pivot; so that the inmate might face the -compass points in turn. Sometimes, though this was rather a foreign -fashion, it was so commodious that it would take a nosegay of twelve; -at the same time that it went revolving and revolving--a very far from -merry-go-round! Now (as at Dublin) it was the kernel of a large and -imposing structure of stone. Now (as at Coleshill, in Warwickshire) -it stood a deft arrangements of uprights, boards, and holes, and did -triple duty--as stocks, as whipping-post, as Pillory. Now, yet again -(as at Marlborough, in Wiltshire), the frame turned on a swivel at the -will of the patient, whose deft twistings in dodging missiles hugely -delighted the grinning mob. With pen and pencil Mr. Llewellyn Jewitt -and other antiquarians have preserved for our delectation yet other -forms. - -The Pillory was first used for dishonest bakers, brewers, corn-sellers, -and the like. Then, its offices were extended to divers kinds of -misdemeanants. Later, it was the lot of your scurrile pamphleteer, your -libeller, and your publisher of unlicensed volumes. The victim was not -always pelted; for feeling might run high against the Government; and -when he was acclaimed his shame became his glory. So the thing served -as a weather-glass of popular opinion. - -I turn to some historic instances. Under Henry III., by the Assize -of Bread and Ale, it was decreed that knavish bakers, brewers, and -butchers be “set on the pyllory.” It was also provided that “The -pyllory shal be of a metely strengthe, so that they that be fautye -may be thereon without any jeopardye of their lyvys.” (The platform -must not seldom have broken down, leaving the “worm of the hour” -suspended by the neck--that had been securely fastened--in peril of -strangulation, in a case of this sort, under Elizabeth, he sued the -town, and recovered damages.) The articles of usage for the City of -London, published under Edward I., set forth some evil humours of the -time. Rustical simplicity fell, then as now, an easy prey to urban -cunning. What rascals these mediæval cits were, to be sure! Thus, your -corn dealer would take in grain from harmless necessary bumpkins, to -whom he would give an earnest, telling them to come to his house for -payment. Here he met them with a long face:--his wife had gone out with -the key of the cash-box; would his country friends call again? And when -they do, he is “not in.” (Ah! That “call again” and that “not in!” Were -they stale so many centuries ago?) If the rogue were discovered, he -impudently denied his debt:--he had never seen the gentlemen before; -or, raising some dispute about the price, he told him to take back his -goods--when the corn was found too wet for removal. “By these means -the poor men lose half their pay in expenses before they are settled -with;” and the wrong-doer is to be amerced heavily. Being unable to -pay, “then he shall be put on the Pillory, and remain there an hour in -the day at least; a Serjeant of the City standing by the side of the -Pillory with good hue-and-cry as to the reason why he is punished.” -The wicked butcher suffered after the same fashion; while the baker, -who put off bad bread, was drawn--for the first offence upon a hurdle -from the Guildhall to his own house, by “the great streets that are -most dirty, with the faulty loaf hanging about his neck,” a spectacle -to gods and a cockshy for men. For the second offence he processioned -as before; and, to boot, he must stand in the Pillory for an hour. -Offending for the third time, he was judged incorrigible: his oven was -dismantled, and he might bake within the city bounds no more. Sure, the -ancient London loaf, be it _manchet_, or _chete_, or mere _mystelon_, -must ever have been of good quality? When, indeed, did the falling off -begin? Was it when the city fathers unwisely took to regulating men’s -morals? In the seventh of Richard II. this punishment was ordained -for the man of evil life:--“Let his head and beard be shaved except a -fringe on the head two inches in breadth, and let him be taken to the -Pillory, with minstrels, and set thereon for a certain time, at the -discretion of the Mayor and Aldermen.” As for the erring sister, she -was taken from the prison into Aldgate with a hood of ray and a white -wand in her hand. From Aldgate minstrels played her to the Thew (a -species of Pillory for women). Thence, her offence being proclaimed, -she was led “through Chepe and Newgate to Cokkes Lane, there to take -up her abode.” Again, the brawler or the scold must hold a distaff -with tow in hand--and so on; for your old-time law-giver lusted after -variation. - -Once the Pillory was an indispensable ornament of the market-place. -Nay, were it not kept fit for use, the very right to hold a market -might be lost. As an emblem of power, it was claimed by the great -lords: often, indeed, it went with the lordship of the manor. Thus at -Beverley, in the twenty-first of Edward I., John, Archbishop of York, -claims the right of Pillory with the right of gallows and gibbet; -and with the right of Pillory the right of tumbrell, which was the -dung-cart wherein minor malefactors were shamefully trundled through -the town. Legislative ingenuity was ever striving to devise fresh marks -of ignominy. Stow relates that, in the seventh of Edward IV., certain -common jurors must (for their partial conduct) ride in paper mitres -from Newgate to the Pillory in Cornhill, and there do penance for their -fault. Again, in the first of Henry VIII. (1509), Smith and Simpson, -ringleaders of false inquests, rode the City (also in paper mitres) -with their faces to the horse’s tail; and they were set on the Pillory -in Cornhill; and they were brought again to Newgate, where they died -from very shame. The like fate, it seems, befell a much later offender, -one James Morris, who was pilloried (April 2, 1803) for fraud in the -market place at Lancaster. Next morning he was found dead in his bed, -and the coroner’s jury brought it in as “visitation of God.” Oft-times -the sufferer came less mysteriously to his end. The mobility was, -in effect, invited, as it were, to italicise his sentence in terms -of anything you please, from rotten eggs to brickbats. Not seldom it -did so to the sternest purpose. On June 22, 1732, contemporary prints -report:--“Last night the corpse of John Walker, who was killed in the -Pillory on Tuesday last, was buried at St. Andrew’s, Holborn;” and -among the casualties of the December of that same year, the case of -another poor wretch is dismissed with “murder’d in the pillory.” In -1756 Egon and two others were pilloried for procuring the commission of -a robbery, in order to get a reward for its detection. Egon was stoned -to death. On one or two occasions--notably when Elizabeth Collier was -pilloried by order of Jeffreys in 1680--the authorities were ordered to -see that the peace was kept and that the culprit suffered the exposure -alone. - -A long list might be given of misdemeanours punished by the -Pillory:--as, practising the art magick; cutting a purse; placing a -piece of iron in a loaf of bread; selling bad oats, stinking eels, -strawberry pottles half fall of fern; vending ale by measures not -sealed and thickening the bottom of such measures with pewter. As -(also) lies, defamations, and libels of all sorts. If the lie were -notorious, or were told of the mayor or any other dignitary, the liar -was pilloried with a whetstone round his neck: whence it came that a -whetstone was the popular reward for audacious mendacity, and “lying -for the whetstone” was a current phrase. - -Late Tudor and Stuart times edged and weighted the punishment of -the Pillory. It might be preceded by a flogging at the Cart’s-tail. -Stripped to the waist, the culprit, man or woman, was tied to the -hinder end (our fathers used a shorter phrase) of a cart, and was thus -lashed through the streets. (This vulgarly was called, “Shoving the -tumbler,” or “Crying carrots and turnips.”) Or, as Butler’s couplet -reminds us, the patient’s ears were nailed to the wood:-- - - Each window like a Pillory appears, - With heads thrust through, nail’d by the ears. - -Or his ears were cropped, and not seldom his nose was slit likewise. -In 1570, Timothy Penredd was pilloried in Chepe on two successive -market-days for counterfeiting the seal of the Queen’s Bench. Each -time an ear was nailed; and this poor member he must free “by his own -proper motion.” If the wrench were too great for human fortitude, the -thoughtful authorities lent some aid. In one case (1552) the culprit -would not “rent his eare”; so that in the long run “one of the bedles -slitted yt upwards with a penkniffe to loose it.” Indeed, the law had -a strong grudge against the ears of malefactors. The fourteenth of -Elizabeth, cap. 5, ordered that vagrants be grievously whipped and -burned through the gristle of the right ear, unless some credible -person took them to service (if they relapsed they were hanged). The -punishments of the time show a curious alternation between Pillory -and Cart. Thus, whilst keepers of immoral houses were carted about -the town to the music of ringing basins, in the eleventh of James I., -William Barnwell, “gentleman” (an inaccurate description had vitiated -the indictment), and his wife Thomasina, criminals of the same class, -were whipped at the Cart’s-tail from the prison to their house, and -back again. Thus, too, were handled those who lived by cards and dice; -but, for witchcraft, Dorothy Magicke was set four times a year upon -the Pillory, and must thereon make public confession. This man capers -dolefully at the Cart’s-tail for stealing lead; that must take his -turn in the Pillory for snatching three-pence worth of hairs from a -mare’s tail. Later, it was thought excellent for fraudulent attorneys. -In November 1786 one “Mr. A----” (the name is thus disguised), a legal -gentleman, was brought from Newgate in a hackney cab and pilloried for -an hour hard by the gate of Westminster Hall. What he did, and how he -fared, we are not told; so it may be that his hap was even as Thomas -Scott’s, pilloried for a false accusation in January 1804. Scott was -pelted with rotten eggs, filth, and dirt of the street. Also, the -neighbouring ragamuffins had thoughtfully collected good store of dead -cats and rats “in the vicinity of the metropolis” that morning. - -Was it so very edifying after all? Opinions began to differ. Yet Lord -Thurlow solemnly cracked it up “as a restraint against licentiousness -provided by the wisdom of our ancestors”; and in 1814 Lord Ellenborough -ordered Lord Cochrane to be pilloried for conspiring to spread false -news. The justice of this last abominable sentence was questioned. -Sir Francis Burdett, Cochrane’s fellow-member for Middlesex, vowed -that he would stand with him on the day of punishment; but the -Government did not venture to carry out the sentence. Two years later, -in 1816, the punishment of Pillory was restricted to persons guilty -of perjury; and in 1837, by the 1 Vict. cap. 23, it was abolished -altogether. The last person who suffered it is said to have been -Peter James Bossy, pilloried in front of the Old Bailey, June 24, -1830. The public whipping of women went in 1817; the private followed -in 1820 by 1 Geo. IV. cap. 57. The whipping of men for a common law -misdemeanour has never been formally abolished; but the punishment is -now inflicted only under the Garrotters Act (1863) for robbery with -violence; which, of course, has nothing to do with existing statutory -provisions for the flogging of juvenile male offenders. I should add -that in America Pillory and Whipping-Post were “an unconscionable time -a-dying”; lingered especially in the State of Delaware; and that their -restoration has been urged. - -The Finger Pillory deserves a word. It was fixed up inside churches -(that of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, for instance) and halls. Boys who -misbehaved during service, and offenders at festive times against -the mock reign of the lord of misrule, alike expiated their offences -therein. - -I note some remarkable cases. First, and most important, is the group -of literary martyrs. The Stuart Government could not crush the press; -but author, printer, and publisher all worked in peril of the Pillory. -The author of _Robinson Crusoe_ was, perhaps, its most famous inmate. - - Earless on high stood unabash’d De Foe, - And Tutchin flagrant from the scourge below, - -sings Pope in the _Dunciad_ with reckless inaccuracy. In 1703, De Foe, -for his _Shortest Way with the Dissenters_, was condemned to stand -thrice in the Pillory before the Royal Exchange, near the Conduit in -Cheapside, and at Temple Bar. The mob, he tells us, treated him very -well, and cheered long and loud when he was taken out of what he calls -a “Hieraglyphick state machine; Contrived to punish fancy in” (_Hymn -to the Pillory_). He comforts himself by reflecting that the learned -Selden narrowly escaped it, and turns the whole thing to ridicule; but -then mutilation was no port of the sentence. Pope’s reference to John -Tutchin is still wider of the mark. Tutchin, having narrowly escaped -death for his share in Monmouth’s rebellion, was sentenced by Jeffreys, -on his famous Western Circuit (1685), to seven years’ imprisonment, -during which he must, once a year, be whipped through every market-town -in Dorsetshire. The very clerk of the court was moved to protest that -this meant a whipping once a fortnight; but the sentence remained. -Out of bravado, or in desperation, the prisoner petitioned the King -to be hanged instead of whipped; but, in the result, he was neither -whipped nor hanged. He fell ill of the small-pox; passion cooled; -and, intelligently bribing, he escaped, to visit Jeffreys in the -Tower. Apparently he went to gloat, but remained to accept the ruined -Chancellor’s explanation, that he had only obeyed instructions. “So -after he had treated Mr. _Tutchin_ with a glass of wine, Mr. _Tutchin_ -went away.” - -Another of Pope’s examples is “old Prynne,” cropped (in 1632) in the -Pillory for his _Histriomastic_, or Players’ Scourge, which was held to -reflect on Charles I.’s Queen. Again he stood there in 1637, when the -executioner cruelly mangled the ancient stumps. A quite incorrigible -person was this same William Prynne, described by Marchmont Needham -as “one of the greatest paper worms that ever crept about a library.” -He wrote some forty works remarkable for virulence even in that age -of bitter polemics. He strenuously supported the Restoration, and the -new Government was at its wit’s end what to do with him till Charles -himself solved the difficulty with happy humour. “Let him amuse himself -with writing against the Catholics and poring over the records in the -Tower,” said the king; and silenced him with the Keepership of the -Records and £500 a year. Prynne’s second appearance was for a bitter -attack on Laud; and he had as fellow-sufferers John Bastwick, who had -written a sort of mock _Litanie_, and Henry Burton. Bastwick was “very -merrie.” His wife “got on a stool and kissed him;” and, “his ears being -cut off, she called for them, put them in a clean handkerchief, and -carried them away with her.” There was a great crowd, which “cried and -howled terribly, especially when Burton was cropped.” Being angered by -the jeers and execrations of the mob, the executioner did his work very -brutally. Pope’s Billingsgate is classic, but it remains Billingsgate. -The Pillory shows often in his verse. Edmund Curl was a pet aversion -of his, and for publishing the _Memoirs of Ker of Kersland_ Curl -suffered the punishment at Charing Cross on Feb. 23, 1728. Pope hints -(_Dunciad_, II. 3 and 4) that he was badly handled by the mob. In truth -he came off very well, owing, it seems, to an explanatory circular he -got distributed among the spectators. - -As time wore on the punishment reverted to its earlier and milder form. -Thus, in 1630, Dr. Leighton, for his _Zion’s Plea against Prelacy_, -was pilloried, branded, cropped, and whipped; but the authors of the -eighteenth century were punished by exposure alone, and were often -solaced by popular sympathy. In 1765 Williams, the bookseller, stood -in the Pillory for re-publishing _The North Briton_: he held a sprig -of laurel in his hand, and a large collection was made for him then -and there. In derision of authority the mob displayed (_inter alia_) -the famous Bootjack--the popular reference to Lord Bute, the late -Prime Minister. Still more farcical was the exposure (1759) of Dr. -Shebbeare for publishing political libels. He was attended on the -platform by a servant in livery holding an umbrella over his head, -and his neck and arms were not confined. The court thought the -under-sheriff of Middlesex something more than remiss: wherefore he -was fined and imprisoned, it being judicially decided that the culprit -must stand not merely _on_ but _in_ the Pillory. In this connexion I -will only further mention the case of Eton the publisher, “a very old -man,” who in 1812 was pilloried for printing Paine’s _Age of Reason_. -Here, again, the crowd, by the respect it heaped upon the prisoner, -altogether eliminated the sting from the punishment. The minor scribe -of to-day is supposed to court an action, nay, a criminal prosecution, -as a stimulus to circulation; a former age saw in the Pillory the best -possible advertisement for the Grub Street hack. In Foote’s _Patron_, -Puff, the publisher, urges Dactyl to produce a satire; and, when the -proposed risk is hinted at, retorts: “Why, I would not give twopence -for an author who was afraid of his ears.... Why, zooks, sir! I never -got salt for my porridge till I mounted at the Royal Exchange, that was -the making of me.... The true Castalian stream is a shower of eggs and -a Pillory the poet’s Parnassus.” - -Among cases other than literary, a notable one is that of Titus Oates -(1685), who, being convicted of perjury, was sentenced to stand in -the Pillory and be whipped at the Cart’s-tail. The lashing was so -cruelly done that you feel some pity even for that arch rascal. The -curious computed that he received 2256 strokes with a whip of six -thongs--13,536 strokes in all. Yet the wretch lived to enjoy a pension -after the Revolution! There was another remarkable instance that same -year. Thomas Dangerfield, convicted of libelling the King when Duke of -York, was sentenced to a fine, to the Pillory, and to be whipped from -Aldgate to Newgate, and from Newgate to Tyburn. The dreadful work was -over, and he was returning prisonwards in a coach, when there steps -forward Robert Francis, a barrister of Gray’s Inn, with the cruel jibe, -“How now, friend? Have you had your heat this morning?” Dangerfield -turned on him with bitter curses (“Son of a wh----” is the elegant -sample preserved by the records). Francis, much enraged, thrust at the -aching, smarting, bleeding wretch with a small cane, and by mischance -put out an eye, so that in two hours Dangerfield was dead; and no great -while thereafter he himself was tried, condemned, and hanged. According -to the testimony of the Rev. Mr. Samuel Smith, Ordinary at Newgate, he -made a very edifying end. - -Quite interesting is the case of Japhet Crook, _alias_ Sir Peter -Stringer, whose unhappy memory is preserved in some of Pope’s most -biting lines. In 1731, poor Japhet stood in the Pillory at Charing -Cross for forging a deed; when the hangman, dressed like a butcher, -“with a knife like a gardener’s pruning knife cut off his ears, and -with a pair of scissors slit both his nostrils.” The wretch endured all -this with great patience; but at the searing “the pain was so great -that he got up from his chair.” No wonder! Two years after Eleanor -Beare, keeper of “The White Horse,” Nuns Green, Derby, was pilloried -(August 1732) after just escaping the gallows for murder. She mounted -the platform “with an easy air”; thus exasperating a mob already -ill-disposed, which bombarded her with apples, eggs, turnips, and so -forth; so that “the stagnate kennels were robbed of their contents, and -became the cleanest part of the street.” Managing to escape, she dashed -off, “a moving heap of filth,” but was presently seized and lugged -back; and at the end of the hour she was carried to prison, “an object -which none cared to touch.” A week after she was again forced to take -her stand. The officer noted that her head was wondrous swelled, and -he presently stripped it of “ten or twelve coverings,” whereof one was -a pewter plate. Her aspect was most forlorn, but the crowd, no whit -moved, pelted its hardest, and she was borne away more dead than alive. -Yet she too not only lived, but “recovered her health, her spirits, -and her beauty.” Two lighter instances, and I have done. In the early -stages of Monmouth’s rebellion, an astrologer, consulting the stars, -saw that the duke would be presently King of England. After Sedgemoor -he was cast into Dorchester Gaol for this unlucky prediction. Again -falling to his observations, he clearly read “that he would be whipped -at the Cart’s ----”; and this time the planets spoke true. In 1783, the -poet Cowper reports one humorous case from his own experience. At Olney -a man was publicly whipped for theft; he whealed with every stroke; but -that was only because the beadle drew the scourge against a piece of -red ochre hidden in his hand. Noting the fraud, the parish constable -laid his cane smartly about the shoulders of the all too-lenient -official, whereat a country wench, in high dudgeon, set to pomelling -the constable. And of the three the thief alone escaped punishment. - - - - -State Trials for Witchcraft - - Early Laws against Witchcraft--The Essex Witches--The Devon - Witches--The Bury St. Edmunds Case--Bewitched Children--The - Scepticism of Serjeant Keeling--Evidence of Sir Thomas Browne--The - Judge’s Charge--The End of it All--The Trial of Richard - Hathaway--The Comic Side of Superstition--A Rogue’s Punishment--A - Word in Conclusion. - - -I propose to examine the Witchcraft cases in Howell’s twenty-one bulky -volumes of State Trials. The general subject, even in England, is too -vast for detailed treatment here; also it is choked with all manner of -absurdities. In a trial some of these are pared away: you know what -the people saw, or believed they saw, and you have the declarations of -the witches themselves. Only five cases, all between 1616 (13 Jac. I.) -and 1702 (1 Anne) are reported. The selection is capricious, for some -famous prosecutions as that of the Lancashire witches are omitted, but -it is fairly representative. - -In the early times Witchcraft and sorcery were left to the Church. In -1541, 33 Hen. VIII. c. 8, made both felony without “benefit of clergy;” -and by the 1 Jac. I. c. 12, all persons invoking any evil spirit, or -taking up dead bodies from their graves to be used in any Witchcraft, -sorcery, charm, or enchantment, or killing or otherwise hurting any -person by such infernal arts, shall be guilty of felony without -“benefit of clergy,” and suffer death. King James’s views on Witchcraft -and his skill (whereon he greatly plumed himself) as witch-finder are -famed. Royal influence went hand-in-hand with popular superstition. In -less than a century and a half, legislative if not vulgar ideas were -altered, and in 1736, by 9 Geo. II. c. 5, the laws against Witchcraft -were swept away, though charlatans professing the occult sciences were -still punished as cheats. - -I pass as of little interest Howell’s first case, that of Mary Smith, -in 1616. More worthy of note are the proceedings against the Essex -witches, some twenty in number, condemned at the Chelmsford Sessions on -July 29, 1645, before the Earl of Warwick and other Justices. One noted -witch was Elizabeth Clarke to whom the devil had appeared “in the shape -of a proper gentleman with a laced band, having the whole proportion of -a man.” She had certain imps, whom she called Jamara (“a white dogge -with red spots”), Vinegar Tom, Hoult, and Sack and Sugar. So far the -information of Matthew Hopkins, of Manningtree, gent., who further said -that the same evening whereon the accused confessed those marvels to -him, “he espied a white thing about the bignesse of a kitlyn,” which -bit a piece out of his greyhound, and in his own yard that very night -“he espied a black thing proportioned like a cat, only it was thrice -as big, sitting on a strawberry-bed, and fixing the eyes on this -informant.” - -John Sterne, gent., had equal wonders of imps the size of small dogs, -and how Sack and Sugar were like to do him hurt. ’Twere well, said the -malevolent Elizabeth, “that this informant were so quick, otherwise -the said impe had soone skipped upon his face, and perchance had got -into his throate, and then there would have been a feast of toades in -this informant’s belly.” The witch Clarke ascribed her undoing to Anne -Weste, widow, here usually called Old Beldam Weste, who, coming upon -her as she was picking up a few sticks, and seeming to pity her for -“her lamenesse (having but one leg) and her poverty,” promised to send -her a little kitten to assist her. Sure enough, a few nights after -two imps appeared, who vowed to “help her to an husband who should -maintain her ever after.” A country justice’s notions of evidence are -not supposed to be exact even to-day; what they were then let the -information of Robert Tayler, also of Manningtree, show. It seems -Clarke had accused one Elizabeth Gooding as a confederate. Gooding was -refused credit at Tayler’s for half a pound of cheese, whereupon “she -went away muttering and mumbling to herself, and within a few hours -came again with money and bought a pound of cheese of this informant.” -That very night Tayler’s horse fell grievously ill and four farriers -were gravelled to tell what ailed it, but this portentous fact was -noted: “the belly of the said horse would rumble and make a noyse as -a foule chimney set on fire.” In four days it was dead. Tayler had -also heard that certain confessed witches had “impeached the said -Elizabeth Gooding for killing of this said horse,” moreover Elizabeth -kept company with notorious witches--after which scepticism was scarce -permissible. Rebecca Weste, a prisoner awaiting trial in Colchester, -confessed how at a witches’ meeting the devil appeared to her in the -shape of a dog and kissed her. In less than six months he came again -and promised to marry her. “Shee said he kissed her, but was as cold as -clay, and married her that night in this manner: he tooke her by the -hand and led her about the chamber and promised to be a loving husband -to death, and to avenge her of her enemies.” - -One Rawbood had taken a house over the head of Margaret Moon, another -of the accused, with highly unpleasant consequences. Thus, Mrs. -Rawbood, though a “very tydy and cleanly woman, sitting upon a block, -after dinner with another neighbour, a little before it was time to go -to church upon an Easter Day, the said Rawbood’s wife was on a sudden -so filled with lice that they might have been swept off her clothes -with a stick; and this informant saith he did see them, and that they -were long and lean, and not like other lice.” More gruesome were the -confessions of Rebecca Jones, of Osyth. One fine day some twenty-five -years past she, a servant lass at Much-Clacton, was summoned by a knock -at the door, where she saw “a very handsome young man, as shee then -thought, but now shee thinks it was the devil.” Politely inquiring how -she did, he desired to see her left wrist, which being shown him, he -pulled out a pin “from this examinant’s owne sleeve, and pricked her -wrist twice, and there came out a drop of bloud, which he took off -with the top of his finger, and so departed”--leaving poor Rebecca’s -heart all in a flutter. About four months afterwards as she was going -to market to sell butter, a “man met with her, being in a ragged state, -and having such great eyes that this examinant was very much afraid of -him.” He presented her with three things like to “moules,” which she -afterwards used to destroy her neighbours’ cattle, and now and again -her neighbours themselves. In evidence against other suspects there was -mention of a familiar called Elimanzer, who was fed with milk pottage, -and of imps called Wynowe, Jeso, Panu, with many other remarkable -particulars. - -The foregoing was collected before trial as information upon oath; but -this testimony of Sir Thomas Bowes, knight, was given from the bench -during the trial of Anne Weste, whom it concerned. He reported that -an honest man of Manningtree passing Anne Weste’s door at the very -witching hour of night, in bright moonlight saw four things like black -rabbits emerge. He caught one of them, and beat the head of it against -his stick, “intending to beat out the braines of it,” failing in which -benevolent design, he next tried to tear off its head, “and as he wrung -and stretched the neck of it, it came out between his hands like a lock -of wooll;” then he went to a spring to drown it, but at every step he -fell down, yet he managed to creep to the water, under which he held -the thing “a good space.” Thinking it was drowned he let go, whereupon -“it sprang out of the water into the aire, and so vanished away.” There -was but one end possible for people who froze the rustic soul with such -pranks. Each and all were soon dangling from the gallows. - -The case of the Devon witches tried at Exeter in August 1682 is much -like the Essex business. The informations are stuffed with grotesque -horrors, yet it is hard to believe that the accused--three poor women -from Bideford, two of them widows--had been convicted but for their -own confessions, which are full of copious and minute details of their -dealings with Satan. Going to their death, they were worried by Mr. -H----, a nonconformist preacher and (as is evident) a very pestilent -fellow. “Did you pass through the keyhole of the door, or was the door -open?” was one query. The witch asserted that like other people she -entered by the door, though “the devil did lead me upstairs.” Mr. H---- -went on, “How do you know it was the devil?” “I knew it by his eyes,” -she returned. Again, “Did you never ride over an arm of the sea on a -cow?”--an exploit which the poor woman sturdily disclaimed. Mr. H----, -a little dissatisfied, one fancies, prayed at them a while, after which -two of the women were turned off the ladder. Mr. Sheriff tried his -hand at the survivor: he was curious as to the shape or colour of the -devil, and was answered that he appeared “in black like a bullock.” -He again pressed her as to whether she went in “through the keyhole -or the door,” but she alleged the more commonplace and (for a witch) -unorthodox mode of entry, “and so was executed.” - -Between these two cases one occurred wherein the best legal intellect -of the day was engaged--and with no better result. In March 1665, Rose -Cullender and Amy Duny, widows, were indicted at the Assizes at Bury -St. Edmunds for bewitching certain people. Sir Matthew Hale, Lord Chief -Baron of the Exchequer, presided. “Still his name is of account.” To -an earlier time he seemed a judge “whom for his integrity, learning, -and law, hardly any age, either before or since, could parallel.” -William Durant, an infant, was one victim; his mother had promised -Amy Duny a penny to watch him, but she was strictly charged not to -give him suck. To what end? queried the court reflecting on Amy’s age. -The mother replied: firstly, Amy had the reputation of a witch, and -secondly, it was a custom of old women thus to please the child, “and -it did please the child, but it sucked nothing but wind, which did -the child hurt.” The two women had a quarrel on the subject: Amy was -enraged, and departed after some dark sayings, and the boy forthwith -fell into “strange fits of swounding.” Dr. Jacob, of Yarmouth, an -eminent witch-doctor, advised “to hang up the child’s blanket in the -chimney-corner all day, and at night when she put the child to bed -to put it into the said blanket, and if she found anything in it she -should not be afraid, but throw it into the fire.” The blanket was duly -hung up, and taken down, when a great toad fell out, which being thrown -into the fire made (not unnaturally) “a great and horrible noise;” -followed a crack and a flash, and--exit the toad! The court with solemn -foolishness inquired if the substance of the toad was not seen to -consume? and was stoutly answered “No.” Next day Amy was discovered -sitting alone in her house in her smock without any fire. She was in -“a most lamentable condition,” having her face all scorched with fire. -This deponent had no doubt as to the witch’s guilt, “for that the said -Amy hath been long reputed to be a witch and a person of very evil -behaviour, whose kindred and relations have been many of them accused -for witchcraft, and some of them have been condemned.” - -Elizabeth Pacy was another bewitched child. By direction of the judge, -Amy Duny was made to touch her, whereupon the child clawed the Old -Beldam till the blood came--a portentous fact, for everybody knew that -the bewitched would naturally scratch the tormentor’s face and thus -obtain relief. The father of the child, Samuel Pacy (whose soberness -and moderation are specially commended by the reporter), now told how -Amy Duny thrice came to buy herrings, and, being as often refused, -“went away grumbling, but what she said was not perfectly understood.” -Immediately his child Deborah fell sick, whereupon Amy was set in the -stocks. Here she confessed that, when any of her offspring were so -afflicted, “she had been fain to open her child’s mouth with a tap to -give it vitals,” which simple device the sapient Pacy practised upon -his brats with some effect, but still continuing ill they vomited -“crooked pins and one time a twopenny nail with a very broad head, -which pins, amounting to forty or more, together with the twopenny -nail, were produced in court,” so what room was there for doubt? The -children, continually accusing Amy Duny and Rose Cullender as cause -of their sickness, were packed off by their distracted father to his -sister at Yarmouth, who now took up the wondrous tale. When the younger -child was taking the air out of doors, “presently a little thing like a -bee flew upon her face, and would have gone into her mouth.” She rushed -indoors, and incontinent vomited up a twopenny nail with a broad head, -whose presence she accounted for thus: “the bee brought this nail and -forced it into her mouth”; from all which the guilt of the witches was -ever more evident. - -Even that age had its sceptics. Some people in court, chief among them -Mr. Serjeant Keeling, whose position and learning made it impossible -to disregard their opinion, “seemed much unsatisfied.” The learned -serjeant pointed out that even if the children were bewitched, there -was no real evidence to connect the prisoners with the fact. Then Dr. -Browne, of Norwich, “a person of great knowledge” (no other, alas! than -the Sir Thomas Browne of the _Religio Medici_), made a very learned if -confusing dissertation on Witchcraft in general, with some curious -details as to a late “great discovery of witches” in Denmark; which -no whit advanced the matter. Then there was another experiment. Amy -Duny was brought to one of the children whose eyes were blinded. The -child was presently touched by another person, “which produced the -same effect as the touch of the witch did in the court.” The sceptical -Keeling and his set now roundly declared the whole business a sham, -which “put the court and all persons into a stand. But at length -Mr. Pacy did declare that possibly the maid might be deceived by a -suspicion that the witch touched her when she did not.” This was the -very point the sceptics were making, and was anything but an argument -in reply, though it seems to have been accepted as such. And how to -suppose, it was urged, that innocent children would tell such terrible -lies? It was the golden age of the rod; never was there fitter occasion -for its use. Once fancies a few strokes had produced remarkable -confessions from the innocents! However, the court went on hearing -evidence. The judge summed up with much seeming impartiality, much -wooden wisdom, and the usual judicial platitudes, all which after more -than two centuries you read with considerable irritation. The jury upon -half an hour’s deliberation returned a verdict of guilty. Next morning -the children were brought to the judge, “and Mr. Pacy did affirm that -within less than half an hour after the witches were convicted they -were all of them restored.” After this, what place was left for doubt? -“In conclusion the judge and all the court were fully satisfied with -the verdict, and thereupon gave judgment against the witches that they -should be hanged.” Three days afterwards the poor unfortunates went to -their death. “They were much urged to confess, but would not.” - -Finally, you have this much less tragic business. In the first year -of Queen Anne’s reign (1702), Richard Hathaway was tried at the -Surrey Assizes before Lord Chief Justice Holt for falsely accusing -Sarah Morduck of bewitching him. The offence being a misdemeanour, -the prisoner had counsel, an advantage not then fully given to those -charged with felony. The trial reads like one in our own day. The case -for the Crown had been carefully put together. Possibly the authorities -were striking at accusations of and prosecutions for Witchcraft. -Sarah Morduck had been tried and acquitted at Guildford Assizes for -bewitching Hathaway, whereupon this prosecution had been ordered. Dr. -Martin, parish minister in Southwark, an able and enlightened divine, -had saved Sarah from the mob, and so was led on to probe the matter. -He found Hathaway apparently blind and dumb, but giving his assent -by a sign to the suggestion that he should scratch Morduck, and so -(according to the superstition already noted) obtain relief. Dr. Martin -brought Sarah and a woman of the same height called Johnson to the room -where the impostor lay, seemingly, at death’s door. Morduck announced -her willingness to be scratched, and then Johnson’s hand was put into -his. Hathaway was suspicious, and felt the arm very carefully, whereat -the parson “spoke to him somewhat eagerly: If you will not scratch I -will begone.” Whereupon he clawed so lustily that Johnson near fainted. -She was forthwith hustled out of the room and Morduck pushed forward; -but the rogue, fearing a trap, lay quiet till Dr. Martin encouraged him -by simulated admiration. Then he opened wide his eyes, “caught hold of -the apron of Sarah Morduck, and looked her in the face,” thus implying -that his supposed scratching of her had restored his eyesight. Being -informed of his blunder he “seemed much cast down,” but his native -impudence soon asserting itself, he gave himself out for worse than -ever, whilst Sarah Morduck, anxious to be clear at any cost, declared -that not she but Johnson was the witch. The popular voice roundly -abused Dr. Martin for a stubborn sceptic. Charges of bribery against -him, as well as against the judge and jury who had acquitted Morduck, -were freely bandied about. Dr. Martin had got Bateman a friend of his -to see Hathaway, one of whose symptoms was the vomiting of pins. His -evidence was that the rogue scattered the pins about the room by -sleight of hand; Bateman had taken several parcels of them, almost by -force, out of his pocket. Kensy, a surgeon, further told how Hathaway, -being committed to his care, at first would neither eat nor drink. -Kensy being afraid that he would starve himself to death sooner than -have his cheat discovered, arranged a pretended quarrel with his maid -Baker, who supplied the patient with food as if against his orders. -Indeed, she plied him so well with meat and drink that, so she told -the court, “he was very merry and danced about, and took the tongs -and played upon them, but after that he was mightily sick and vomited -sadly”--but there were no pins and needles! She further told how four -gentlemen, privily stored away in the buttery and coal-hole, witnessed -Hathaway’s gastronomic feats. Serjeant Jenner for the defence called -several witnesses, who testified to the prisoner’s abstinence from -food for quite miraculous periods. The force of this evidence was much -shaken by the pertinent cross-examination of the judge, who asked the -jury in his summing up, “Whether you have any evidence to induce you -to believe it to be in the power of all the witches in the world, or -all the Devils in Hell, to fast beyond the usual time that nature will -allow: they cannot invert the order of nature.” The jury, “without -going from the bar, brought him in Guilty.” He was sentenced to a fine, -a sound flogging, the pillory, and imprisonment with hard labour. The -last conviction for Witchcraft in England was that of Jane Wenham, -at Hertford, in 1712. She was respited by the judge and afterwards -pardoned. The case is not here reported. - -These trials throw a curious light on the ideas of the time; -unfortunately they exhibit human nature in some of its worst aspects. -The victims were women, old, poor, helpless, and the persecution to -which they were subjected was due partly to superstition, partly to -that delight in cruelty so strong in the natural man. The “confessions” -of the accused are easily accounted for. The popular beliefs so -impressed their imaginations that they believed in their own malevolent -power, also the terror they inspired lacked not charm, it procured -them consideration, some money, even some protection. Not seldom -their “confessions” were merely terrified assents to statements made -about them by witch-finders, clergymen, and justices. And the judges? -Sometimes, alas! they callously administered a law in which they had no -belief. Is there not still something inexplicable? Well, such things as -mesmerism, thought-reading, and so forth exhibit remarkable phenomena. -A former age ascribed all to Satan: we believe them natural though we -cannot as yet solve all their riddles. I must add that the ancient -popular horror of witches is partly explained by the hideous and -grotesque details given at the trials, but those obscenities I dare not -reproduce. - - - - -A Pair of Parricides - - The State Trials--The Dry Bones of Romance--Pictures of - the Past--Their Value for the Present--The Case of Philip - Standsfield--The Place of the Tragedy--The Night of the - Murder--The Scene in Morham Kirk--The Trial--“The Bluidy - Advocate--Mackenzie”--The Fate of Standsfield--The Case - of Mary Blandy, Spinster--The Villain of the Piece--The - Maid’s Gossip--Death of Mr. Blandy--The “Angel” Inn at - Henley-on-Thames--The Defence--Miss Blandy’s Exit. - - -There is a new series of _State Trials_ continuing the old, and edited -with a skill and completeness altogether lacking in its predecessor; -yet its formal correctness gives an impression of dulness. You -think with regret of Howell’s thirty-three huge volumes, that vast -magazine of curiosities and horrors, of all that is best and worst -in English history. How exciting life was long ago, to be sure, and -how persistently it grows duller! What a price we pay for the smug -comfort of our time! People shuddered of yore; did they yawn quite so -often? Howell and the folk he edits knew how to tell a story. Judges, -too, were not wont to exclude interesting detail for that it wasn’t -evidence, and the compilers did not end with a man’s condemnation. -They had too keen a sense of what was relished of the general: the -last confession and dying speech, the exit on the scaffold or from the -cart, are told with infinite gusto. What a terrible test earth’s great -unfortunates underwent! Sir Thomas More’s delicate fencing with his -judges, the exquisite courtesy wherewith he bade them farewell, make -but half the record; you must hear the strange gaiety which flashed -in the condemned cell and by the block ere you learn the man’s true -nature. And to know Raleigh you must see him at Winchester under the -brutal insults of Coke; “Thou art a monster, thou hast an English face -but a Spanish heart;” again, “I thou thee, thou traitor!” and at Palace -Yard, Westminster, on that dreary October morning urging the sheriff to -hurry, since he would not be thought fear-shaken when it was but the -ague; for these are all-important episodes in the life of that richly -dressed, stately, and gallant figure your fancy is wont to picture in -his Elizabethan warship sweeping the Spanish Main. Time would fail -to tell of Strafford and Charles and Laud and a hundred others, for -the collection begins with Thomas à Becket in 1163 and comes down to -Thistlewood in 1820. Once familiar with those close packed, badly -printed pages, you find therein a deeper, a more subtle charm than -cunningest romance can furnish forth. The account of Mary Stuart’s -ending has a finer hold than Froude’s magnificent and highly decorated -picture--Study at first hand “Bloody Jeffreys,” his slogging of Titus -Oates, with that unabashed rascal’s replies during his trial for -perjury; or again, my Lord’s brilliant though brutal cross-examination -of Dunn in the “Lady” Alice Lisle case, during the famous or infamous -Western Circuit, and you will find Macaulay’s wealth of vituperative -rhetoric, in comparison, tiresome and pointless verbiage. Also you -will prefer to construct your own Braxfield from trials like those of -Thomas Muir in 1793, and of Alexander Scott and Maurice Margarot in -1794, rather than accept the counterfeit presentment which Stevenson’s -master-hand has limned in _Weir of Hermiston_. - -But the interests are varied. How full of grotesque and curious horrors -are the prosecutions for witchcraft! There is that one, for instance, -in March 1665 at Bury St. Edmunds before Sir Matthew Hale, with -stories of bewitched children, and plague-stricken women, and satanic -necromancy. Again, there is the diverting exposure of Richard Hathaway -in 1702, and how the rogue pretended to vomit pins and abstain from -meat or drink for quite miraculous periods. But most of those things I -deal with elsewhere in this volume. The trials of obscurer criminals -have their own charm. Where else do you find such Dutch pictures of -long-vanished interiors or exteriors? You touch the _vie intime_ of a -past age; you see how kitchen and hall lived and talked; what master -and man, mistress and maid thought and felt; how they were dressed, -what they ate, of what they gossiped. Again, how oft your page recalls -the strange, mad, picturesque ways of old English law! _Benefit of -clergy_ meets you at every turn, the _Peine Fort et Dure_ is explained -with horrible minuteness, the lore of _Ship Money_ as well as of -_Impressment of Seamen_ is all there. Also is an occasional touch of -farce. But what phase of man’s life goes unrecorded in those musty old -tomes? - -Howell’s collection only comes down to 1820. Reform has since then -purged our law, and the whole set is packed off to the Lumber Room. In -a year’s current reports you may find the volumes quoted once or twice, -but that is “but a bravery,” as Lord Bacon would say, for their law is -“a creed outworn.” Yet the human interest of a story remains, however -antiquated the setting, incapable of hurt from Act of Parliament. So, -partly for themselves, partly as samples of the bulk, I here present in -altered form two of these tragedies, a Pair of Parricides: one Scots -of the seventeenth, the other English of the eighteenth century. - -The first is the case of Philip Standsfield, tried at Edinburgh, in -1688, for the murder of his father, Sir James Standsfield, of New -Mills, in East Lothian. To-day New Mills is called Amisfield; it -lies on the south bank of the Tyne, a mile east of Haddington. There -is a fine mansion-house about a century old in the midst of a well -wooded park, and all round are the superbly tilled Lothian fields, as -_dulcia arva_ as ever the Mantuan sang. Amisfield got its present name -thus: Colonel Charteris, infamed (in the phrase of Arbuthnot’s famous -epitaph) for the “undeviating pravity of his manners” (hence lashed by -Pope in many a stinging line), purchased it early in the last century -and re-named it from the seat of his family in Nithsdale. Through him -it passed by descent to the house of Wemyss, still its owners. Amongst -its trees and its waters the place lies away from the beaten track and -is now as charmingly peaceful a spot as you shall anywhere discover. -Name gone and aspect changed, local tradition has but a vague memory -of the two-centuries-old tragedy whereof it was the centre. - -Sir James Standsfield, an Englishman by birth, had married a Scots lady -and spent most of his life in Scotland. After the Restoration he had -established a successful cloth factory at the place called New Mills, -and there lived, a prosperous gentleman. But he had much domestic -trouble chiefly from the conduct of his eldest son Philip, who, though -well brought up, led a wild life. Whilst “this profligate youth” (so -Wodrow, who tells the story, dubs him) was a student at the University -of St. Andrews, curiosity or mischief led him to attend a conventicle -where godly Mr. John Welch was holding forth. Using a chance loaf as -a missile, he smote the astonished divine, who, failing to discover -the culprit, was moved to prophecy. “There would be,” he thundered, -“more present at the death of him who did it, than were hearing him -that day; and the multitude was not small.” Graver matters than this -freak stained the lad’s later career. Serving abroad in the Scots -regiment, he had been condemned to death at Treves, but had escaped by -flight. Certain notorious villainies had also made him familiar with -the interior of the Marshalsea and the prisons of Brussels, Antwerp, -and Orleans. Sir James at last was moved to disinherit him in favour -of his second son John. Partly cause and partly effect of this, -Philip was given to cursing his father in most extravagant terms (of -itself a capital offence according to old Scots law); he affirmed his -parent “girned upon him like a sheep’s head in a tongs;” on several -occasions he had even attempted that parent’s life: all which is set -forth at great length in the “ditty” or indictment upon which he was -tried. No doubt Sir James went in considerable fear of his unnatural -son. A certain Mr. Roderick Mackenzie, advocate, testifies that eight -days before the end he met the old gentleman in the Parliament Close, -Edinburgh, whereupon “the defunct invited him to take his morning -draught.” As they partook Sir James bemoaned his domestic troubles. -“Yes,” said Mackenzie, but why had he disherished his son? And the -defunct answered: “Ye do not know my son, for he is the greatest -debauch in the earth. And that which troubles me most is that he twice -attempted my own person.” - -Upon the last Saturday of November 1687, the elder Standsfield -travelled from Edinburgh to New Mills in company with Mr. John -Bell, minister of the Gospel, who was to officiate the next day in -Morham Church (Morham is a secluded parish on the lower slope of the -Lammermoors, some three miles south-west of New Mills; the church -plays an important part in what follows). Arrived at New Mills the -pair supped together, thereafter the host accompanied his guest to -his chamber, where he sat talking “pertinently and to good purpose” -till about ten o’clock. Left alone, our divine gat him to bed, but had -scarce fallen asleep when he awoke in terror, for a terrible cry rang -through the silence of the winter night. A confused murmur of voices -and a noise of folk moving about succeeded. Mr. Bell incontinently -set all down to “evil wicked spirits,” so having seen to the bolts of -his chamber door, and having fortified his timid soul with prayers, he -huddled in bed again; but the voices and noises continuing outside the -house he crept to the window, where peering out he perceived nought -in the darkness. The noises died away across the garden towards the -river, and Bell lay quaking till the morning. An hour after day Philip -came to his chamber to ask if his father had been there, for he had -been seeking him upon the banks of the water. “Why on the banks of -that water?” queried Bell in natural amazement. Without answer Philip -hurriedly left the room. Later that same Sunday morning a certain -John Topping coming from Monkrig to New Mills, along the bank of the -Tyne, saw a man’s body floating on the water. Philip, drawn to the -spot by some terrible fascination, was looking on (you picture his -face). “Whose body was it?” asked the horror-struck Topping, but -Philip replied not. Well _he_ knew it was his father’s corpse. It was -noted that, though a hard frosty morning, the bank was “all beaten -to mash with feet and the ground very open and mellow.” The dead man -being presently dragged forth and carried home was refused entry by -Philip into the house so late his own, “for he had not died like a man -but like a beast,”--the suggestion being that his father had drowned -himself,--and so the poor remains must rest in the woollen mill, and -then in a cellar “where there was very little light.” The gossips -retailed unseemly fragments of scandal, as “within an hour after his -father’s body was brought from the water, he got the buckles from -his father’s shoes and put them in his;” and again, there is note -of a hideous and sordid quarrel between Lady Standsfield and Janet -Johnstoun, “who was his own concubine,” so the prosecution averred, -“about some remains of the Holland of the woonding-sheet,” with some -incriminating words of Philip that accompanied. - -I now take up the story as given by Umphrey Spurway, described as an -Englishman and clothier at New Mills. His suspicions caused him to -write to Edinburgh that the Lord Advocate might be warned. Philip -lost no time in trying to prevent an inquiry. At three or four of the -clock on Monday morning Spurway, coming out of his house, saw “great -lights at Sir James’ Gate;” grouped round were men and horses. He was -told they were taking away the body to be buried at Morham, whereat -honest Umphrey, much disturbed at this suspicious haste, sighed for the -“crowner’s quest law” of his fatherland. But on the next Tuesday night -after he had gone to bed a party of five men, two of them surgeons, -came post haste to his house from Edinburgh, and showing him an order -“from my Lord Advocat for the taking up again the body of Sir James -Standsfield,” bid him rise and come. Philip also must go with the party -to Morham. Here the grave was opened, the body taken out and carried -into the church, where the surgeons made their examination, which -clearly pointed to death by strangulation not by drowning (possibly -it struck Spurway as an odd use for a church; it had not seemed so -to a presbyterian Scot of the period). The dead being re-dressed in -his grave clothes must now be set back in his coffin. A terrible thing -happened. According to Scots custom the nearest relative must lift the -body, and so Philip took the head, when lo! the corpse gushed forth -blood on his hands! He dropped the head--the “considerable noise” it -made in falling is noted by one of the surgeons--frantically essayed -to wipe off the blood on his clothes, and with frenzied cries of “Lord -have mercy upon me, Lord have mercy upon us!” fell half swooning across -a seat. Strong cordials were administered, and in time he regained his -sullen composure. - -A strange scene to ponder over, but how terrible to witness! Think of -it! The lonely church on the Lammermoors, the dead vast and middle -of the dreary night (November 30, 1687), the murdered man, and the -Parricide’s confession (it is so set forth in the “ditty”) wrung from -him (as all believed) by the direct interposition of Providence. What -fiction ever equalled this gruesome horror? Even his mother, who had -sided with him against the father, scarce professed to believe his -innocence. “What if they should put her bairn in prison?” she wailed. -“Her bairn” was soon hard and fast in the gloomy old Tolbooth of -Edinburgh, to which, as the _Heart of Midlothian_, Scott’s novel was in -future days to give a world-wide fame. - -The trial came on February 6 ensuing. In Scotland there is no inquest -or public magisterial examination to discount the interest of the -story, and the crowd that listened in the Parliament House to the -evidence already detailed had their bellyful of surprises and horrors. -The Crown had still in reserve this testimony, sensational and deadly. -The prosecution proposed to call James Thomson, a boy of thirteen, and -Anna Mark, a girl of ten. Their tender years were objected. My Lords, -declining to receive them as witnesses, oddly enough consented at the -request of the jury to take their declaration. The boy told how Philip -came to his father’s house on the night of the murder. The lad was -hurried off to bed, but listened whilst the panel, Janet Johnstoun, -already mentioned, and his father and mother softly whispered together -for a long time, until Philip’s rage got the better of his discretion, -and he loudly cursed his father and threatened his life. Next Philip -and Janet left the house, and in the dead of night his father and -mother followed. After two hours they crept back again; and the boy, -supposed to be sleeping, heard them whisper to each other the story of -the murder, how Philip guarded the chamber door “with a drawn sword -and a bendit pistol,” how it was strange a man should die so soon, how -they carried the body to the water and threw it in, and how his mother -ever since was afraid to stay alone in the house after nightfall. The -evidence of Anna Mark was as to certain criminating words used by her -mother Janet Johnstoun. - -Up to this time the panel had been defended by four eminent advocates -mercifully appointed thereto by the Privy Council; there had been the -usual Allegations, Replyes, and Duplies, with frequent citations from -Mattheus, Carpzovius, Muscard, and the other fossils, as to the matters -contained in the “ditty” (indictment), and they had strenuously fought -for him till now, but after the statement of the children they retired. -Then Sir George Mackenzie rose to reply for the Crown. Famous in his -own day, his name is not yet forgotten. He was “the bluidy advocate -Mackenzie” of Covenanting legend and tradition, one of the figures in -Wandering Willie’s tale in _Redgauntlet_ (“who for his worldly wit -and wisdom had been to the rest as a god”). He had been Lord Advocate -already, and was presently to be Lord Advocate again. Nominally but -second counsel he seems to have conducted the whole prosecution. He had -a strong case, and he made the most of it. Passionate invective and -prejudicial matter were mixed with legal argument. Cultured politician -and jurist as he was, he dwelt with terrible emphasis on the scene in -Morham kirk. “God Almighty Himself was pleased to bear a share in -the testimonies which we produce.” Nor was the children’s testimony -forgotten. “I need not fortifie so pregnant a probation.” No! yet he -omitted not to protest for “an Assize of Error against the inquest -in the case they should assoilzie the pannal”--a plain intimation to -jury that if they found Philip Standsfield “not guilty” they were -liable to be prosecuted for an unjust verdict. But how to doubt after -such evidence? The jury straightway declared the panel guilty, and my -lords pronounced a sentence of picturesque barbarity. Standsfield was -to be hanged at the Mercat Cross of Edinburgh, his tongue cut out and -burned upon the scaffold, his right hand fixed above the east port -of Haddington, and his dead body hung in chains upon the Gallow Lee -betwixt Leith and Edinburgh, his name disgraced for ever, and all his -property forfeited to the Crown. According to the old Scots custom the -sentence was given “by the mouth of John Leslie, dempster of court”--an -office held along with that of hangman. “Which is pronounced for doom” -was the formula wherewith he concluded. - -On February 15 Standsfield though led to the scaffold was reprieved -for eight days “at the priest’s desire, who had been tampering to -turn Papist” (one remembers these were the last days of James II., -or as they called him in Scotland, James VII.’s reign). Nothing came -of the delay, and when finally brought out on the 24th “he called -for Presbyterian ministers.” Through some slipping of the rope, the -execution was bungled; finally the hangman strangled his patient. The -“near resemblance of his father’s death” is noted by an eye-witness. -“Yet Edmund was beloved.” Leave was asked to bury the remains. One -fancies this was on the part of Lady Standsfield, regarding whose -complicity and doting fondness, strange stories were current. The -prayer was refused, but the body was found lying in a ditch a few days -after, and again the gossips (with a truly impious desire to “force the -hand” of Providence) saw a likeness to the father’s end. Once more the -body was taken down and presently vanished. - -Lord Fountainhall, a contempory of Standsfield, and Sir Walter Scott, -both Scots lawyers of high official position, thought the evidence of -Standsfield’s guilt not altogether conclusive, and believed something -might be urged for the alternative theory of suicide. Whilst venturing -to differ, I note the opinion of such eminent authorities with all -respect. - -Standsfield maintained his innocence to the last. Three servants of -his father’s--two men and a woman--were seized and tortured with the -thumbikins. They confessed nothing. Now, torture was frequently used -in old Scots criminal procedure, but if you did not confess you were -almost held to have proved your innocence. - -I cannot discover the after fate of these servants, and probably -they were banished--a favourite method with the Scots authorities -for getting rid of objectionable characters whose guilt was not -sufficiently proved. - -The second case, not so romantic albeit a love-story is woven through -its tangled threads, is that of Mary Blandy, spinster, tried at -Oxford in 1752, before two of the Barons of the Exchequer, for the -murder of her father, Francis Blandy, attorney, and town clerk of -Henley-on-Thames. Prosecuting counsel described her as “genteel, -agreeable, sprightly, sensible.” She was an only child. Her sire -being well off she seemed an eligible match, and yet wooers tarried. -Some years before the murder, the villain of the piece, William Henry -Cranstoun, a younger son of the Scots Lord Cranstoun and an officer -recruiting at Henley for the army, comes on the scene. Contemporary -gossip paints him the blackest colour. “His shape no ways genteel, his -legs clumsy, he has nothing in the least elegant in his manner.” He was -remarkable for his dulness; he was dissipated and poverty-stricken. -More fatal than all he had a wife and child in Scotland, though he -brazenly declared the marriage invalid spite the judgment of the Scots -courts in its favour. Our respectable attorney, upon discovering these -facts, gave the Captain, as he was called, the cold shoulder. The -prospect of a match with a Lord’s son was too much for Miss Blandy, now -over thirty, and she was ready to believe any ridiculous yarn he spun -about his northern entanglements. Fired by an exaggerated idea of old -Blandy’s riches, he planned his death, and found in the daughter an -agent and, as the prosecution averred, an accomplice. - -The way was prepared by a cunning use of popular superstitions. -Mysterious sounds of music were heard about; at least Cranstoun said -so; indeed, it was afterwards alleged he “hired a band to play under -the windows.” If any one asked “What then?” he whispered “that a -wise woman, one Mrs. Morgan, in Scotland,” had assured him that such -was a sign of death to the head of the house within twelve months. -The Captain further alleged that he held the gift of second sight -and had seen the worthy attorney’s ghost; all which, being carefully -reported to the servants by Miss Blandy raised a pleasing horror in the -kitchen. Cranstoun, from necessity or prudence, left Henley before the -diabolical work began in earnest, but he supplied Mary with arsenic -in powder, which she administered to her father for many months. The -doses were so immoderate that the unfortunate man’s teeth dropped whole -from their sockets, whereat the undutiful daughter “damn’d him for a -toothless old rogue and wished him to hell.” Cranstoun, under the guise -of a present of Scotch pebbles, sent her some more arsenic, nominally -to rub them with. In the accompanying letter, July 18, 1751, he -glowingly touched on the beauties of Scotland as an inducement to her, -it was supposed, to make haste. Rather zealous than discreet, she near -poisoned Anne Emmett, the charwoman, by misadventure, but brought her -round again with great quantities of sack whey and thin mutton broth, -sovereign remedies against arsenic. - -Her father gradually became desperately ill. Susannah Gunnell, -maidservant perceiving a white powder at the bottom of a dish she was -cleaning had it preserved. It proved to be arsenic, and was produced -at the trial. Susannah actually told Mr. Blandy he was being poisoned; -but he only remarked, “Poor lovesick girl! what will not a woman do for -the man she loves?” Both master and maid fixed the chief, perhaps the -whole, guilt on Cranstoun, the father confining himself to dropping -some strong hints to his daughter, which made her throw Cranstoun’s -letters and the remainder of the poison on the fire, wherefrom the drug -was in secret rescued and preserved by the servants. - -Mr. Blandy was now hopelessly ill, and though experienced doctors -were at length called in, he expired on Wednesday, August 14, 1751. -The sordid tragedy gets its most pathetic and highest touch from the -attempts made by the dying man to shield his daughter and to hinder -her from incriminating admissions which under excitement and (one -hopes) remorse she began to make. And in his last hours he spoke to her -words of pardon and solace. That night and again on Thursday morning -the daughter made some distracted efforts to escape. “I ran out of -the house and over the bridge, and had nothing on but a half-sack and -petticoat without a hoop--my petticoats hanging about me.” But now -all Henley was crowded round the dwelling to watch the development of -events. The mob pressed after the distracted girl, who took refuge -at the sign of the Angel, a small inn just across the bridge. “They -were going to open her father,” she said, and “she could not bear the -house.” She was taken home and presently committed to Oxford Gaol to -await her trial. Here she was visited by the high sheriff, who “told me -by order of the higher powers he must put an iron on me. I submitted as -I always do to the higher powers” (she had little choice). Spite her -terrible position and these indignities she behaved with calmness and -courage. - -The trial, which lasted twelve hours, took place on February 29, 1752, -in the Divinity School of the University. The prisoner was “sedate -and composed without levity or dejection.” Accused of felony, she had -properly counsel only for points of law, but at her request they were -allowed to examine and cross-examine the witnesses. Herself spoke -a defence possibly prepared by her advisers, for though the style -be artless, the reasoning is exceeding ingenious. She admitted she -was passionate and thus accounted for some hasty expressions; the -malevolence of servants had exaggerated these. Betty Binfield, one of -the maids, was credibly reported to have said of her, “she should be -glad to see the black bitch go up the ladder to be hanged.” But the -powder? Impossible to deny she had administered that. “I gave it to -procure his love.” Cranstoun, she affirmed, had sent it from Scotland, -assuring her that it would so work, and Scotland, one notes, seemed to -everybody “the shores of old romance,” the home of magic incantations -and mysterious charms. It was powerfully objected that Francis Blandy -had never failed in love to his daughter, but she replied that the drug -was given to reconcile her father to Cranstoun. She granted he meant to -kill the old man in hopes to get his money, and she was the agent, but -(she asserted) the innocent agent, of his wicked purpose. This theory -though the best available was beset with difficulties. She had made -many incriminating statements, there was the long time over which the -doses had been spread, there was her knowledge of its effects on Anne -Emmett the charwoman, there was the destruction of Cranstoun’s letters, -the production of which would have conclusively shown the exact measure -in which guilty knowledge was shared. Finally, there was the attempt to -destroy the powder. Bathurst, leading counsel for the Crown, delivered -two highly rhetorical speeches, “drawing floods of tears from the most -learned audience that perhaps ever attended an English Provincial -Tribunal.” The jury after some five minutes’ consultation in the box -returned a verdict of “guilty,” which the prisoner received with -perfect composure. All she asked was a little time “till I can settle -my affairs and make my peace with God,” and this was readily granted. -She was left in prison five weeks. - -The case continued to excite enormous interest, increased by an -account which she issued from prison of her father’s death and her -relations with Cranstoun. She was constant in her professions of -innocence, “nor did anything during the whole course of her confinement -so extremely shock her as the charge of infidelity which some -uncharitable persons a little before her death brought against her.” -Some were convinced and denied her guilt, “as if,” said Horace Walpole, -“a woman who would not stick at parricide would scruple a lie.” Others -said she had hopes of pardon “from the Honour she had formerly had of -dancing for several nights with the late P----e of W----s, and being -personally known to the most sweet-tempered P--ess in the world.” The -press swarmed with pamphlets. The Cranstoun correspondence, alleged not -destroyed, was published--a very palpable Grub Street forgery! and a -tragedy, _The Fair Parricide_, dismal in every sense, was inflicted on -the world. The last scene of all was on April 6, 1752. “Miss Blandy -suffered in a black bombazine short sack and petticoat, with a clean -white handkerchief drawn over her face. Her hands were tied together -with a strong black riband, and her feet at her own request almost -touched the ground” (“Gentlemen, don’t hang me high for the sake of -decency,” an illustration of British prudery which has escaped the -notice of French critics). She mounted the ladder with some hesitation. -“I am afraid I shall fall.” For the last time she declared her -innocence, and soon all was over. “The number of people attending her -execution was computed at about 5000, many of whom, and particularly -several gentlemen of the university, were observed to shed tears” -(tender-hearted “gentlemen of the university”!) “In about half an hour -the body was cut down and carried through the crowd upon the shoulders -of a man with her legs exposed very indecently.” Late the same night -she was laid beside her father and mother in Henley Church. - -Cranstoun fled from justice and was outlawed. In December that same -year he died in Flanders. - - - - -Some Disused Roads to Matrimony - - Marriage according to the Canon Law--The English - Law--Peculiars--The Fleet Chapel--Marriage Houses--“The Bishop of - Hell”--Ludgate Hill in the Olden Time--Marriages Wholesale--The - Parsons of the Fleet--Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act--The Fleet - Registers--Keith’s Chapel in May Fair--The Savoy Chapel--The Scots - Marriage Law--The Strange Case of Joseph Atkinson--Gretna Green in - Romance and Reality--The Priests--Their Clients--A Pair of Lord - High Chancellors--Lord Brougham’s Marriage Act--The Decay of the - Picturesque. - - -“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The marrying in the -Fleet is the beginning of eternal woe.” So scribbled (1736) Walter -Wyatt, a Fleet Parson, in one of his note-books. He and his likes are -long vanished, and his successor the blacksmith priest (in truth he was -neither one nor other) of Gretna is also gone; yet their story is no -less entertaining than instructive, and here I set it forth. - -Some prefatory matter is necessary for the right understanding of -what follows. Marriage, whatever else it may or may not be, is a -contract of two consenting minds; but at an early age the church put -forth the doctrine that it was likewise a sacrament which could be -administered by the contracting parties to each other. Pope Innocent -III., in 1215, first ordained--so some authorities say--that marriages -must be celebrated in church; but it was not yet decreed that other -and simpler methods were without effect. According to the canon law, -“espousals” were of two kinds: _sponsalia per verba de præsenti_--which -was an agreement to marry forthwith; and _sponsalia per verba de -futuro_--which was a contract to wed at a future time. Consummation -gave number two the effect of number one, and civilly that effect was -the same as of duly celebrated nuptials; inasmuch as the church, while -urging the religious ceremony upon the faithful as the sole proper -method, admitted the validity of the others--_quod non fieri debit -id factum valeat_ (so the maxim ran). The common law adopting this, -held that (1) marriage might be celebrated with the full rites of the -church; or (2) that the parties might take each other for man and -wife; or (3), which obviously followed, that a priest might perform -the ceremony outside the church, or without the full ceremonial--with -maimed rites, so to speak. Whatever penalties were incurred by -following other than the first way the marriage itself held good. - -I must here note that in 1844, in the case of _The Queen against -Millis_, the House of Lords _seemed_ to decide that there could not -have been a valid marriage in England, even before Lord Hardwicke’s -Act, which in 1753 completely changed the law, in the absence of an -ordained ecclesiastic. The arguments and the judgment fill the half -of one of Clark and Finnelly’s bulky volumes, and never was matter -more thoroughly threshed, and winnowed, and garnered. The House was -equally divided; and the opinion of the Irish Court of Queen’s Bench, -which maintained the necessity of the priest’s presence, was affirmed. -The real explanation, I think, is that, though the old canon law and -the old common law were as I have stated, yet English folk had got so -much into the habit of calling in the Parson that his presence came to -be regarded as essential. The parties, even when they disobeyed the -church by leaving undone much they were ordered to do, would still have -“something religious” about the ceremony. In 1563 the Council of Trent -declared such marriages invalid as were not duly celebrated in church; -but Elizabeth’s reign was already five years gone, both England and -Scotland had broken decisively with the old faith, and the Council’s -decrees had no force here. - -In England both church and state kept tinkering the Marriage Laws. In -1603 the Convocation for the Province of Canterbury declared that no -minister shall solemnise matrimony without banns or licence upon pain -of suspension for three years. Also, all marriages were to be in the -parish church between eight and twelve in the forenoon. Nothing so far -affected the validity of the business; and “clandestine marriages,” -as they were called, became frequent. In 1695, an Act of William III. -fined the Parson who assisted at such couplings one hundred pounds for -the first offence, and for the second suspended him for three years. -This enactment was followed almost immediately by another, which -mulcted the clergyman who celebrated or permitted any such marriage in -his church as well as the bridegroom and the clerk. The main object -of this legislation was to prevent the loss of duties payable upon -regularly performed marriages; but it strengthened ecclesiastical -discipline. - -Thus your correct wedding, then as now, had its tedious preliminaries; -but the fashion of the time imposed some other burdens. There was -inordinate feasting with music and gifts and altogether much expense -and delay. Poor folk could ill afford the business; now and again -the rich desired a private ceremony; here and there young people -sighed for a runaway match. Also, outside this trim and commonplace -century the nation’s life had not that smoothness which seems to us -such a matter of course. Passion was stronger and worse disciplined; -law, though harsh, was slow and uncertain. How tempting, then, the -inducement to needy persons to marry cheaply and without ceremony! Now, -London had a number of places of worship called _Peculiars_, which, -as royal chapels, possessions of the Lord Mayor and alderman, or what -not, claimed, rightly or wrongly, exemption from the visitation of -the ordinary. These were just the places for irregular or clandestine -marriages. Peculiars or not, as many as ninety chapels favoured such -affairs. Chief among them were the Savoy, the Minories, Mayfair -Chapel, and (above all) the Fleet, which--from a very early date -to half a century ago--was a famous prison especially for debtors, -standing on what is now the east side of Farringdon Street. It had -a chapel where marriages were properly solemnised by 1613, and (it -may be) earlier; but the records are somewhat scanty. Now, a number -of dissolute Parsons were “fleeted” (as the old phrase ran) for one -cause or another, and some might live outside the walls but within the -_rules_ or _liberties of the Fleet_, as the ground about the prison was -called. These obtained the use of the chapel, where, for a reasonable -consideration, they were willing to couple any brace forthwith. What -terror had the law for them? Men already in hold for debt laughed at a -fine, and suspension was a process slow and like to be ineffectual at -the last. The church feebly tried to exercise discipline. On June 4, -1702, the Bishop of London held a visitation _in carcere vulgo vocat’ -ye Fleet in civitate London_. He found one Jeronimus Alley coupling -clients at a great rate. ’Twas hinted that Jeronimus was not a Parson -at all, and proof of his ordination was demanded; “but Mr. Alley soon -afterwards fled from _ye said prison_ and never exhibited his orders.” -Another record says that he obtained “some other preferment” (probably -he was playing the like game elsewhere). - -The legislature, in despair, as it might seem, now struck at more -responsible heads. In 1712 a statute (10 Ann. c. 19) imposed the -penalty of a hundred pounds on keepers of gaols permitting marriage -without banns or licence within their walls. This closed the Fleet -Chapel to such nuptials, but private houses did just as well. -Broken-down Parsons, bond or free, were soon plentiful as blackberries; -and taverns stood at every corner; so at the “Two Fighting Men and -Walnut Tree,” at “The Green Canister,” at “The Bull and Garter,” at -“The Noah’s Ark,” at “The Horseshoe and Magpie,” at “Jack’s Last -Shift,” at “The Shepherd and Goat,” at “The Leg” (to name no more), -a room was fitted up in a sort of caricature of a chapel; and here -during the ceremony a clock with doubly brazen hands stood ever at one -of the canonical hours though without it might be midnight or three -in the morning. A Parson, hired at twenty shillings a week, “hit or -miss,” as ’twas curiously put, attended. The business was mostly done -on Sundays, Thursdays, and Fridays; but ready, ay ready, was the word. -The landlord or a servingman played clerk, and what more was wanted? - -There were many orders of Fleet Parsons, some not parsons at all. -At the top of the tree was the “famous Dr. John Gaynam,” known as -the “Bishop of Hell:” he made a large income and in his time coupled -legions; and at the bottom were a parcel of fellows who would marry -any couple anywhere for anything. The Fleet Parson of standing kept a -pocket-book in which he roughly jotted down the particulars of each -marriage, transcribing the more essential details to a larger register -at home. Certificates, at a varying charge, were made out from these, -and the books being thus a source of profit were preserved with a -certain care. To falsify such documents was child’s play. Little -accidents (as a birth in the midst of the ceremony) were dissembled -by inserting the notice of the marriage in some odd corner of a more -or less ancient record. This antedating of registers was so common -as almost to deprive them of any value as evidence. Worse still, -certificates were now and again issued, though there had been no -marriage. Sometimes the taverners kept registers of their own, but how -to establish a fixed rule? - -Not all the “marriage houses,” as they were called, were taverns. They -were often distinguished by some touching device: as a pair of clasping -hands with the legend “Marriages Performed Within.” A feature of the -system was the _plyer_ or _barker_, who, dressed in ragged and rusty -black, touted for Parson or publican, or it might be for self, vaunting -himself the while clerk and register to the Fleet. “These ministers -of wickedness” (thus, in 1735, a correspondent of _The Grub Street -Journal_) “ply about Ludgate Hill, pulling and forcing the people to -some peddling alehouse or a brandy-shop to be married, even on a Sunday -stopping them as they go to church, and almost tearing their clothes -off their backs.” If you drove Fleetwards with matrimony in your eye, -why, then you were fair game:-- - - Scarce had the coach discharg’d its trusty fare, - But gaping crowds surround th’ amorous pair. - The busy plyers make a mighty stir, - And whisp’ring, cry, “D’ye want the Parson, Sir?” - -Yet the great bulk of Fleet marriages were in their own way orderly -and respectable. Poor people found them shortest and cheapest. Now and -again there are glimpses of rich or high-born couples: as, in 1744, -the Hon. H. Fox with Georgina Caroline, eldest daughter of Charles, -second Duke of Richmond, of which union Charles James was issue. One -odd species was a parish wedding: the churchwardens thought it an -ingenious device to bribe some blind or halting youth, the burden of a -neighbouring parish, to marry a female pauper chargeable to them; for, -being a wife she immediately acquired her husband’s settlement, and -they were rid of her. In one case they gave forty shillings and paid -the expense of a Fleet marriage; the rag, tag, and bobtail attended -in great numbers and a mighty racket was the result. According to the -law then and long after, a woman by marrying transferred the burden -of her debts to her husband. So some desperate spinsters hied them -Fleetwards to dish their creditors; plyer or Parson soon fished up a -man; and though, under different _aliases_, he were already wived like -the Turk, what mattered it? The wife had her “lines,” and how to prove -the thing a sham? Husbands, again, had a reasonable horror of their -wives’ antenuptial obligations. An old superstition, widely prevalent -in England, was that if you took nothing by your bride you escaped -liability. Obviously, then, the thing to do was to marry her in what -Winifred Jenkins calls “her birthday soot,” or thereabouts. So “the -woman ran across Ludgate Hill in a shift,” for thus was her state of -destitution made patent to all beholders. - -When the royal fleet came in, the crews, “panged” full of gold and -glory, made straight for the taverns of Ratcliffe Highway, and of -them, there footing it with their Polls and Molls, some one asked, -“Why not get married?” Why not, indeed? Coaches are fetched; the party -make off to the Fleet; plyers, Parsons, and publicans, all welcome -them with open arms; the knots are tied in less than no time; there -is punch with the officiating cleric; the unblushing fair are crammed -into the coaches; Jack, his pocket lighter, his brain heavier, climbs -up on the box or holds on behind; the populace acclaims the procession -with old shoes, dead cats, and whatever Fleet Ditch filth comes handy; -and so back to their native _Radcliffe_, to spend their honeymoon in -“fiddling, piping, jigging, eating,” and to end the bout with a divorce -even less ceremonious than their nuptials. “It is a common thing,” -reports a tavern-keeper of that sea-boys’ paradise, “when a fleet comes -in to have two or three hundred marriages in a week’s time among the -sailors.” - -The work was mostly done cheap: the Parson took what he could get, and -every one concerned must have his little bit. Thus, “the turnkey had -a shilling, Boyce (the acting clerk) had a shilling, the plyer had a -shilling, and the Parson had three and sixpence”--the total amounting -to six shillings and sixpence. This was a fair average, though now and -again the big-wigs netted large sums. - -A Fleet marriage was as valid as another; but in trials for bigamy -the rub was: Had there been any marriage at all? Some accused would -strenuously maintain the negative. In 1737 Richard Leaver was indicted -at the Old Bailey for this offence; and “I know nothing about the -wedding,” was his ingenuous plea. “I was fuddled overnight and next -morning I found myself a-bed with a strange woman and ‘Who are you? -How came you here?’ says I. ‘O, my dear,’ says she, ‘we were marry’d -last night at the Fleet.’” More wonderful still was the story told -by one Dangerfield, charged the preceding year for marrying whilst -Arabella Fast, his first wife, was still alive. Arabella and he, so -he asserted, had plotted to blackmail a Parson with whom the lady -entertained relations all too fond. At ten at night he burst in upon -them as had been arranged. “‘Hey’ (says I), ‘how came you a-bed with -my spouse?’ ‘Sir,’ (says he), ‘I only lay with her to keep my back -warm.’” The explanation lacked probability, and “in the morning” the -erring divine acknowledged his mistake:--“I must make you a present if -you can produce a certificate” (he suspected something wrong, you see). -Dangerfield was gravelled. Not so the resourceful Arabella. “‘For a -crown I can get a certificate from the Fleet,’ she whispered; and ‘I -gave her a crown, and in half an hour she brings me a certificate.’” -The jury acquitted Dangerfield. - -The clergyman said to have officiated in both cases was the “famous -Dr. Gaynam” (so a witness described him), the aforesaid “Bishop of -Hell.” How could he recollect an individual face, he asked, for had -he not married his thousands? But it must be right if it was in his -books: _he_ never altered or falsified _his_ register. “It was as fair -a register as any church in England can produce. I showed it last night -to the foreman of the jury, and my Lord Mayor’s clerk at the London -punch-house” (a noted Fleet tavern): so Gaynam swore at Robert Hussey’s -trial for bigamy in 1733. A familiar figure was the “Bishop” in Fleet -taverns and Old Bailey witness-box. At Dangerfield’s trial neither -counsel nor judge was very complimentary to him; but he was moved not a -whit; he was used to other than verbal attacks, and some years before -this he was soundly cudgelled at a wedding--in a dispute about his -fees, no doubt. “A very lusty, jolly man,” in full canonicals, a trifle -bespattered from that Fleet Ditch on whose banks he had spent many -a scandalous year, his florid person verging on over-ripeness, even -decay, for he vanishes four years later. Was he not ashamed of himself? -sneered counsel. Whereupon “he (bowing) _video meliora, deteriora -sequor_.” Don’t you see the reverend rogue complacently mouthing his -tag? He “flourished” ’twixt 1709 and 1740. On the fly-leaf of one of -his pocket-books he wrote: - - The Great Good Man w^m fortune may displace, - May into scarceness fall, but not disgrace, - His sacred person none will dare profane, - Poor he may be, but never can be mean, - He holds his value with the wise and good, - And prostrate seems as great as when he stood. - -The personal application was obvious; but alas for fame! Even in Mr. -Leslie Stephen’s mighty dictionary his record is to seek. - -Time would fail to trace the unholy succession of Fleet Parsons. There -was Edward Ashwell (1734-1743), “a most notorious rogue and impostor.” -There was Peter Symson (1731-1754), who officiated at the “Old Red -Hand and Mitre,” headed his certificates G.R., and bounced after -this fashion:--“Marriages performed by authority by the Reverend Mr. -Symson, educated at the University of Cambridge, and late Chaplain to -the Earl of Rothes. N.B.--Without imposition.” Then there was James -Landow (1737-1743), late Chaplain to His Majesty’s ship _Falkland_, -who advertised “Marriage with a licence, certificate, and a crown -stamp at a guinea, at the New Chapel, next door to the China Shop, -near Fleet Bridge, London.” Of an earlier race was Mr. Robert Elborrow -(1698-1702): “a very ancient man and is master of ye chapple” (he seems -to have been really “the Parson of the Fleet”). His chief offence was -leaving everything to his none too scrupulous clerk, Bassett. There is -some mention also of the Reverend Mr. Nehemiah Rogers, a prisoner, “but -goes at large to his living in Essex and all places else.” Probably -they were glad to get rid of him for “he has struck and boxed ye -bridegroom in ye Chapple and damned like any com’on souldier.” _Mulli -praeterea, quos fama obscura recondit._ How to fix the identity of the -“tall black clergyman” who, hard by “The Cock” in Fleet Market, pressed -his services on loving couples? Was he one with the “tall Clergyman who -plies about the Fleet Gate for Weddings,” and who in 1734 was convicted -“of swearing forty-two Oaths and ordered to pay £4 2_s._”? - -In 1753 Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act (26 Geo. II. cap. 3) put a sudden -stop to the doings of those worthies. Save in the case of Jews and -Quakers, all marriages were void unless preceded by banns or licence -and celebrated according to the rites of the Church of England in a -church or chapel of that communion. The Priest who assisted at an -irregular or clandestine marriage was guilty of a felony punishable -by fourteen years’ transportation. The Bill was violently opposed; -and, according to Horace Walpole, was crammed down the throats of both -Houses; but its policy, its effects, as well as later modifications of -the marriage law, are not for discussion here. - -I turn to the registers wherein the doings of the Fleet Parsons are -more or less carefully recorded. In 1783 most of those still extant -had got into the hands of Mr. Benjamin Panton. “They weighed more than -a ton”; were purchased by the Government for £260 6_s._ 6_d._, and -to-day you may inspect them at Somerset House. There are between two -and three hundred large registers and a thousand or more pocket-books -(_temp._ 1674-1753). Not merely are the records of marriages curious -in themselves, but also they are often accompanied by curious comments -from the Parson, clerk, taverner, or whoever kept the book. The oddest -collection is in a volume of date 1727-1754. The writer used Greek -characters, though his words are English, and is as frank as Pepys, -and every bit as curious. Here are a few samples from the lot: “Had a -noise for four hours about the money” was to be expected where there -were no fixed rates; but “stole my clouthes-brush,” and “left a pott of -4 penny to pay,” and “ran away with the scertifycate and left a pint -of wine to pay for,” were surely cases of exceptional roguery. Curious -couples presented themselves:--“Her eyes very black and he beat about -ye face very much.” Again, the bridegroom was a boy of eighteen, the -bride sixty-five, “brought in a coach by four thumping ladies” (the -original is briefer and coarser) “out of Drury Lane as guests”; and yet -the Parson had “one shilling only.” He fared even worse at times. Once -he married a couple, money down, “for half a guinea,” after which “it -was extorted out of my pocket, and for fear of my life delivered.” Even -a Fleet Parson had his notion of propriety. “Behav’d very indecent and -rude to all,” is one entry; and “N.B. behav^d rogueshly. Broke the -Coachman’s Glass,” is another. Once his reverence, “having a mistrust -of some Irish roguery,” though the party seemed of better rank than -usual, asked indiscreet questions. The leader turned on him with the -true swagger of your brutal Georgian bully. “What was that to me? -G---- dem me, if I did not immediately marry them he would use me ill; -in short, apprehending it to be a conspiracy, I found myself obliged -to marry them _in terrorem_.” Again, he had better luck on another -occasion: “handsomely entertained,” he records; and of a bride of June -11, 1727, “the said Rachel, the prettiest woman I ever saw.” (You fancy -the smirk wherewith he scrawled that single record of the long vanished -beauty!) He is less complimentary to other clients. His “appear^d a -rogue” and “two most notorious thieves” had sure procured him a broken -pate had his patrons known! How gleefully and shamelessly he chronicles -his bits of sharp practice! “Took them from Brown who was going into -the next door with them,” was after all merely business; but what -follows is _not_. In 1729 he married Susannah Hewitt to Abraham Wells, -a butcher. The thing turned out ill; and in 1736 she came back, and -suggested annulment by the simple expedient of destroying the record; -when “I made her believe I did so, for which I had a half a guinea.” -Nor was there much honour among the crew of thieves. “Total three and -sixpence, but honest Wigmore kept all the money so farewell him,” is an -entry by the keeper of a marriage house, whom a notorious Fleet Parson -had dished. Another is by a substitute for the same divine:--“Wigmore -being sent for but was drunk, so I was a stopgap.” I confess to a -sneaking fondness for those entertaining rascals, but enough of their -pranks. - -Of the other places where irregular marriages were celebrated two -demand some notice. One was Keith’s Chapel in Mayfair, “a very -bishopric of revenue” to that notorious “marriage broker” the Reverend -Alexander Keith. His charge was a guinea, and, being strictly -inclusive, covered “the Licence on a Crown Stamp, Minister’s and -Clerk’s fees, together with the certificate.” No wonder he did a -roaring trade! Keith seemed a nobler quarry than the common Fleet -Parson, and the ecclesiastical authorities pursued him in their courts. -In October 1742, he was excommunicated: with matchless impudence he -retorted by excommunicating his persecutors from the Bishop downwards. -Next year they stuck him in the Fleet; but, through Parsons as reckless -as himself, he continued to “run” his chapel. In 1749 he made his -wife’s death an occasion for advertisement: the public was informed -that the corpse, being embalmed, was removed “to an apothecary’s in -South Audley Street, where she lies in a room hung with mourning, -and is to continue there until Mr. Keith can attend her funeral.” -Then follows an account of the chapel. One authority states that six -thousand marriages were celebrated there within twelve months; but -this seems incredible. That sixty-one couples were united the day -before Lord Hardwicke’s Act became law is like enough. Here took -place, in 1752, the famous marriage of the fourth Duke of Hamilton to -the youngest of the “beautiful Miss Gunnings,” “with a ring of the -bed curtain half an hour after twelve at night,” as Horace Walpole -tells. And here, in September 1748, at a like uncanny hour, “handsome -Tracy was united to the butterman’s daughter in Craven Street.” Lord -Hardwicke’s Act was elegantly described as “an unhappy stroke of -fortune” by our enterprising divine. At first he threatened another -form of competition:--“I’ll buy two or three acres of ground and by God -I’ll under-bury them all.” But in the end he had to own himself ruined. -He had scarce anything, he moaned, but bread and water, although he had -been wont to expend “almost his whole Income (which amounted yearly -to several Hundred Pounds per Annum) in relieving not only single -distressed Persons, but even whole Families of wretched Objects of -Compassion.” The world neither believed nor pitied; and he died in the -Fleet on December 17, 1758. - -Last of all comes the Savoy. There, _The Public Advertiser_ of January -2, 1754, announced, marriages were performed “with the utmost privacy, -decency, and regularity, the expense not more than one guinea, the -five shilling stamp included. There are five private ways by land to -this chapel, and two by water.” The Reverend John Williamson, “His -Majesty’s Chaplain of the Savoy,” asserted that as such he could grant -licences; and despite the Act he went on coupling. In 1755 he married -the enormous number of one thousand one hundred and ninety; half the -brides being visibly in an interesting condition. The authorities, -having warned him time and again to no purpose, at last commenced -proceedings. But he evaded arrest by skipping over roofs and vanishing -through back doors, in a manner inexplicable to us to-day; and went -on issuing licences, while his curate, Mr. Grierson, did the actual -work at the altar. Grierson, however, was seized and transported for -fourteen years: then his chief surrendered (1756), stood his trial, and -received a like sentence; the irregular marriages both had performed -being declared of no effect. - -What now were the amorous to do? Well, there were divers makeshifts. -Thus, at Southampton (_temp._ 1750), a boat was held ever ready to -sail for Guernsey with any couple able and willing to pay five pounds. -Ireland did not impress itself on the lovers’ imagination: it may be -that the thought of that gruesome middle passage “froze the genial -current of their souls.” But there was a North as well as a South -Britain; and--what was more to the purpose--the Scots marriage law -was all that heart could wish. Marriage (it held) is a contract into -which two parties not too young and not too “sib” might enter at any -time, all that was necessary being that each party clearly and in -good faith expressed consent. Neither writing nor witnesses, however -important for proof, were essential to a valid union. Not that the -Scots law, civil or ecclesiastical, favoured this happy despatch; but -the very punishment it imposed only tied the knot tighter. Couples of -set purpose confessed their vows, got a small fine inflicted, and -there was legal evidence of their union! Ecclesiastical discipline was -strict enough to prevent regularly instituted Scots ministers from -assisting at such affairs. But any man would do (for, after all, he was -but a witness), and the first across the Border as well as or better -than another. Now, by a well-known principle of international law, -the _lex loci contractus_ governs such contracts: the marriage being -valid in Scotland where it took place, was also recognised as valid in -England where its celebration would have been a criminal offence! This -was curiously illustrated early in the century by the case of Joseph -Atkinson. The Border, I must explain, had all along been given to -irregular marriages, and different localities in Scotland were used as -best suited the parties. Lamberton Toll Bar, N.B., lay four miles north -of Berwick-on-Tweed; and here our Atkinson did a thriving business in -the coupling line. One fine day he had gone to Berwick when a couple -sought his service at the toll-house. A quaint fiction presumes that -everybody knows the law; but here it turned out that nobody did, for -the bride and groom instead of uniting themselves before the first -comer rushed off to Berwick, and were there wedded by Lamberton. And -not only was the affair a nullity; but the unfortunate coupler was -sentenced to seven years’ transportation for offending against the -English marriage laws. - -Most of them, however, that went North on marriage bent, took the -Carlisle road. A few miles beyond that city the little river Sark -divides the two countries. Just over the bridge is the toll-house: -a footpath to the right takes you to Springfield. Till about 1826 -the North road lay through this village; then, however, the way was -changed, and ran by Gretna Green, which is nine and a half miles -from Carlisle. These two places, together with the toll-house, are -all in Gretna parish; but of course the best known is Gretna Green: -“the resort” (wrote Pennant) “of all amorous couples whose union -the prudence of parents or guardians prohibits.” The place acquired -a world-wide fame: that English plays and novels should abound in -references to it, as they had done to the Fleet, was only natural; -but one of George Sand’s heroes elopes thither with a banker’s -daughter, and even Victor Hugo hymns it in melodious verse, albeit his -pronunciation is a little peculiar: - - La mousse des près exhale - Avril, qui chante drin, drin, - Et met une succursale - De Cythère à Gretna Green. - -And how to explain the fact that people hurried from the remotest -parts of Scotland as well as from England, though any square yard of -soil “frae Maidenkirk to Johnny Groat’s” had served their purpose just -as well? The parishioners, indeed, sought not the service of their -self-appointed priest; but is there not an ancient saying as to the -prophet’s lack of honour among his own people? - -Now, if you travelled North in proper style, in a chaise and four, with -post-boys and so forth, you went to the “King’s Head” at Springfield, -or, after the change of road, more probably to Gretna Hall; but your -exact halting-place was determined at Carlisle. The postillions there, -being in league with one or other of the Gretna innkeepers, took you -willy-nilly to one or the other hostelry. Were you poor and tramped -it, you were glad to get the knot tied at the toll-house. Most of the -business fell into a few hands. Indeed, the landlords of the various -inns instead of performing the rite themselves usually sent for a -so-called priest. A certificate after this sort was given to the wedded -couple:--“Kingdom of Scotland, County of Dumfries, Parish of Gretna: -these are to certify to all whom it may concern that (here followed the -names) by me, both being present and having declared to me that they -are single persons, have now been married after the manner of the law -of Scotland.” This the parties and their witnesses subscribed. - -I shall not attempt to trace the obscure succession of Gretna Green -priests. Joseph Paisley, who died in 1811, aged eighty-four, was, it -seems, the original blacksmith; but he was no son of Tubal Cain, -though he had been fisher, smuggler, tobacconist. He united man with -woman even as the smith welds iron with iron--thus the learned explain -his title. After Paisley, and connected with him by marriage, there -was Robert Elliott, and several people of the name of Laing. In some -rather amusing memoirs Elliott assures us that between 1811 and 1839 he -performed three thousand eight hundred and seventy-two marriages; also -that his best year was 1825, when he did one hundred and ninety-eight, -and his worst 1839, when he did but forty-two. At the toll-bar there -was a different line, whose most picturesque figure was Gordon, the old -soldier. Gordon officiated in full regimentals, a large cocked hat on -his head and a sword by his side. Here, too, Beattie reigned for some -years before 1843. His occupation went to his head, for latterly he -had a craze for marrying, so that he would creep up behind any chance -couple and begin to mumble the magic words that made them one. The law -has ever terrors for the unlettered, and the rustic bachelor fled at -Beattie’s approach, as if he had been the pest. The “priests” sometimes -used a mangled form of the Church of England service: which irreverence -was probably intended as a delicate compliment to the nationality of -most of their clients. The fees were uncertain. When the trembling -parties stood hand in hand in inn or toll-bar, whilst the hoofs of -pursuing post-horses thundered ever nearer, ever louder, or it might be -that irate father or guardian battered at the door, it was no time to -bargain. The “priest” saw his chance; and now and again he pouched as -much as a hundred pounds. - -Each house had its record of famous marriages. There was the story -of how Lord Westmoreland sought the hand of the heiress of Child, -the banker, and was repulsed with “Your blood, my Lord, is good, but -money is better.” My Lord and the young lady were speedily galloping -towards the border, while Mr. Child “breathed hot and instant on their -trace.” He had caught them too, but his leader was shot down or his -carriage disabled by some trick (the legends vary), and he was too late -after all. He made the best of it, of course, and in due time Lady -Sophia Fane, daughter of the marriage, inherited grandpa’s fortune -and his bank at Temple Bar. Odder still was the marriage, in 1826, -of Edward Gibbon Wakefield to Ellen Turner. It was brought about by -an extraordinary fraud, and a week after the far from happy couple -were run to earth at Calais by the bride’s relatives. They “quoted -William and Mary upon me till I was tired of their Majesties’ names,” -was Wakefield’s mournful excuse for submitting to a separation. He -was afterwards tried for abduction, found guilty, and sentenced to -three years’ imprisonment; while a special Act of Parliament (7 and 8 -Geo. IV. c. 66) declared the marriage null and void. Wakefield ended -strangely as a political economist. Is not his “theory of colonisation” -writ large in all the text books? A pair of Lord High Chancellors -must conclude our list. In November 1772, John Scott, afterwards Lord -Eldon, was married at Blackshiels, in East Lothian, to Bessie Surtees, -the bridegroom being but twenty-one. Though the Rev. Mr. Buchanan, -minister of an Episcopal congregation at Haddington, officiated, it was -a runaway match and an irregular marriage. Lord Erskine, about October -1818, was wedded at the “King’s Head,” Springfield, to Miss Mary Buck -(said to have been his housekeeper). He was about seventy, and, one -fears, in his dotage. A number of extravagant legends still linger as -to the ceremony. He was dressed in woman’s clothes, and played strange -pranks. He and his intended spouse had with them in the coach a brace -of merry-begots (as our fathers called them), over whom he threw his -cloak during the ceremony in order to make them his heirs. It is still -a vulgar belief in the North that if the parents of children born out -of wedlock are married, the offspring, to be legitimised, must be held -under their mother’s girdle through the nuptial rites. Now, by the -law of Scotland, such a marriage produces the effect noted; but the -presence or absence of the children is void of legal consequence. As -far as is known, Erskine had one son called Hampden, born December 5, -1821, and no other by Mary Buck. It is worth noting that Robert Burns, -on his road to Carlisle in 1787, fell in by the way “with a girl and -her married sister”; and “the girl, after some overtures of gallantry -on my side, sees me a little cut with the bottle, and offers to take me -in for a Gretna Green affair.” Burns was already wed, Scots fashion, to -Jean Armour. And the thing did not come off, so that bigamy is not to -be reckoned among the poet’s sins. - -They were rather sordid affairs in the end, those Gretna Green -marriages. So, at least, the Reverend James Roddick, minister of -the parish, writing of the place in 1834 in the _New Statistical -Account_, would have us believe. There were three or four hundred -marriages annually: “the parties are chiefly from the sister kingdom -and from the lowest rank of the population.” A number came from -Carlisle at fair-time, got married, spent a few days together, and -then divorced themselves. Competition had brought down the priest’s -fee to half-a-crown, and every tippling-house had its own official. -Nay, the very roadman on the highway that joined the kingdoms pressed -his services on all and sundry! And then the railway came to Gretna, -and you had the spectacle of “priests” touting on the platform. Alas -for those shores of old Romance! In 1856, Lord Brougham’s Act (19 & -20 Vict. cap. 96), made well-nigh as summary an end of Gretna as Lord -Hardwicke’s had of the Fleet unions. It provided that at least one -of the parties to an irregular Scots marriage must be domiciled in -Scotland, or have resided there during the twenty-one days immediately -preceding the espousals; else were they altogether void. What an enemy -your modern law-giver is to the picturesque! And what an entertaining -place this world must once have been! - - - - -The Border Law - - The Border Country--Its Lays and Legends--The Wardens and Other - Officers--Johnie Armstrong--Merrie Carlisle--Blackmail--The Border - Chieftain and His Home--A Raid--“Hot-trod”--“To-names”--A Bill - of Complaint--The Day of Truce--Business and Pleasure--“Double - and Salffye”--Border Faith--Deadly Feud--The Story of Kinmont - Willie--The Debateable Land--The Union of the Crowns and the End of - Border Law. - - -_Leges marchiarum_, to wit, the Laws of the Marches; so statesmen and -lawyers named the codes which said, though oft in vain, how English and -Scots Borderers should comport themselves, and how each kingdom should -guard against the other’s deadly unceasing enmity. I propose to outline -these laws, and the officials by whom and courts wherein they were -enforced. - -But first a word as to country and people. From Berwick to the -Solway--the extreme points of the dividing line between North and -South Britain--is but seventy miles in a crow’s flight. But trace its -windings, and you measure one hundred and ten. Over more than half of -this space the division is arbitrary. It happed where the opposing -forces balanced. The Scot pushed his way a little farther south here, -was pushed back a little farther north there; and commissioners and -treaties indelibly marked the spots. The conflict lasted over three -centuries, and must obviously be fiercest on the line where the -kingdoms met. If it stiffened, yet warped, the Scots’ character, and -prevented the growth of commerce and tilth and comfort in Scotland -proper, what must have been its effect on the Scots Borderer, ever in -the hottest of the furnace? The weaker, poorer, smaller kingdom felt -the struggle far more than England, yet the English were worse troubled -than the Scots Borders: being the richer, they were the more liable -to incursion; their dalesmen were not greatly different from other -Englishmen; they were kept in hand by a strong central authority; they -had thriving towns and a certain standard of wealth and comfort. Now, -the Scots clansmen developed unchecked; so it is mainly from them that -we take our ideas of Border life. - -The Border country is a pleasant pastoral land, with soft, rounded -hills, and streams innumerable, and secluded valleys, where the ruins -of old peels or feudal castles intimate a troubled past. That past, -however, has left a precious legacy to letters, for the Border ballads -are of the finest of the wheat. They preserve, as only literature can, -the joys and sorrows, the aspirations, hopes and fears, and beliefs of -other days and vanished lives. They are voices from the darkness, yet -we oft feel: - - He had himself laid hand on sword - He who this rime did write! - -The most of them have no certain time or place. Even the traditional -stories help but little to make things clear. Yet they tell us more, -and tell it better, than the dull records of the annalists. We know who -these men really were--a strong, resolute race, passionate and proud, -rough and cruel, living by open robbery, yet capable of deathless -devotion, faithful to their word, hating all cowards and traitors to -the death; not without a certain respect and admiration for their likes -across the line, fond of jest and song, equal on occasion to a certain -rude eloquence; and, before all, the most turbulent and troublesome. -The Scots Borderers were dreaded by their own more peaceful countrymen; -and to think of that narrow strip of country, hemmed in by the -Highlands to the north and the Border clans on the south, is to shudder -at the burden _it_ had to endure. For a race, whatever its good -qualities, that lives by rapine, is like to be dangerous to friends as -well as foes. Some Border clans, as the Armstrongs and the Elliots, -were girded at as “always riding”; and they were not particular as to -whom they rode against. Nay, both governments suspected the Borderers -of an inexplicable tenderness for their neighbours. When they took part -in a larger expedition, they would attack each other with a suspicious -lack of heart. At best they were apt to look at war from their own -point of view, and fight for mere prisoners or plunder. - -To meet such conditions the Border Laws were evolved. They were -administered in chief by special officers called Wardens. Either Border -was portioned out into three Marches: the East, the Middle, and the -West (the Lordship of Liddesdale was included in the Scots Middle -March, but sometimes it had a special Keeper of almost equal dignity -with a Warden.) Each of the three Scots Wardens had a hundred pounds of -yearly fee; he could appoint deputies, captains of strongholds, clerks, -sergeants, and dempsters; he could call out the full force of his -district to invade or beat back invasion; he represented the Sovereign, -and was responsible for crimes. He must keep the Border clans in order -by securing as hostages several of their most conspicuous sons, and -either these were quartered on nobles on the other side of the Firth, -or they were held in safer keeping in the king’s castles. He also held -Justice Courts for the trial of Scots subjects accused of offences -against the laws of their own country. He was commonly a great noble -of the district, his office in early times being often hereditary; -and, as such noble, he had power of life and death, so that the need -for holding special courts was little felt. A pointed Scots anecdote -pictures an angry Highlander “banning” the Lords of Session as “kinless -loons,” because, though some were relatives, they had decided a case -against him. These Wardens were _not_ “kinless loons,” and they often -used their office to favour a friend or depress a foe. On small pretext -they put their enemies “to the horn,” as the process of outlawry (by -trumpet blast) was called. True, the indifference with which those -enemies “went to the horn” would scandalise the legal pedants. - -Sometimes a superior officer, called “Lieutenant,” was sent to the -Borders; the Wardens were under him; he more fully represented the -royal power. Now and again the Sovereign himself made a progress, -administering a rough and ready justice, and so “dantoning the -thieves of the Borders, and making the rush bush keep the cow.” So -it was said of James V.’s famous raid in 1529. The chief incident -was the capture of Johnie Armstrong of Gilnockie, the ruins of whose -picturesque tower at the Hollows still overlook the Esk. Gilnockie -came to meet his King with a great band of horsemen richly apparelled. -He was captain of Langholm Castle, and the ballad tells how he and -his companions exercised themselves in knightly sports on Langholm -Lee, whilst “The ladies lukit frae their loft windows. ‘God bring our -men well hame agen!’” the ladies said; and their apprehensions were -more than justified, for Johnie’s reception was not so cordial as he -expected. “What wants yon knave that a King should have?” asked James -in angry amaze, as he ordered the band to instant execution. Gilnockie -and company were presently strung up on some convenient yew-trees at -Carlenrig, though, in accordance with romantic precedent, one is said -to have escaped to tell the tale. Many of Johnie’s name, among them Ill -Will Armstrong, tersely described as “another stark thieff,” went to -their doom; but the act, however applauded at Edinburgh, was bitterly -condemned on the Borders. Gilnockie only plundered the English, it -was urged, and the King had caught him by a trick unworthy a Stuart. -The country folk loved to tell how the dule-trees faded away, and -they loved to point out the graves of the Armstrongs in the lonely -churchyard. But the stirring ballad preserves the name better than -all else. It unblushingly commends Gilnockie’s love of honesty, his -generosity, his patriotism, and directly accuses his Sovereign of -treachery, in which accusation there is perhaps some truth. Anyhow, -his execution was the violent act of a weak man, and had no permanent -effect. - -The Wardens had twofold duties: first, that of defence against the -enemy; second, that of negotiation in times of peace with their -mighty opposites. Thus the Border laws were part police and part -international, and were administered in different courts. Offences of -the first class were speaking or conferring with Englishmen without -permission of the King or the Warden, and the warning Englishmen of the -Scots’ alertness in the matter of forays. In brief, aiding, abetting, -or in any way holding intercourse with the “auld enemy” was march -treason (to adopt a convenient English term). - -In England the Wardens were finally chosen for their political and -military skill, not because of their territorial position. Now, the -Warden of the East Marches was commonly Governor and Castellan of -Berwick. The castle of Harbottell was allotted to the Warden of the -Middle Marches; whilst for the West, Carlisle, where again Governor -and Warden were often one, was the appointed place. Sometimes a Lord -warden-general was appointed, sometimes a Lieutenant, but the Wardens -were commonly independent. At the Warden courts Englishmen were -punished for march treason, a branch of which was furnishing the Scots -with articles of merchandise or war. And here I note that Carlisle -throve on this illegal traffic. At Carlisle Fair the Carlisle burgher -never asked the nationality of man or beast. The first got his money or -its equivalent; the second was instantly passed through the hands of -butcher and skinner. Though the countryside were wasted, the burghers -lay safe within their strong walls, and waxed fat on the spoils of -borderman and dalesman alike. Small wonder the city was “Merrie -Carlisle.” The law struck with as little force against blackmail, or -protection money, which it was an offence to pay to any person, Scots -or English. From this source, Gilnockie and others, coining the terror -of their name, drew great revenue. Another provision was against -marriage with a Scotswoman without the Warden’s consent, for in this -way traitors, or “half-marrows,” arose within the gate. Complete forms -are preserved of the procedure at those Warden courts. There were a -grand jury and an ordinary jury, and the Warden acted very much as a -judge of to-day. One or two technical terms I shall presently explain. -Here I but note that the criminal guilty of march treason was beheaded -“according to the customs of the marches.” - -The international duties of the Wardens were those of conference with -each other, and the redressing of approved wrongs, which wrongs were -usually done in raids or forays. Of these I must now give some account. -The smaller Border chieftain dwelt in a peel tower, stuck on the edge -of a rock or at the break of a torrent. It was a rude structure with -a projecting battlement. A stair or ladder even held its two stories -together, and about it lay a barnkin--a space of some sixty feet -encompassed by a wall; the laird’s followers dwelling in huts hard -by. For small parties the tower was self-sufficient in defence, and -if it lay in the way of a hostile army, the laird was duly warned -by scouts or beacon fires, and withdrew to some fastness of rock or -marsh, carrying his few valuables, driving his live stock before him, -leaving the foeman nothing to burn and nothing to take away. With his -followers he lived on milk, meat, and barley, together with the spoils -of the forest and stream. The marchmen are reported temperate--no -doubt from necessity. Their kine, recruited by forays, were herded in -a secluded part of the glen, and when the herd waxed small, and the -laird was tired of hunting, and his women lusted after new ornament, -and old wounds were healed, and the retainers were growing rusty, then -it was time for a raid. Was the laird still inactive? In struck his -lady’s sharper wit, and the story goes that Wat Scott of Harden was -ever and anon served with a dish which, being uncovered, revealed a -pair of _polished_ spurs. Thus his wife, Mary Scott, the “Flower of -Yarrow”--a very practical person, despite her romantic name--urged him -to profitable rapine. Well: his riders were bidden to a trysting-place; -and hither, armed in jacks (which are leathern jerkins plated with -iron) and mounted on small but active and hardy horses, they repaired -at evenfall. The laird and some superior henchmen wore also sleeves -of mail and steel bonnets; all had long lances, swords, axes, and in -later times such rude firearms--serpentines, half-haggs, harquebusses, -currys, cullivers, and hand-guns are mentioned--as were to be had. -In the mirk night the reivers crossed the Border; and to do this -unseen was no easy matter. The whole line from Berwick to Carlisle was -patrolled by setters and searchers, watchers and overseers, having -sleuth-hounds to track the invader; also, many folk held lands by the -tenure of cornage, and by blowing horns must warn the land of coming -raids. Where the frontier line was a river the fords were carefully -guarded; those held unnecessary were staked up; narrow passes were -blocked in divers ways, so that chief element in Border craft was the -knowledge of paths and passes through moorland and moss, and of nooks -and coigns of security deep in the mountain glens. - -Our party crosses in safety and makes to one of those hidden spots, -as near as may be to the scene of action. Here it rests and refreshes -itself during the day, and next night it swoops down on its appointed -foray. The chief quest was ever cattle, which were eatable and -portable. But your moss-trooper was not particular. He took everything -inside and outside house and byre. Many lists are preserved of -things lifted, whereof one notes a shroud and children’s clothes. A -sleuth-hound was a choice prize. Possibly its abduction touched the -Borderer’s sense of humour. Scott of Harden, escaping from a raid, with -“a bow of kye and a bassen’d (brindled) bull,” passed a trim haystack. -He sighed as he thought of the lack of fodder in his own glen. “Had -ye but four feet ye should not stand lang there,” he muttered as he -hurried onwards. Not to him, not to any rider was it given to tarry by -the way, for the dalesmen were not the folk to sit down under outrage. -The warder, as he looked from the “Scots gate” of Carlisle castle, and -saw the red flame leaping forth into the night from burning homestead -or hamlet, was quick to warn the countryside that a reiving expedition -was afoot. Even though the prey were lifted unobserved, that only -caused a few hours’ delay, and soon a considerable body, carrying -a lighted piece of turf on a spear, as a sign, was instant on the -invader’s trace. This “following of the fraye” was called “hot-trod,” -and was done with hound and horn, and hue and cry. Certain privileges -attached to the “hot-trod.” If the offender was caught red-handed he -was executed; or, if thrift got the better of rage, he was held to -ransom. As early as 1276 a curious case is reported from Alnwick, of a -Scot attacking one Semanus, a hermit, and taking his clothes and one -penny! Being presently seized, the culprit was beheaded by Semanus in -person, who thus recovered his goods and took vengeance of his wrong. A -later legend illustrates the more than summary justice that was done. -The Warden’s officers having taken a body of prisoners, asked my Lord -his pleasure. His Lordship’s mind was “ta’en up wi’ affairs o’ the -state,” and he hastily wished the whole set hanged for their untimely -intrusion. Presently he was horrified to find that his imprecations -had been taken as literal commands, and literally obeyed. Even if -the reivers gained their own border, the law of “hot-trod” permitted -pursuit within six days of the offence. The pursuer, however, must -summon some reputable man of the district entered to witness his -proceedings. Nay, the inhabitants generally must assist him--at least, -the law said so. - -But if all failed, the _Leges Marchiarum_ had still elaborate -provisions to meet his case. He had a shrewd guess who were his -assailants. The more noted moss-troopers were “kenspeckle folk.” -The very fact that so many had the same surname caused them to be -distinguished by what were called “to-names,” based on some physical -or moral characteristic, which even to-day photographs the man for us. -Such were Eddie Great-legs, Jock Half-lugs, Red-neb Hob, Little Jock -Elliott, Wynkyng Wyll, Wry-crag, Ill Wild Will, Evil Willie, David -the Leddy, Hob the King; or some event in a man’s history provided -a “to-name.” Ill Drooned Geordy, you fancy, had barely escaped a -righteous doom, and Archie Fire-the-Braes was sure a swashbuckler of -the first magnitude. Others derived from their father’s name. - - The Lairdis Jok - All with him takis. - -Thus, Sir Thomas Maitland, who has preserved some of these appellations -in his _Complainte Aganis the Thievis of Liddisdail_, apparently the -only weapon he--though Scots Chancellor--could use against them. -Other names, the chroniclers affirm, are more expressive still; but -modern prudery forbids their recovery. They were good enough headmark, -whatever their quality; and a harried household had but to hear one -shouted in or after the harrying to know who the harriers were. The -slogan, or war-cry, of the clan would rap out in the excitement, and -there again he knew his men. The cross of St. Andrew showed them to be -Scots, the cross of St. George affirmed them English. A letter sewn -in a cap, a kerchief round the arm, were patent identification. The -chieftain’s banner was borne now and again, even in a daylight foray--a -mode affected by the more daring spirits. - -Divining in some sort his spoiler, the aggrieved and plundered -sought legal redress. Now the Laws of the Marches, agreed on by royal -commissioners from the two kingdoms, regulated intercourse from early -times. Thus as early as 1249, eleven knights of Northumberland, and -as many from the Scots Border, drew up a rough code: for the recovery -of debts, the surrender of fugitive bondsmen, and the trial by combat -of weightier matters in dispute. All Scotsmen, save the king and the -bishops of St. Andrews and Dunkeld, accused of having committed a -crime in England, must fight their accuser at certain fixed places on -the Marches; and there were corresponding provisions when the accused -was an Englishman. What seems a form of the _judicium Dei_ appears in -another provision. An animal said to be stolen, being brought to the -Tweed or the Esk, where either formed the boundary, was driven into -the water. If the beast sank the defendant paid. If it swam to the -farther shore, the claimant had him as his own. If it scrambled back -to the bank whence it started, the accused might (perchance) retain -it with a clear conscience. But as to this event the record is silent; -and, indeed, the whole business lacks intelligibility. The combats, -however, were many, and were much denounced by the clergy, who had to -provide a champion, and were heavily mulcted if he lost. The priest -suffered no more than the people; but he could better voice his wrongs. -All such things were obviously adaptations of the trial by ordeal, or -by combat, and the treason duel of chivalry, to the rough life of the -Border. Again, the matter was settled, even in late times, by the oath -of the accused. The prisoner was sworn:--“By Heaven above you, Hell -beneath you, by your part of Paradise, by all that God made in six -days and seven nights, and by God Himself,” that he was innocent. In a -superstitious age this might have some effect; and there was ever the -fear of being branded as perjured. But it can have been used only when -there was no proof, or when the doubt was very grave: when the issue, -that is, seemed as the cutting of a knot, the loosing whereof passed -man’s wit. - -In the century preceding the Union of the Crowns, the international -code was very highly developed, and the procedure was strictly defined. -As England was the larger nation, and as its law was in a more highly -developed and more firm and settled state, its methods were followed -on the whole. The injured party sent a bill of complaint to his own -Warden; and the bill, even as put into official form, was simplicity -itself. It said that A. complained upon B. for that--and then followed -a list of the stolen goods, or the wrongs done. It was verified by -the complainant’s oath, and thereafter sent to the opposite Warden, -whose duty was to arrest the accused or at least to give him notice to -attend on the next Day of Truce. [One famous fray (June 17, 1575) is -commemorated in _The Raid of the Reidswire_, a ballad setting forth -many features of a Day of Truce.] The Wardens agreed on the Day, and -the place was usually in the northern kingdom, where most of the -defendants lived. The meeting was proclaimed in all the market towns -on either side. The parties, each accompanied by troops of friends, -came in; and a messenger from the English side demanded that assurance -should be kept till sunrise the following day. This was granted by the -Scots, who proceeded to send a similar message, and were presently -secured by a similar assurance. Then each Warden held up his hand as a -sign of faith, and made proclamation of the Day to his own side (the -evident purpose of this elaborate ritual was to keep North and South -from flying, on sight, at each other’s throats). The English Warden -now came to his Scots brother, whom he saluted and embraced; and the -business of the Day of Truce (or Diet, or Day Marche, or Warden Court, -as it was variously called) began. That business was commerce, and -pleasure, as well as law. Merchants come with their wares; booths -were run up; a brisk trade ran in articles tempting to the savage -eye. Both sides were ready for the moment to forget their enmities. -If they could not fight, they could play, and football was ever your -Borderers’ favourite pastime (from the desperate mauls which mark that -exhilarating sport as practised along the Border line, one fancies -that the “auld riding bluid” still stirs in the veins of the players). -Gambling, too, was a popular excitement. There was much of feasting -and drinking, and sure some Border Homer, poor and old and blind, even -as him of Chios, was there to charm and melt his rude hearers with the -storied loves and wars of other days. The conclave fairly hummed with -pleasure and excitement. Yet with such inflammable material, do you -wonder that the meeting ended now and again in most admired disorder? - -For our bill of complaint, it might be tried in more than one way. -It might be by “the honour of the Warden,” who often had knowledge, -personal or acquired, of the case, and felt competent to decide the -matter off-hand. On his first appearance he had taken an oath (yearly -renewed) in presence of the opposite Warden and the whole assemblage -to do justice, and he now officially “fyled” or “cleared the bill” -(as the technical phrase ran) by writing on it the words “foull (or -‘clear’), as I am verily persuaded upon my conscience and honour”--a -deliverance after the method wherein individual peers give their -voice at a trial of one of their order. This did not of necessity end -the matter, for the complainant could present a new bill and get the -verdict of a jury thereon, which also was the proper tribunal where the -Warden declined to interfere. It was thus chosen: The English Warden -named and swore in six Scots, the Scots Warden did the like to six -Englishmen. The oath ran in these terms:--“Yea shall cleare noe bill -worthie to be fild, yea shall file no bill worthie to be cleared,” and -so forth. Warden sergeants were appointed who led the jury to a retired -place; the bills were presented; and the jurymen fell to work. It would -seem that they did so in two sections, each considering complaints -against its own nationality. If the bill was “fyled,” the word “foull” -was written upon it (of course, a verdict of guilty); but how to -get such a verdict under such conditions? The assize had more than a -fellow-feeling for the culprit: like the jury in Aytoun’s story, they -might think that Flodden (then no distant memory) was not yet avenged. -There were divers expedients to this end. Commissioners were sometimes -appointed by the two crowns to solve a difficulty a Warden Court had -failed to adjust. Again, it was strangely provided that “If the accused -be not quitt by the oathe of the assize it is a conviction.” One very -stubborn jury (_temp._ 1596) sat for a day, a night, and a day on end, -“almost to its undoeinge.” The Warden, enraged at such conduct and yet -fearing for the men’s lives, needs must discharge them. I ought to -mention an alleged third mode of trial by vower, who, says Sir Walter -Scott, was an umpire to whom the dispute was referred. Rather was he a -witness of the accused’s own nation. Some held such evidence essential -to conviction; if honest, it was practically conclusive. - -Well! Suppose the case too clear and the man too friendless, and the -jury “fyled” the bill. If the offence were capital, the prisoner was -kept in safe custody, and was hanged or beheaded as soon as possible. -But most affairs were not capital. Thus the Border Law forbad hunting -in the other kingdom without the express leave of the owner of the -soil. Just such an unlicensed hunting is the theme of _Chevy Chase_. -Thus:-- - - The Percy owt of Northumberland, - And a vow to God mayd he, - That he wolde hunte in the mountayns - Off Cheviot within dayes thre, - In the mauger of doughty Douglas, - And all that ever with him be. - -Douglas took a summary mode of redress where a later and tamer owner -had lodged his bill. In a common case of theft, if the offender were -not present (the jury would seem to have tried cases in absence), the -Warden must produce him at the next Day of Truce. Indeed, whilst the -jury was deliberating, the officials were going over the bills “filed” -on the last Day, and handing over each culprit to the opposite Warden; -or sureties were given for him; or the Warden delivered his servant as -pledge. If the pledge died, the body was carried to the next Warden -Court. - -The guilty party, being delivered up, must make restitution within -forty days or suffer death, whilst aggravated cases of “lifting” -were declared capital. In practice a man taken in fight or otherwise -was rarely put to death. Captive and captor amicably discussed the -question of ransom. That fixed, the captive was allowed to raise it; -if he failed he honourably surrendered. The amount of restitution -was the “Double and Salffye,” to wit, three times the value of the -original goods, two parts being recompense, and the third costs or -expenses. Need I say that this triple return was too much for Border -honesty? Sham claims were made, and these, for that they obliged the -Wardens “to speire and search for the thing that never was done,” were -rightly deemed a great nuisance. As the bills were sworn to, each -false charge involved perjury; and in 1553 it was provided that the -rascal claimants should be delivered over to the tender mercies of the -opposite Warden. Moreover, a genuine bill might be grossly exaggerated -(are claims against insurance and railway companies always urged with -accuracy of detail?). If it were disputed, the value was determined by -a mixed jury of Borderers. - -I have had occasion to refer to Border faith. In 1569 the Earl of -Northumberland was implicated in a rising against Elizabeth. Fleeing -north, he took refuge with an Armstrong, Hector of Harelaw, who -sold him to the Regent Murray. Harelaw’s name became a byword and a -reproach. He died despised and neglected; and “to take Hector’s cloak” -was an imputation of treachery years after the original story had -faded. Thus, in Marchland the deadliest insult against a man was to -say that he had broken faith. The insult was given in a very formal -and deliberate manner, called a Baugle. The aggrieved party procured -the glove or picture of the traitor, and whenever there was a meeting -(a Day of Trace was too favourable an opportunity to be neglected) he -gave notice of the breach of faith to friend and foe, with blast of -the horn and loud cries. The man insulted must give him the lie in his -throat, and a deadly combat ensued. The Laws of the Marches attempted -to substitute the remedy by bill, that the matter might not “goe to the -extremyte of a baughle,” or where that was impossible, to fix rules for -the thing itself. Or, the Wardens were advised to attend, with less -than a hundred of retinue, to prevent “Brawling, buklinge, quarrelinge, -and bloodshed.” Such things were a fruitful source of what a Scots -Act termed “the heathenish and barbarous custom of Deadly Feud.” When -one slew his fellow under unfair conditions, the game of revenge -went see-sawing on for generations. The Border legislators had many -ingenious devices to quench such strife. A Warden might order a man -complained of to sign in solemn form a renunciation of his feud; and if -he refused, he was delivered to the opposite Warden till he consented. -In pre-Reformation days the church did something by enjoining prayer -and pilgrimage. A sum of money (Assythement) now and again settled -old scores; or there might be a treaty of peace cemented by marriage. -Sometimes, again, there was a fight by permission of the Sovereign. -(_Cf._ the parallel case of the clan-duel in the _Fair Maid of Perth_.) -Still, prearranged single combats, duels in fact, were frequent on the -Border. Turner, or Turnie Holme, at the junction of the Kirshope and -Liddel, was a favourite spot for them. - -And now business and pleasure alike are ended, and the day (fraught -with anxiety to official minds) is waning fast. Proclamation is made -that the multitude may know the matters transacted. Then it is declared -that the Lord Wardens of England and Scotland, and Scotland and England -(what tender care for each other’s susceptibilities!) appoint the -next Day of Truce, which ought not to be more than forty days hence, -at such and such a place. Then, with solemn salutations and ponderous -interchange of courtesy, each party turns homeward. As noted, the Truce -lasted till the next sunrise. As the nations were at peace (else had -there been no meeting), this recognised the fact that the Borders -were always, more or less, in a state of trouble. Also it prevented -people from violently righting themselves forthwith. A curious case in -1596, where this condition was broken, gave rise to a Border foray of -the most exciting kind, commemorated in the famous ballad of _Kinmont -Willie_. A Day of Truce had been held on the Kershope Burn, and at its -conclusion Willie Armstrong of Kinmont, a noted Scots freebooter, rode -slowly off, with a few companions. Some taunt, or maybe the mere sight -of one who had done them so much wrong, was too much for the English -party, and Kinmont was speedily laid by the heels in Carlisle Castle. -Buccleuch was Keeper of Liddisdale. He had not been present at the Day -of Truce; but when they told him that Kinmont had been seized “between -the hours of night and day,” he expressed his anger in no uncertain -terms: - - He has ta’en the table wi’ his hand, - He garr’d the red wine spring on hie. - - * * * * - - And have they ta’en him, Kinmont Willie, - Against the truce of Border tide? - And forgotten that the bauld Buccleuch - Is keeper here on the Scottish side? - -Negociations failing to procure redress, Buccleuch determined to rescue -Kinmont himself. In the darkness of a stormy night he and his men stole -up to Carlisle, broke the citadel, rescued Kinmont, and carried him off -in safety, whilst the English lawyers were raising ingenious technical -justifications (you can read them at length in the collection of Border -Papers) of the capture. Those same papers show that the ballad gives -the main features of the rescue with surprising accuracy. But I cannot -linger over its cheerful numbers. The event might once have provoked -a war, but the shadow of the Union was already cast. James would do -nothing to spoil the splendid prize almost within his grasp, and -Elizabeth’s statesmen were not like to quarrel with their future master. - -Half a century before the consummation one great cause of discord had -been removed. From the junction of the Liddel and Esk to the Solway -was known as the Debateable Land, a sort of No-Man’s Land, left in -doubt from the time of Bruce. Both nations pastured on it from sunrise -to sunset, but in the night any beasts left grazing were lawful prey -to the first comer. Enclosures or houses on it could be destroyed or -burned without remedy. Apparently the idea was to make it a “buffer -State” between the two kingdoms. It was, however, a thorn in the flesh -to each, for the Bateables, as the in-dwellers were called, were -broken men, and withal the most desperate ruffians on the Border. In -1552 a joint Commission divided the Debateable Land between England -and Scotland. The Bateables were driven out, and a dyke was built as -boundary line. All the same, here was, for many years, the wildest in -the whole wild whirlpool; so that long after the Union, when somebody -told King James of a cow which, taken from England to Scotland, had -broken loose and got home of itself, the British Solomon was sceptical. -It gravelled him, he confessed, to imagine any four-footed thing -passing unlifted through the Debateable Land. - -With the death of Elizabeth (1603) came the Union of the Crowns, and -the Scots riders felt their craft in danger, for they forthwith made -a desperate incursion into England, with some idea (it is thought) of -staying the event. But they were severely punished, and needs must -cower under the now all-powerful Crown. The appointment of effective -Wardens presently ceased. In 1606, by the Act 4 Jac. I., cap. 1, the -English Parliament repealed the anti-Scots laws, on condition that the -Scots Parliament reciprocated; and presently a kindred measure was -touched with the sceptre at Edinburgh. The administration of the Border -was left to the ordinary tribunals, and the _Leges Marchiarum_ vanished -to the Lumber Room. - - - - -The Serjeant-at-Law - - The Black Patch on the Wig--A King’s Serjeant--The Old English - Law Courts--The Common Pleas--Queen’s Counsel--How Serjeants - were Created--Their Feasts--Their Posies--Their Colts--Chaucer’s - Serjeant-at-Law--The Coif--The Fall of the Order--Some Famous - Serjeants. - - -You have no doubt, at some time or other, walked through the Royal -Courts of Justice and admired the Judges in their scarlet or other -bravery. One odd little detail may have caught your eye: a black patch -on the top differences the wig of the present (1898) Master of the -Rolls from those of his brethren. It signifies that the wearer is a -Serjeant-at-Law, and when he goes to return no more, with him will -probably vanish the Order of the Coif. Verily, it will be the “end -o’ an auld sang,” of a record stretching back to the beginning of -English jurisprudence, of an order whose passing had, at one time, -seemed as the passing of the law itself. Here in bare outline I set -forth its ancient and famous history. And, first, as to the name. -Under the feudal system land was held from the Crown upon various -tenures. Sometimes special services were required from the holders; -these were called Serjeants, and a tenure was said to be by Serjeanty. -Special services, though usually military, now and again had to do -with the administration of justice. A man enjoyed his plot because he -was coroner, keeper of the peace, summoner, or what not; and, over -and above the land, he had the fees of the office. A few offices, -chiefly legal, came to have no land attached--were only paid in fees. -Such a business was a Serjeanty in gross, or at large, as one might -say. Again, after the Conquest, whilst the records of our law courts -were in Latin, the spoken language was Norman-French--a fearful and -wondrous tongue that grew to be--“as ill an hearing in the mouth as -law-French,” says Milton scornfully--and indeed Babel had scarce -matched it. But from the first it must have been a sore vexation to -the thick-witted Saxon haled before the tribunal of his conquerors. -He needs must employ a _counter_, or man skilled in the _conter_, as -the pleadings were called. The business was a lucrative one, so the -Crown assumed the right of regulation and appointment. It was held for -a Serjeanty in gross, and its holders were _servientes regis ad legem_. -The word _regis_ was soon omitted except as regards those specially -retained for the royal service. The literal translation of the other -words is Serjeants-at-law, still the designation of the surviving -fellows of the order. The Serjeant-at-law was appointed, or, in form at -least, commanded to take office by writ under the Great Seal. He was -courteously addressed as “you,” whilst the sheriff was commonly plain -“thou” or “thee.” The King’s or Queen’s Serjeants were appointed by -letters patent; and though this official is extinct as the dodo, he is -mentioned after the Queen’s Attorney-General as the public prosecutor -in the proclamation still mumbled at the opening of courts like the Old -Bailey. - -Now, in the early Norman period the _aula regis_, or Supreme Court, -was simply the King acting as judge with the assistance of his great -officers of state. In time there developed therefrom among much else -the three old common law courts; whereof the Common Pleas settled the -disputes of subjects, the King’s Bench, suits concerning the King -and the realm, the Exchequer, revenue matters. Though the last two -by means of quaint fictions afterwards acquired a share of private -litigation, yet such was more properly for the Court of Common Pleas. -It was peculiarly the Serjeants’ court, and for many centuries, up to -fifty years ago, they had the exclusive right of audience. Until the -Judicature Acts they were the body of men next to the judges, each -being addressed from the bench as “Brother,” and from them the judges -must be chosen, also until 1850 the assizes must be held before a judge -or a Serjeant of the coif. - -A clause in Magna Charta provided that the Common Pleas should not -follow the King’s wanderings, but sit in a fixed place; this fixed -place came to be near the great door of the Hall at Westminster. With -the wind in the north the spot was cold and draughty, so after the -Restoration some daring innovator proposed “to let it (the Court) in -through the wall into a back room which they called the treasury.” Sir -Orlando Bridgeman, the Chief Justice, would on no account hear of this. -To move it an inch were flagrant violation of Magna Charta. Might not, -he darkly hinted, all its writs be thus rendered null and void? Was -legal pedantry ever carried further? In a later age the change was made -without comment, and in our own time the Common Pleas itself has gone -to the Lumber Room. No doubt this early localising of the court helped -to develop a special Bar. Other species of practitioners--barristers, -attorneys, solicitors--in time arose, and the appointment of Queen’s -Counsel, of whom Lord Bacon was the earliest, struck the first real -blow at the Order of the Coif; but the detail of such things is not -for this page. In later days every Serjeant was a more fully developed -barrister, and then and now, as is well known, every barrister must -belong to one of the four Inns of Court--the two Temples, Gray’s Inn, -and Lincoln’s Inn to wit, whose history cannot be told here; suffice -it to say they were voluntary associations of lawyers, which gradually -acquired the right of calling to the Bar those who wished to practise. - -Now, the method of appointment of Serjeants was as follows: The judges, -headed by the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, picked out certain -eminent barristers as worthy of the dignity, their names were given in -to the Lord Chancellor, and in due time each had his writ, whereof he -formally gave his Inn notice. His House entertained him at a public -breakfast, presented him with a gold or silver net purse with ten -guineas or so as a retaining fee, the chapel bell was tolled, and he -was solemnly rung out of the bounds. On the day of his call he was -harangued (often at preposterous length) by the Chief Justice of the -King’s Bench, he knelt down, and the white coif of the order was fitted -on his head; he went in procession to Westminster and “counted” in -a real action in the Court of Common Pleas. For centuries he did so -in law-French. Lord Hardwicke was the first Serjeant who “counted” in -English. The new-comer was admitted a member of Serjeants’ Inn, in -Chancery Lane, in ancient times called Farringdon Inn, whereof all -the members were Serjeants. Here they dined together on the first -and last days of term; their clerks also dined in hall, though at a -separate table--a survival, no doubt, from the days when the retainer -feasted, albeit “below the salt,” with his master. Dinner done and -the napery removed, the board of green cloth was constituted, and -under the presidency of the Chief Judge the business of the House was -transacted. There was a second Serjeants’ Inn in Fleet Street, but in -1758 its members joined the older institution in Chancery Lane. When -the Judicature Acts practically abolished the order, the Inn was sold -and its property divided among the members, a scandalous proceeding and -poor result of “the wisdom of an heep of lernede men”! - -The Serjeant’s feast on his appointment was a magnificent affair, -_instar coronationis_, as Fortescue has it. In old times it lasted -seven days; one of the largest palaces in the metropolis was selected, -and kings and queens graced its quaint ceremonial. Stow chronicles one -such celebration at the call of eleven Serjeants, in 1531. There were -consumed “twenty-four great beefes, one hundred fat muttons, fifty-one -great veales, thirty-four porkes,” not to mention the swans, the -larkes, the “capons of Kent,” the “carcase of an ox from the shambles,” -and so forth. One fancies these solids were washed down by potations -proportionately long and deep. And there were other attractions and -other expenses. At the feast in October 1552, “a standing dish of wax -representing the Court of Common Pleas” was the admiration of the -guests; again, a year or two later, it is noted that each Serjeant was -attended by three gentlemen selected by him from among the members of -his own Inn to act as his sewer, his carver, and his cup-bearer. These -Gargantuan banquets must have proved a sore burden: they were cut down -to one day, and, on the union of the Inns in 1758, given up as unsuited -to the newer times. - -One expense remained. Serjeants on their call must give gold rings to -the Sovereign, the Lord Chancellor, the judges, and many others. From -about the time of Elizabeth mottoes or “posies” were engraved thereon. -Sometimes each Serjeant had his own device, more commonly the whole -call adopted the same motto, which was usually a compliment to the -reigning monarch or an allusion to some public event. Thus, after the -Restoration the words ran: _Adeste Corolus Magnus_. With a good deal -of elision and twisting the Roman numerals for 1660 were extracted -from this, to the huge delight of the learned triflers. _Imperium et -libertas_ was the word for 1700, and _plus quam speravimus_ that of -1714, which was as neat as any. The rings were presented to the judges -by the Serjeant’s “colt,” as the barrister attendant on him through -the ceremony was called (probably from _colt_, an apprentice); he also -had a ring. In the ninth of Geo. II. the fourteen new Serjeants gave, -as of duty, 1409 rings, valued at £773. That call cost each Serjeant -nearly £200. This ring-giving continued to the end; another custom, -that of giving liveries to relatives and friends, was discontinued in -1759. In mediæval times the new Serjeants went in procession to St. -Paul’s, and worshipped at the shrine of Thomas à Becket; then to each -was allotted a pillar, so that his clients might know where to find -him. The Reformation put a summary end to the worship of St. Thomas, -but the formality of the pillar lingered on till Old St. Paul’s and Old -London blazed in the Great Fire of 1666. - -The mediæval lawyer lives for us to-day in Chaucer’s famous picture: - - A Sergeant of Lawe, war and wys, - That often hadde ben atte parvys, - Ther was also, ful riche of excellence. - Discret he was, and of great reverence: - He semede such, his wordes weren so wise, - Justice he was ful often in assise, - By patente, and by pleyn commissioun; - For his science, and for his heih renoun, - Of fees and robes hadde he many oon. - So gret a purchasour was nowher noon. - Al was fee symple to him in effecte, - His purchasyng mighte nought ben enfecte. - Nowher so besy a man as he ther nas, - And yit he seemede besier than he was. - In termes hadde he caas and domes alle; - That fro the tyme of kyng William were falle. - Therto he couthe endite, and make a thing, - Ther couthe no wight pynche at his writyng; - And every statute couthe he pleyn by roote. - He rood but hoomly in a medlé coote, - Gird with a seynt of silk, with barres smale - Of his array telle I no lenger tale. - -How lifelike that touch of the fussy man, who “seemede besier than he -was”! But each line might serve as text for a long dissertation! The -old court hours were early: the judges sat from eight till eleven, -when your busy Serjeant would, after bolting his dinner, hie him to -his pillar where he would hear his client’s story, “and take notes -thereof upon his knee.” The parvys or pervyse of Paul’s--properly, only -the church door--had come to mean the nave of the cathedral, called -also “Paul’s Walk,” or “Duke Humphrey’s Walk,” from the supposed tomb -of Duke Humphrey that stood there. In Tudor times it was the great -lounge and common newsroom of London. Here the needy adventurer “dined -with Duke Humphrey,” as the quaint euphemism ran; here spies garnered -in popular opinion for the authorities. It was the very place for the -lawyer to meet his client, yet had he other resorts: the round of the -Temple Church and Westminster are noted as in use for consultations. - -Chaucer’s Serjeant “rood but hoomly” because he was travelling; in -court he had a long priest-like robe, with a furred cape about his -shoulders and a scarlet hood. The gowns were various, and sometimes -parti-coloured. Thus, in 1555 we find each new Serjeant possessed -of one robe of scarlet, one of violet, one of brown and blue, one -of mustard and murrey, with tabards (short sleeveless coats) of -cloths of the same colours. The cape was edged, first with lambskin, -afterwards with more precious stuff. In Langland’s _Vision of Piers -Plowman_ (1362) there is mention of this dress of the Serjeants, they -are jibed at for their love of fees and so forth, after a fashion -that is not yet extinct! But _the_ distinctive feature in the dress -was the coif, a close-fitting head covering made of white lawn or -silk. A badge of honour, it was worn on all professional occasions, -nor was it doffed even in the King’s presence. In monumental effigies -it is ever prominent. When a Serjeant resigned his dignity he was -formally discharged from the obligation of wearing it. To discuss its -exact origin were fruitless, yet one ingenious if mistaken conjecture -may be noticed. Our first lawyers were churchmen, but in 1217 these -were finally debarred from general practice in the courts. Many were -unwilling to abandon so lucrative a calling, but what about the -tonsure? “They were for decency and comeliness allowed to cover their -bald pates with a coif, which had been ever since retained.” Thus -the learned Serjeant Wynne in his tract on the antiquity and dignity -of the order (1765). In Tudor times, if not before, fashion required -the Serjeant to wear a small skull-cap of black silk or velvet on the -top of the coif. This is very clearly shown in one of Lord Coke’s -portraits. Under Charles II. lawyers, like other folk, began to wear -wigs, the more exalted they were the bigger their perukes. It was -wittily said that Bench and Bar went into mourning on Queen Anne’s -death, and so remained, since their present dress is that then adopted. -Serjeants were unwilling to lose sight of their coifs altogether, -and it was suggested on the wig by a round patch of black and white, -representing the white coif and the cap which had covered it. The limp -cap of black cloth known as the “black cap” which the judge assumes -when about to pass sentence of death was, it seems, put on to veil the -coif, and as a sign of sorrow. It was also carried in the hand when -attending divine service, and was possibly assumed in pre-Reformation -times when prayers were said for the dead. - -A few words will tell of the fall of the order. As far back as 1755 -Sir John Willis, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, proposed to throw -open that court as well as the office of judge to barristers who were -not Serjeants, but the suggestion came to nothing. In 1834, the Bill -for the establishment of a Central Criminal Court contained a clause -to open the Common Pleas; this was dropped, but the same object was -attained by a royal warrant, April 25, 1834. The legality of this was -soon questioned and, after solemn argument before the Privy Council, -it was declared invalid. In 1846 a statute (the 9 & 10 Vict. c. 54) -to the same effect settled the matter, and the Judicature Act of 1873 -provided that no judge need in future be a Serjeant. On the dissolution -of Serjeants’ Inn its members were received back into the Houses whence -they had come. - -As for centuries all the judges were Serjeants, the history of the -order is that of the Bench and Bar of England; yet some famous men -rose no higher, or for one reason or other became representative -members. Such a one was Sir John Maynard (1602-1690). In his last -years William III. commented on his venerable appearance: “He must -have outlived all the lawyers of his time.” “If your Highness had not -come I should have outlived the law itself,” was the old man’s happy -compliment. Pleading in Chancery one day, he remarked that he had -been counsel in the same case half a century before, he had steered a -middle course in those troubled times, but he had ever leant to the -side of freedom against King and Protector alike. His share in the -impeachment of Strafford procured him a jibe in Butler’s _Hudibras_, -yet it was said that all parties seemed willing to employ him, and -that he seemed willing to be employed by all. Jeffreys, who usually -deferred to him, once blustered out, “You are so old as to forget -your law, Brother Maynard.” “True, Sir George, I have forgotton more -law than ever you knew,” was the crushing retort. Macaulay has justly -praised his conduct at the Revolution for that he urged his party -to disregard legal technicalities and adopt new methods for new and -unheard-of circumstances. Edmund Plowden (1518-1585) deserves at least -equally high praise. He was so determined a student that “for three -years he went not once out of the Temple.” He is said to have refused -the Chancellorship offered him by Elizabeth as he would not desert -the old faith. He was attacked again and again for nonconformity, -but his profound knowledge of legal technicalities enabled him on -each occasion to escape the net spread for him. He was an Englishman -loyal to the core, and Catholic as he was opposed in 1555 the violent -proceedings of Queen Mary’s Parliament. The Attorney-General filed a -bill against him for contempt, but “Mr. Plowden traversed fully, and -the matter was never decided.” “A traverse full of pregnancy,” is Lord -Coke’s enthusiastic comment. On his death in 1584 they buried him in -that Temple Church whose soil must have seemed twice sacred to this -oracle of the law. An alabaster monument whereon his effigy reposes -remains to this day. A less distinguished contemporary was William -Bendloes (1516-1584), “Old Bendloes,” men called him. A quaint legend -reports him the only Serjeant at the Common Pleas bar in the first -year of Elizabeth’s reign. Whether there was no business, or merely -half-guinea motions of course, or the one man argued on both sides, or -whether the whole story be a fabrication, ’tis scarce worth while to -inquire. - -I pass to more modern times. William Davy was made Serjeant-at-law in -1754. His wit combats with Lord Mansfield are still remembered. His -lordship was credited with a desire to sit on Good Friday; our Serjeant -hinted that he would be the first judge that had done so since Pontius -Pilate! Mansfield scouted one of Davy’s legal propositions. “If that be -law I must burn all my books.” “Better read them first,” was the quiet -retort. In recent days two of the best known Serjeants were Parry and -Ballantine, the first a profound lawyer, the second a great advocate, -but both are vanished from the scene. - - - Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. - London & Edinburgh - - - - -TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: - - - Text in italics is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. - - Superscripted text is preceded with a carat character: behav^d. - - Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. - - Inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation, and punctuation have been - standardized. - - - - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAW’S LUMBER ROOM (2ND SERIES) *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Law’s Lumber Room (Second Series)</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Francis Watt</div> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: October 28, 2017 [eBook #55839]<br /> -[Most recently updated: October 9, 2021]</div> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: deaurider, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team</div> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAW’S LUMBER ROOM (2ND SERIES) ***</div> - -<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="" /></div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="transnote"> -<p class="ph2">TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:</p> - - -<p>Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.</p> - -<p>Inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation, and punctuation have been standardized.</p> - -<p>The cover image of this eBook has been created by the transcriber from the title page of the original book and is entered into the public domain.</p></div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<h1>The Law’s Lumber Room</h1> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The rusty curb of old father antic—the law</div> -</div> - <div class="stanza"> -<div class="verseright"><span class="smcap">Falstaff</span></div> -</div></div></div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[Pg iii]</a></span></p> - - - -<div class="titlepage"> -<p class="ph1"> -The Law’s<br /> -Lumber<br /> -Room</p> - -<p>By<br /> -Francis<br /> -Watt</p> - -<p><small>Second Series</small></p> - -<p>John Lane, The Bodley Head<br /> -London and New York<br /> -mdcccxcviii</p></div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</a></span></p> - - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">Printed by <span class="smcap">Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.</span><br /> -At the Ballantyne Press</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span> -<h2 class="nobreak">Prefatory</h2></div> - - -<p><i><span class="smcap">This</span> is an entirely distinct book from the -first series of the Law’s Lumber Room. -The subjects are of more general interest, -they are treated with greater fulness of -detail, most are as much literary as legal; -but I have thought it best to retain the -old name. No other seemed so briefly and -so truly descriptive of papers which tell -what the law and its ways once were, and -what they have ceased, one may reasonably -suppose, for ever to be.</i></p> - -<p><i>I make two remarks. There is a great -deal of hanging in this book; that is only -because those were hanging times. The law -had no thought of mending the criminal; it -ended him in the most summary fashion. -The death of the chief actors was as inevitably -the finish of the story as it is in -a modern French novel.</i></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span><i>Again, in pondering those memories of -the past, one realises how much, in other -things than mechanical invention, our time -is unlike all that went before. This is not -the commonplace it seems, for not easily do -we realise how far the change has gone.</i></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="indent6"><i>Under the sway</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>Of Death, the past’s enormous disarray</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>Lies hushed and dark.</i></div> -</div></div> - -<p><i>Details such as make up this volume have -this merit: they bring the antique world before -us, and the net result seems to be this: we lead -better lives, we are more just and charitable, -perhaps less selfish than our forefathers, -but how to deny that something is lost? for -life is not so exciting, and our annals are -anything but picturesque.</i></p> - -<p><i>These papers were originally published -in</i> The New Review, The Yellow Book, -<i>and</i> The Ludgate. <i>I have made very considerable -additions to most of them, and all -have been carefully revised.</i></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span> -<h2 class="nobreak">Contents</h2></div> - - -<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" summary="table"> - -<tr><td> </td><td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr> - -<tr><td>TYBURN TREE</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td>PILLORY AND CART’S TAIL</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td>STATE TRIALS FOR WITCHCRAFT</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_68">68</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td>A PAIR OF PARRICIDES</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_88">88</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td>SOME DISUSED ROADS TO MATRIMONY</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_116">116</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td>THE BORDER LAW</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_152">152</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td>THE SERJEANT-AT-LAW</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_185">185</a></td></tr> -</table> - - -<hr class="chap" /> - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span> -<h2 class="nobreak"> -Tyburn Tree</h2></div> - -<blockquote> - -<p class="hangingindent">Its Exact Position not known—Near the Marble Arch—Fanciful -Etymologies—The Last Days of the Old-Time -Criminal—Robert Dowe’s Bequest—Execution -Eve—St. Sepulchre’s Bell—The Procession—St. -Giles’s Bowl—At Tyburn—Ketch’s Perquisites—The -Newgate Ordinary—The Executioner—Tyburn’s -Roll of Fame—Catholic Martyrs—Cromwell’s -Head—The Highwaymen—Lord Ferrers—Dr. Dodd—James -Hackman—Tyburn in English Letters.</p></blockquote> - - -<p><span class="smcap">To-day</span> you cannot fix the exact spot where -Tyburn Tree raised its uncanny form. To -the many it was the most noteworthy thing -about Old London, yet while thousands who -had gazed thereon in fascinated horror were -still in life, a certain vagueness was evident -in men’s thoughts, and, albeit antiquaries -have keenly debated the <i>locus</i>, all the mind -is clouded with a doubt, and your carefully -worked out conclusion is but guesswork. -There is reason manifold for this. Of -old time the populous district known as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> -Tyburnia was wild heath intersected by the -Tyburn Brook, which, rising near Hampstead, -crossed what is now Oxford Street, hard by -the Marble Arch, and so on to Chelsea and -the Thames. Somewhere on its banks was -the Middlesex gallows. It may be that as -the tide set westward the site was changed. -Again, the wild heath is now thick with -houses; new streets and squares have confused -the ancient landmarks; those who dwelt -therein preferred that there should not be a -too nice identification of localities. How -startling the reflection that in the very place -of your dining-room, thousands of fellow-creatures -had dangled in their last agonies! -How rest at ease in such a chamber of -horrors? The weight of evidence favours -(or disfavours) No. 49 Connaught Square. -The Bishop of London is ground landlord -here; and it is said that in the lease of that -house granted by him the fact is recorded -that there stood the “Deadly Never-Green.” -Such a record were purely gratuitous, but -the draftsman may have made it to fix the -identity of the dwelling. But to-day the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> -Square runs but to No. 47. Some shuffling -of numerals has, you fancy, taken place to -baffle indiscreet research. However, you may -be informed (in confidence) that you have but -to stand at the south-east corner of the Square -to be “warm,” as children say in their games.</p> - -<p>Let these minutiæ go. Tyburn Tree -stood within a gunshot to the north-west of -the Marble Arch. Its pictured shape is -known from contemporary prints. There -were three tall uprights, joined at the top by -three cross-beams, the whole forming a triangle. -It could accommodate many patients -at once, and there is some authority for -supposing that the beam towards Paddington -was specially used for Roman Catholics. In -the last century the nicer age objected to it -as an eyesore; and it was replaced by a -movable structure, fashioned of two uprights -and a cross-beam, which was set up in the -Edgware Road at the corner of Bryanston -Street, and which, the grim work done, was -stored in the corner house, from whose -windows the sheriffs superintended executions. -To accommodate genteel spectators<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> -there were just such stands as you find on a -racecourse, the seats whereof were let at -divers prices, according to the interest -excited. In 1758, for Dr. Henesey’s execution -as arch-traitor, the rate rose to two -shillings and two and sixpence a seat. The -Doctor was “most provokingly reprieved,” -whereat the mob in righteous indignation -arose and wrecked the stands. Mammy -Douglas, a woman who kept the key of one -of these stands, was popularly known as “the -Tyburn pew-opener.”</p> - -<p>Fanciful etymologists played mad pranks -with the name. In Fuller’s <i>Worthies, Tieburne</i> -is derived on vague authority from -“Tie” and “Burne,” because the “poor -Lollards” there “had their necks <i>tied</i> to the -beame and their lower parts <i>burnt</i> in the -fire. Others” (he goes on more sensibly) -“will have it called from <i>Twa</i> and <i>Burne</i>, -that is two rivulets, which it seems meet -near the place.” And then it was plainly a -<i>Bourn</i> whence no traveller returned! Most -probably it is a shortened form of <i>The</i>, or <i>At -the Aye Bourne</i> (= <i>’t Aye-bourne</i> = <i>Tyburn</i>)<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> -or Brook already denoted. Tyburn was not -always London’s sole or even principal place -of execution. In early times people were -hanged as well as burned at Smithfield. The -elms at St. Giles’s were far too handy a -provision to stay idle. At Tower Green -was the chosen spot for beheading your high-class -criminal, and it was common to put off -a malefactor on the very theatre of his malefaction. -There are few spots in Old London -which have not carried a gallows at one or -other time. Some think that certain elm-trees -suggested the choice of Tyburn. In the -end it proved the most convenient of all, -being neither too near nor too far; and in -the end its name came to have (as is common -with such words) a general application, and -was applied at York, Liverpool, Dublin, and -elsewhere, to the place of execution.</p> - -<p>To-day the criminal’s progress from cell -to gallows is an affair of a few minutes. To -an earlier time this had savoured of indecent -haste. Then, the way to Tyburn, long in -itself, was lengthened out by the observance -of a complicated ritual, some of it of ancient<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> -origin. Let us follow “the poor inhabitant -below” from the dock to the rope. To -understand what follows one must remember -that two distinct sets of forces acted on his -mind:—on the one hand, the gloom of the -prison, the priest’s advice, the memory of -mis-spent days, the horror of doom; on the -other, the reaction of a lawless nature against -a cruel code, the resolve to die game, the -flattering belief that he was the observed of -all observers, and perhaps a secret conviction -that the unknown could be no worse than -the known. According as the one set or -other prevailed he was penitent or brazen, -the Ordinary’s darling or the people’s joy. -Well, his Lordship having assumed the black -cap and pronounced sentence of death, the -convict was forthwith removed to the condemned -hold in Newgate. There he was -heavily fettered, and, if of any renown as a -prison-breaker, chained to a ring in the -ground. Escape was not hopeless. Friends -were allowed to visit and supply him with -money, wherewith he might bribe his keepers; -and the prison discipline, though cruel, was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> -incredibly lax (Jack Sheppard’s two escapes -from the condemned hold, carefully described -by Ainsworth, are cases in point). To -resume, our felon was now frequently visited -by the Ordinary, who zealously inquired -(from the most interested motives) into his -past life, and admonished him of his approaching -doom. At chapel o’ Sundays he -sat with his fellows in the condemned pew, a -large dock-like erection painted black, which -stood in the centre, right in front of and -close to the ordinary’s desk and pulpit. For -his last church-going the condemned sermon -was preached, the burial service was read, -and prayers were put up “especially for -those awaiting the awful execution of the -law.” The reprieved also were present, and -the chapel was packed with as many spectators -as could squeeze their way in.</p> - -<p>Now, our old law was not so bad as it -seemed. True, the death-penalty was affixed -to small offences; but it was comparatively -rarely exacted. In looking over Old Bailey -sessions-papers of from one to two centuries -ago, I am struck with the number of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> -acquittals—brought about, I fancy, by the -triviality of the crime, not the innocence of -the prisoner—and jurors constantly appraised -the articles at twelve pence or under to reduce -the offence to petty larceny, which was -not capital, and after sentence each case was -carefully considered on its merits by the King -in Council (the extraordinary care which -George III. gave to this matter is well known: -he was often found pondering sentences late -into the night). Only when the offender -was inveterate or his crime atrocious was the -death-penalty exacted. In effect, cases now -punished by long terms of penal servitude -were then ordered for execution. I don’t -pretend to say whether or no to-day’s plan -may be the more merciful. We have, on the -authority of the Newgate Ordinary, a list -between 1700 and 1711. Of forty-nine condemned -in one year, thirty-six were reprieved -and thirteen executed, in another year thirty-eight -were condemned, twenty were reprieved, -and eighteen were executed; the highest -annual return of executions during that -period was sixty-six, the lowest five. An Act<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> -of 1753 (25 Geo. II., c. 37) provided for the -speedy exit and dissection of murderers; but -the fate of other felons might hang dubious, -as weeks often elapsed without a Privy Council -meeting. The Recorder of London brought -up the report from Windsor. When it -reached Newgate, usually late at night, the -condemned prisoners were assembled in one -ward. The Ordinary entered in full canonicals -and spoke his fateful message to each -kneeling wretch. “I am sorry to tell you it -is all against you,” would fall on one man’s -trembling ears; while “Your case has been -taken into consideration by the King and -Council and His Majesty has been mercifully -pleased to spare your life,” was the comfortable -word for another. The reprieved now -returned thanks to God and the King; the -others, all hope gone, must return to the -condemned hold.</p> - -<p>There broke in on them here, during the -midnight hours on the eve of their execution, -the sound of twelve strokes of a hand-bell, -the while a doleful voice in doleful rhyme -addressed them:</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">You prisoners that are within,</div> -<div class="verse">Who for wickedness and sin....</div> -</div></div> - -<p>Here the rhyme failed; but in not less dismal -prose the voice admonished them that -on the morrow “the greatest bell of St. -Sepulchre will toll for you in the form and -manner of a passing bell”; wherefore it behoved -them to repent. In later years the -songster procured himself this rigmarole:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">Prepare you, for to-morrow you shall die.</div> -<div class="verse">Watch all and pray, the hour is drawing near</div> -<div class="verse">When you before th’ Almighty must appear.</div> -<div class="indent">Examine well yourselves; in time repent,</div> -<div class="indent">That you may not th’ eternal flames be sent.</div> -<div class="verse">And when St. ’Pulcre’s bell to-morrow tolls,</div> -<div class="verse">The Lord have mercy on your souls!</div> -<div class="indent10">Past twelve o’clock.</div> -</div></div> - -<p>Now this iron nightingale was the sexton -or his deputy of St. Sepulchre’s, hard by -Newgate; and his chant originated thus. -In the early seventeenth century there flourished -a certain Robert Dowe, “citizen and -merchant taylor of London”; he disbursed -much of his estate to various charities, and -in especial gave one pound six shillings and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> -eight pence yearly to the sexton of St. -Sepulchre’s to approach as near as might be -to the condemned hold on execution eve, and -admonish malefactors of their approaching -end, as if they were likely to forget it, or as -if “Men in their Condition cou’d have any -stomach to Unseasonable Poetry,” so pertinently -observes John Hall (executed about -1708), “the late famous and notorious -robber,” or rather the Grub Street hack who -compiled his <i>Memoirs</i>. The rhymes were, so -the same veracious authority assures us, “set -to the Tune of the Bar-Bell at the Black -Dog,” and their reception varied. Hall and -his companions (but again you suspect Grub -Street) paid in kind with verse equally edifying, -and, if possible, still more atrocious. -Most, you fancy, turned again to their uneasy -slumbers with muttered curses. Not so -Sarah Malcolm, condemned in 1733 for the -cruel murder of old Mrs. Duncombe, her -mistress. An unseasonable pity for the -sexton croaking his platitudes in the raw -midnight possessed her mad soul. “D’ye -hear, Mr. Bellman?” she bawled, “call for a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> -Pint of Wine, and I’ll throw you a Shilling -to pay for it.” How instant his changed -note as the coin clinked on the pavement! -Alas! no record reports him thus again -refreshed.</p> - -<p>But <i>Venit summa dies et ineluctabile fatum</i> -(a tag you may be sure the Ordinary rolled -off to any broken-down scholar he had in -hand); and our felon’s last day dawns. He -is taken to the Stone Hall, where his irons -are struck off; then he is pinioned by the -yeoman of the halter, who performs that -service for the moderate fee of five shillings -(rope thrown in). At the gate he is delivered -over to the Hangman (who is not free of the -prison), and by him he is set in the cart (a -sorry vehicle drawn by a sorry nag in sorry -harness), his coffin oft at his feet, and the -Ordinary at his side, and so, amidst the yells -of a huge mob and to the sad accompaniment -of St. Sepulchre’s bell, the cart moves -westward. Almost immediately a halt is -called. The road is bounded by the wall of -St. Sepulchre’s Churchyard, over the which -there peers our vocalist of yester-eve, who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> -takes up his lugubrious whine anew:—“All -good people pray heartily with God for the -poor sinners who are now going to their -death,” with more to the same effect, for all -which the poor passenger must once more -bless or curse the name of the inconsiderately -considerate Dowe. He gave his endowment -in 1605, seven years before his death: had -some mad turn of fate made him an object -of his own charity you had scarce grieved. -But now the sexton has done his office to the -satisfaction of the beadle of Merchant Tailors’ -Hall, who “hath an honest stipend allowed -him to see that this is duly done,” and the -cart is again under weigh, when, if the principal -subject be popular, a lady (you assume -her beauty, and you need not rake the -rubbish of two centuries for witness against -her character) trips down the steps of St. -Sepulchre’s Church and presents him with a -huge nosegay. If nosegays be not in season, -“why, then,” as the conjuror assured Timothy -Crabshaw, squire to Sir Launcelot Greaves, -“an orange will do as well.” And now the -cart rumbles down steep and strait Snow<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> -Hill, crosses the Fleet Ditch by narrow -Holborn Bridge, creaks up Holborn Hill -(the “Heavy Hill,” men named it with -sinister twin-meaning), and so through -Holborn Bars, whilst the bells, first of St. -Andrew’s, Holborn, and then of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, -knell sadly as it passes. In the -High Street of the ancient village of that -name, Halt! is again the word. Of old -time a famous Lazar-House stood here, and -hard by those elms of St. Giles, already noted -as a place of execution. The simple piety of -mediæval times would dispatch no wretch on -so long a journey without sustenance. Hence -at the Lazar-House gate he was given a huge -bowl of ale, his “last refreshing in this life,” -whereof he might drink at will. The most -gallant of the Elizabethans has phrased for -us the felon’s thoughts as he quaffed the -strange draught. On that chill October -morning when Raleigh went to his doom at -Westminster, some one handed him “a cup -of excellent sack,” courteously inquiring how -he liked it? “As the fellow,” he answered -with a last touch of Elizabethan wit, “that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> -drinking of St. Giles’s bowl as he went to -Tyburn, said:—‘That were good drink if a -man might tarry by it.’” The Lazar went, -but the St. Giles’s bowl lingered, only no -longer a shaven monk, but the landlord of -the Bowl or the Crown, or what not, handed -up the liquor.</p> - -<p>Bowl Yard, which vanished into Endell -Street, long preserved the memory of this -“last refreshing.” At York a like custom -prevailed, whereof local tradition recorded a -quaint apologue. The saddler of Bawtry -needs must hang—why and wherefore no -man knoweth. To the amazement and -horror of all he most churlishly refused the -proffered bowl. Pity was but wasted (so -our forefathers thought) on such a fellow. -Before a dry-eyed crowd he was strung up -with the utmost dispatch, but a reprieve -arriving, was cut down just as quickly. All -too late, however! He was done with this -world. Had he but reasonably tarried, as -others did, for his draught, he had died in -his bed like many a better man. Hence the -rustic moralist taught how the saddler of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> -Bawtry was hanged for leaving of his ale. -The compilers of the Sunday school treatises -have scandalously neglected this leading case -of lost opportunities. Nay, though a pearl -“richer than all his tribe,” you shall search -the works of Dr. Smiles for it in vain.</p> - -<p>But the day wears on, and our procession -must farther westward along Tyburn Road -(now Oxford Street). It is soon quit of -houses; yet the crowd grows ever denser, -and, though Tyburn Tree stands out grim -and gaunt in our view, it is some time ere -the cart pulls up under the beam. Soon the -halter is fixed, and the parson says his last -words to the trembling wretch. And now -it is proper for him to address the crowd, -confessing his crimes, and warning others to -amend their ways. If a broken-down cleric -or the like, his last devotions and dying -speech are apt to be prosy and inordinate; -so that the mob jeers or even pelts him and -his trusty Ketch himself. Or “some of the -Sheriff’s officers discovering impatience to -have the execution dispatched” (thus Samuel -Smith, the Ordinary of a case in 1684), Jack<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> -cuts things short by whipping up his horses -and leaves his victim dangling and agape. -More decorously the cap is drawn over his -face, and he himself gives the signal to turn -off. The Hangman, if in genial mood, now -stretches the felon’s legs for him, or thumps -his breast with the benevolent design of -expelling the last breath; but the brute is -usually too lazy or too careless, and these -pious offices are performed by friends.</p> - -<p>The accessories of such a last scene are -preserved in Hogarth’s <i>Apprentice</i> Series. -One of the crowd is picking a pocket, and -you foresee him ending here some day soon. -(Is it not told of one rascal, that he urged -on the attendants his right to a near view, -since, sure of hanging some day, he naturally -wished to see how it was done?) Another -in the crowd is bawling, a trifle prematurely, -the last speech and dying confession of -Thomas Idle. Verses commemorative of -the occasion were sold broadcast. “Tyburn’s -elegiac lines,” as you may suppose, were sad -doggerel. Here is the concluding portion of -a specimen (<i>temp. circa</i> 1720):</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">Fifteen of us you soon will see</div> -<div class="verse">Ending our days with misery</div> -<div class="indent">At the Tree, at the Tree.</div> -</div></div> - -<p>Even at Tyburn, how hard to renounce -all hope! There was ever the chance of a -reprieve. There is at least one well-authenticated -case of a man making a sudden bolt -from the cart, and almost escaping; and, as -the <i>modus</i> was simple strangulation, and the -Hangman careless or corrupt, it was just -possible that heroic remedies might restore -to animation. On December 12, 1705, John -Smith was turned off, and hung for a -quarter of an hour. A reprieve arriving, -he was cut down, and coaxed back to life. -More remarkable was the case of William -Duell, in 1740. To all appearance -thoroughly well hanged, he was carried off -for dissection to Surgeons’ Hall, where he -presently recovered himself. He was, somewhat -cruelly, restored to Newgate, but was -let off with transportation. The law was -not always so merciful. In another case, -the sheriff’s officers, having heard that their -prey was again alive and kicking, hunted the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> -wretch out, haled him back to Tyburn, and -hanged him beyond the possibility of doubt. -The rumour of such marvels inspired many -attempts at resuscitation. I fancy about -one per cent. were successful, but how to -tell, since the instance just quoted shows that -such triumphs were better concealed?</p> - -<p>Now, the <i>corpus</i> is essential to the <i>experimentum</i>, -so half an hour after the turning -off, the friends bring up a deal coffin, borne -across an unhinged coach door or any such -make-shift bier. But Ketch is still in possession: -the clothes are Hangman’s perquisites, -and must be purchased. How the -greedy rascal appreciates the value of each -button, dwells on the splendour of each -sorry ornament, watching the while and -gauging the impatience of the buyers! -Never went second-hand duds at such -a figure! Sometimes he overreaches himself, -or no one comes forward to bid. Then -the corpse is rudely stripped, “and the Miscellany -of Rags are all crushed into a sack -which the Valet de Chambre carries on -purpose, and being digested into Monmouth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> -Street, Chick Lane, &c., are comfortably -worn by many an industrious fellow.” And -sometimes the law claims the body to be -removed and hung in chains.</p> - -<p>In cases of treason, the felon was drawn -to Tyburn in a sledge tied to a horse’s tail; -he was hanged from the cart; but was cut -down and dismembered alive. His head -went to the adornment of Temple Bar or -London Bridge; while his quarters, having -been boiled in oil and tar in a cauldron in -Jack Ketch’s Kitchen, as the room above the -central gateway at Newgate was called, were -scattered here and there as the authorities -fancied. The complete ritual of disgrace -was reserved for political offenders. After -rebellions Ketch had his hands full. He -would tumble out of his sack good store of -heads wherewith he and the Newgate felons -made hideous sport, preliminary to parboiling -them with bay salt and cummin seed: -the one for preservation, the other sovereign -against the fowls of the air. If the traitor -were a woman, she was burned (till 1790); -but usually strangled first. Cases are on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> -record where, with a fire too quick or a -Hangman too clumsy, the choking proved -abortive and——! The sledge so often -supplanted the less ignominious cart, that I -ought to explain that a traitor need not be a -political offender. Certain coining offences, -the murder of a husband by his wife, and of -a master by his servant, were all ranked a -form of treason, and the criminal was drawn -and quartered or burnt accordingly.</p> - -<p>Two of Tyburn’s officials, the Ordinary and -the Hangman, to wit, now claim our attention. -The Ordinary, or prison chaplain of -Newgate, said “Amen” to the death sentence, -and ministered to the convict thence to the -end. A terrible duty, to usher your fellow-man -from this world into the next! I have -heard that one such task near proved fatal -to an honest divine; but the hand of little -employment hath the daintier sense, and too -often the Newgate Ordinary was a callous -wretch, with a keen zeal for the profits of -his post, and for the rest a mere praying -machine. He needs must be good trencherman. -It was one of his strange duties to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> -say grace at City banquets. Major Griffiths, -who collects so many curious facts in his -<i>Chronicles of Newgate</i>, alleges him not seldom -required to eat three consecutive dinners -without quitting the table. In post-Tyburn -days, when they hanged in front of the -prison, the governor’s daughter used to -prepare breakfast for those attending each -execution (the <i>deid clack</i>, so they called such -festivity in Old Scotland). Broiled kidneys -were her masterpiece, and she noted that, -whilst most of her pale-faced guests could -stomach nought save brandy and water, his -reverence attacked the dish as one appetised -by a prosperous morning’s work. Most -Ordinaries are clean gone from memory, -unrecorded even by <i>The Dictionary of -National Biography</i>. One (as fly in amber!) -the chance reference of a classic now and -again preserves.</p> - -<p class="center">E’en Guthrie spares half Newgate by a dash,</p> - -<p>sneers Pope, referring to an alleged habit of -merely giving initials. I have turned over a -fair number of the Reverend James Guthrie’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> -accounts of criminals. In those he always -writes the name in full. The witty though -himself forgotten Tom Brown scribbles the -epitaph of the Reverend Samuel Smith, -another Ordinary:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="indent7">Whither he’s gone</div> -<div class="indent5">Is not certainly known,</div> -<div class="indent5">But a man may conclude,</div> -<div class="indent5">Without being rude,</div> -<div class="indent5">That orthodox Sam</div> -<div class="indent5">His flock would not shame.</div> -<div class="verse">And to show himself to ’em a pastor most civil,</div> -<div class="verse">As he led, so he followed ’em on to the d——l.</div> -</div></div> - -<p>And there were the Reverend Thomas -Purney, and the Reverend John Villette, -but these be well-nigh empty names. We -know most about the Reverend Paul Lorrain, -who was appointed in 1698, and died in -1719, leaving the respectable fortune of -£5000. A typical Ordinary of the baser -sort this; a greedy, gross, sensual wretch, -who thrived and grew fat on the perquisites -of his office. Among these was a broadsheet, -published at eight o’clock the morning after -a hanging. It was headed, “The Ordinary -of Newgate, his Account of the Behaviour,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> -Confessions, and Last Speeches of the Malefactors -who were executed at Tyburn, the—.” -It gave the names and sentences of -the convicts, copious notes of the sermons -(of the most wooden type) he preached at -them, biographies, and confessions, and finally -the scenes at the gallows. Let the up-to-date -journalist cherish Lorrain’s name. He -was an early specimen of the personal interviewer: -he had the same keen scent for unsavoury -detail, the same total disregard for -the feelings or wishes of his victim, the same -readiness to betray confidence; and he had -his subject at such an advantage! You -imagine the sanctimonious air wherewith -he produced his notebook and invited the -wretch’s statement. With the scene at -Tyburn variety in detail was impossible. -“Afterwards the Cart drew away, and they -were turn’d off,” is his formula. You had a -good twopenn’orth, such was his usual modest -charge! The first page top was embellished -with two cuts: on the left Old Newgate Archway, -on the right Tyburn Tree. (Gurney -affected a quainter design, wherein he stood,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> -in full canonicals in the centre pointing the -way to Heaven, whilst on his left the Fiend, -furnished with a trident, squirmed in a bed of -flames.) The broadsheet was authenticated -by his signature.</p> - -<p>Now, two things made the Reverend Paul -exceeding wroth. One was the issue of -pirated confessions, which were “a great -Cheat and Imposture upon the World,” and -they would not merely forge his name but -mis-spell it to boot! His is “the only true -<i>Account</i> of the Dying Criminals,” he urgently, -and no doubt truly, asserts. All this touched -his pocket, hence his ire, which blazed no less -against the unrepentant malefactor, who—a -scarce less grievous offence—touched his professional -pride. He did not mince words:—“he -was a Notorious and Hard-hearted -Criminal,” or afflicted with brutish ignorance -or of an obstinate and hardened disposition. -“There is,” he would pointedly remark, “<i>a -Lake of Brimstone, a Worm that dies not, -and a Fire which shall never be quenched</i>. -And this I must plainly tell you, that will be -your dismal portion there for ever, unless<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> -you truly Repent here in time.” And after -“Behaviour” in the title of his broadsheets, -he would insert, in parentheses, “or rather -Misbehaviour.” Most of his flock, stupid -with terror, passively acquiesced in everything -he said. These “Lorrain saints,” as Steele -called them, received ready absolution at his -hands and their reported end was most -edifying. But in James Sheppard (the -Jacobite), who suffered March 17, 1718, -for treason, Lorrain had a most vexatious -subject. A non-juring divine, “that Priest -or Jesuit, or Wolf in Sheep’s clothing,” as -the Rev. Paul describes him, attended the -convict, and the Ordinary’s services were -quite despised. The intruder, “e’en at the -<i>Gallows</i>, had the Presumption to give him -Publick Absolution, tho’ he visibly dy’d -without Repentance.” Dr. Doran assures -us that, on the way to Tyburn, Paul and -his supplanter came to fisticuffs, and our -Ordinary was unceremoniously kicked from -the cart. One would like to believe this -entertaining legend, for “the great historiographer,” -as Pope and Bolingbroke sarcastically<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> -dub him, grows less in your favour the -more you scan his sheets. His account of -Sheppard concludes with the most fulsome -professions of loyalty to the King and the -Protestant Succession, for which he is ready -to sacrifice his life. You note that he was -charged with administering the sacrament -for temporal ends, some scandal apparently -of shamful traffic in the elements. There is -no proof—indeed, we have nothing to go -on but his own denial; but it shows the -gossip whereof he was the centre. He had -ingenious methods of spreading his sale. -Thus he tells his readers that a fuller -account of a special case will be published -along with that of prisoners that go for -execution to-morrow. In the case of Nathaniel -Parkhurst, hanged May 20, 1715, -for the murder of Count Lewis Pleuro, he -actually reports the convict on the eve of -his execution cracking up in advance the -report which his ghostly comforter will -presently publish! Strange advertisements -fill up the odd corners of his broadsheets. -Here he puffs a manual of devotion by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> -himself; there the virtue of a quack medicine, -some sovran remedy for colic, gout, -toothache, “The Itch or any Itching -Humour.” Again, you have “The works of -Petronius Arbiter, with Cuts and a Key,” or -“Apuleius’s Golden Ass,” or some lewd -publication of the day. Even if the advertisements -were Paul’s publishers’, how -strange the man and the time that suffered -so incongruous a mixture! Our Ordinary -petitioned parliament that his precious -broadsheets might go free of the paper tax, -by reason of their edifying nature!</p> - -<p>Turn we now to the Hangman. No rare -figure <i>his</i> in Old England! Only in later -years was he individualised. In James I.’s -time a certain Derrick filled the office. The -playwrights keep his memory green, and the -crane so called is said to take its name from -him. Then there came Gregory Brandon, -who had “a fair coat of arms,” and the title -of esquire in virtue of his office. This was -through a mad practical joke of York -Herald, who, perceiving a solemn ass in -Garter King-at-Arms, sent him in the papers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> -somewhat ambiguously worded, and got the -grant in due form. York and Garter were -presently laid by the heels in the Marshalsea, -“one for foolery, the other for knavery.”</p> - -<p>Gregory was succeeded by his son, also called -Gregory, though his real name was Richard. -His infantile amusement was the heading -of cats and dogs, his baby fingers seemed -ever adjusting imaginary halters on invisible -necks; he was “the destined heir, From his -soft cradle, to his father’s chair”—or rather -cart and ladder. The younger Brandon was, -it seems quite certain, the executioner of -Charles I. Then followed Edward, commonly -known as Esquire Dun, and then the renowned -Jack Ketch, who went to his ghastly -work with so callous a disregard for human -suffering, or, as some fancied, with such -monstrous glee, that his name, becoming the -very synonym for hangman, clave to all his -successors. He “flourished” 1663-1686. -Dryden calls him an “excellent physician,” -and commemorates him more than once in -his full-resounding line. Some held Catch -his true patronymic and Ketch a corruption<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> -of Jacquet, the family name of those who -held the Manor of Tyburn during a great -part of the seventeenth century, but this, -however ingenious, seems too far-fetched. -The original Jack was ungracious and surly -even beyond the manner of his kind. In -January 1686, for insolence to the sheriffs, -“he was deposed and committed to Bridewell.” -Pascha Rose, a butcher, succeeded -but getting himself hanged in May Ketch -was reinstated. It is recorded that he struck -for higher pay—and got it too. You might -fancy that any one could adjust the “Tyburn -Tippet,” or “the riding knot an inch below -the ear.” But the business called for its -own special knack. In the <i>History of the -Press-yard</i> the Hangman is represented, after -the suppression of the 1715 Rising, as cheerfully -expectant, “provided the king does not -unseasonably spoil my market by reprieves -and pardons.” He will receive ample douceurs -“for civility-money in placing their halters’ -knot right under their left ear, and separating -their quarters with all imaginable decency.” -Ketch’s fancy hovered between a noble and a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> -highwayman. My Lord was never stingy with -tips; ’twere unseasonable and quite against -the traditions of his order. And the foppery -of the other made him a bird worth plucking. -I do not pretend to give a complete -catalogue of these rascals, yet two others I -must mention: John Price (1718) was arrested -for murder as he was escorting, it is said, a -felon to Tyburn. It was a brutal business, -and he richly deserved the halter. He got -it too! John Dennis led the attack on -Newgate in the Lord George Gordon No-Popery -Riots (<i>temp.</i> 1780, but of course you -remember your <i>Barnaby Rudge</i>). He was -like to have swung himself, but was continued -in his old occupation on condition of stringing -up his fellow-rioters. Of old time the -Hangman was (we are assured) sworn on the -Book to dispatch every criminal without -favour to father or relative or friend; and -he was then dismissed with this formula:—“Get -thee hence, wretch.” I have noted the -unwillingness to admit him into Newgate—his -wages were paid over the gate—and the -sorry condition of his equipage. This last<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> -gave a grotesque touch to his progress, -readily seized on by the jeering mob, which -had ever a curse or a missile for the scowling -wretch.</p> - -<p>In the centuries of its horrible virility, the -Tree at Tyburn slew its tens of thousands. -A record of famous cases would fill volumes. -I can but note a very few. The earliest -recorded, though they cannot have been the -first, were those of Judge Tressilian and -Nicholas Brembre, in February 1388. Their -offence was high treason, which meant in that -primitive time little more than a political -difference with the authorities. This -Brembre had been four times Mayor of -London. He proposed some startling innovations -in the city, one being to change its -name to New Troy (Geoffrey of Monmouth -perchance had turned his head). Here ended -Perkin Warbeck, that “little cockatrice -of a king” on whom Bacon lavishes such -wealth of vituperative rhetoric, after abusing -Henry VII.’s generosity more than once. The -savagery of Henry VIII. kept the executioner -busy, and he of Tyburn had his full<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> -share. On May 4, 1535, in open defiance -to every past tradition, the King caused -hang and quarter Haughton, the last prior -of the Charterhouse, in his sacerdotal robes, -without any previous ceremony of degradation, -after which “his arm was hung as a -bloody sign over the archway of the Charterhouse.” -In 1581, under Elizabeth, Campion -and Harte continued the long line of catholic -martyrs. Campion had been so cruelly -racked that he could not hold up his hand -to plead without assistance, yet he maintained -his courage through the raw December -morning whereon he suffered. At Tyburn -they vexed him with long discussions; but -at last, while he was yet praying for Elizabeth, -the cart drove away. Many of his -disciples stood round. They fought for -relics which the authorities were determined -they should not have, so that a young man -having dipped his handkerchief in the blood -was forthwith arrested. In the confusion -some one cut off a finger and conveyed it -away. Some one else offered twenty pounds -for a finger-joint, but the hangman dared<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> -not let it go. The fevered imagination of -Campion’s adorers saw wondrous signs. Some -pause in the flow of the Thames was noted -on that day, and was ascribed thereto. The -river</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="indent6">Awhile astonished stood</div> -<div class="verse">To count the drops of Campion’s sacred blood.</div> -</div></div> - -<p>Campion himself had long a presentiment -of his fate, which, considering the desperate -nature of his mission, was not wonderful; -and when occasion took him past the Triple -Tree he was moved to uncover his head. -Southwell, the “sweet singer” of the Catholic -reaction, told the end of his friend in a little -work printed at Douay, but in English, and -of course for English circulation; and in -1595 Southwell followed his brother priest. -His followers noted that, when his heart was -torn out, “it leaped from the dissector’s -hand and, by its thrilling, seemed to repel -the flames.” A strange legend—not quite -baseless, Mr. Gardner thinks—shows the -effect of such scenes on the Catholic mind. -Henrietta Maria, Charles I.’s queen, walked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> -barefoot to Tyburn, as to a shrine, at dead -of night, and did penance under the gallows -for the sins of her adopted country. A -felon of a very different order was Mrs. -Turner, who suffered (November 14, 1615) -for complicity in Sir Thomas Overbury’s -murder. She had invented yellow starch, -and my Lord Coke with a fine sense of the -picturesque ordained her to hang “in her -yellow Tinny Ruff and Cuff.” She dressed -the part gallantly; “her face was highly -rouged, and she wore a cobweb lawn ruff, -yellow starched.” The Hangman had also -yellow bands and cuffs, he tied her hands -with a black silk ribbon herself had provided, -as well as a black veil for her face. Being -turned off, she seemed to die quietly. But -yellow starch went hopelessly out of fashion!</p> - -<p>After the Restoration, the bodies of Cromwell, -Ireton, and Bradshaw were dug up at -Westminster, removed at night to the Red -Lion Inn, Holborn, drawn next morning -(January 30, 1661), the anniversary of -Charles’s death, to Tyburn, and there hanged -in their shrouds on the three wooden posts<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> -of the gallows. At nightfall they were -taken down and beheaded; the bodies being -there buried, whilst the heads adorned Westminster -Hall. Noll had his picturesque -historians before Carlyle. A wild tale arose -that his original funeral at the Abbey had -been but a mock ceremonial; for his body, -according to his own instructions, had been -secretly removed to Naseby, and buried at -nightfall on the scene of that victory. Even -if we disregard this legend, the subsequent -adventures of Cromwell’s head have been a -matter of as much concern to antiquaries -as ever the Royal Martyr’s was to Mr. -Dick.</p> - -<p>Time would fail to narrate the picturesque -and even jovial exits of those “curled darlings” -of the <i>Tyburn Calendar or Malefactors’ -Bloody Register</i> (or any other form of the -<i>Newgate Chronicle</i>), those idols of the popular -imagination, the Caroline and Georgian -highwaymen. Swift pictures the very ideal -in <i>Clever Tom Clinch</i>, who—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="indent7">... while the rabble was bawling,</div> -<div class="verse">Rode stately through Holborn to die in his calling;</div> -<div class="verse">He stopped at the George for a bottle of sack,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></div> -<div class="verse">And promised to pay for it—when he came back.</div> -<div class="verse">His waistcoat and stockings and breeches were white.</div> -<div class="verse">His cap had a new cherry-ribbon to tie’t;</div> -<div class="verse">And the maids to the doors and the balconies ran,</div> -<div class="verse">And cried “Lack-a-day! he’s a proper young man!”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>But how to summarise the infinite variety of -detail? To tell how, when Claude Duval -swung (January 21, 1670) Ladies of Quality -looked on in tears and masks; how he lay -in more than royal state in Tangier Tavern, -St. Giles’s; and how they carved on his -stone “in the centre aisle of Covent Garden -Church,” the pattern of a highwayman’s -epitaph:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">Here lies Du Vall: reader, if male thou art,</div> -<div class="verse">Look to thy purse; if female, to thy heart.</div> -</div></div> - -<p>How the mob bolted with Jack Sheppard’s -body (November 16, 1724) to save the -“bonny corp” from the surgeon’s knife! -How Jonathan Wild, “the Great” (May 24, -1725), during the finishing touches picked -the Ordinary’s pocket of his corkscrew, and -was turned off with it still in his hand -(thus Fielding: Purney was the ordinary.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> -<i>His</i> account is quite different), to the unspeakable -delight of that enormous body of -spectators, to which Sheppard’s two hundred -thousand onlookers were (Defoe assures us) -no more to be compared than is a regiment -to an army. How Sixteen-string Jack -(November 30, 1774), his “bright pea-green -coat” and “immense nosegay” were almost -<i>too</i> magnificent even for so noble an occasion. -Alas! not ours to dwell on such details; let -the brave rogues go!</p> - -<p>I cull one instance from the peerage. -Earl Ferrers suffered at Tyburn (May 5, -1760) for the death of Johnson, his land -steward. He dressed in his wedding clothes, -“a suit of white and silver”: “as good an -occasion,” he observed, “for putting them on, -as that for which they were first made” (his -treatment of his wife had indirectly brought -about the murder). Every consideration -was paid to my Lord’s feelings: “A landau -with six horses” was <i>his</i> Tyburn cart, and a -silk rope <i>his</i> “anodyne necklace”; and yet -things did not go smoothly. The mob was -so enormous that the journey took three<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> -hours. It was far worse than hanging, he -protested to the sheriffs. His very handsome -tip of five guineas was handed by mistake -to the Hangman’s man, and an unseemly -altercation ensued. My Lord toed the line -with anxious care. “Am I right?” were his -last words. The accurate fall of the drop -must have satisfied him that he was.</p> - -<p>I must not neglect the clergy. Here the -leading case is obviously that of Dr. Dodd, -hanged for forgery (June 27, 1777). The -strange ups and down of his life (“he descended -so low as to become the editor of a -newspaper”) are not for this page. The -maudlin piety of his last days is no pleasant -spectacle. Dr. Newton, Bishop of Bristol, -thought him deserving of pity “because -hanged for the least crime he had committed.” -Dr. Samuel Johnson did all he could to save -him; also wrote his address to the judge (sentence -had been respited) in reply to the usual -question, as well as the sermon he delivered -in Newgate Chapel three weeks before the -end. The King sternly refused a reprieve. -No doubt he was right. The very manner<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> -of the deed seems to argue not a first, only -a first discovered, offence. His doggerel -<i>Thoughts in Prison</i> is his chief literary -crime. He went in a coach. His “considerable -time in praying,” and “several -showers of rain,” rendered the mob somewhat -impatient. He was assisted by two -clergymen. One was very much affected; -“the other, I suppose, was the Ordinary, as -he was perfectly indifferent and unfeeling in -everything he said and did.” Villette was -then Ordinary. He wrote an account (after -the most approved pattern) of Dodd’s unhappy -end. The pair had spent much time -together in Newgate, and one hopes the -report of Villette’s behaviour is mistaken or -inaccurate, though it is that of an eye-witness, -a correspondent of George Selwyn himself -an enthusiastic amateur of executions, -who, when he had a tooth drawn, let fall his -handkerchief <i>à la Tyburn</i>, as a signal for the -operation. James Boswell had a like craze. -He went in a mourning coach with the Rev. -James Hackman when that divine was -hanged (April 19, 1779) for the murder of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> -Miss Reay. When Hackman let fall the -handkerchief for signal it fell <i>outside</i> the -cart, and Ketch with an eye to small -perquisites jumped down to secure it <i>before</i> -he whipped up the horse. These are all -names more or less known. There are -hundreds of curious incidents connected with -obscure deaths. Here are a few samples:—In -1598 “some mad knaves took tobacco -all the way as they went to be hanged at -Tyburn.” In 1677, a woman and “a little -dog ten inches high” were hanged side by -side as accomplices—“a hideous prospect,” -comments our chronicler. In 1684 Francis -Kirk, having murdered his wife, must end at -Tyburn. Shortly before he had seen a fellow -hanged there for making away with <i>his</i> -spouse; and this, he confessed, had inspired -him!</p> - -<p>One John Austin had the distinction of -being the last person executed at Tyburn -(November 7, 1783). Reformers had long -denounced the procession as a public scandal. -The sheriffs had some doubts as to their -powers; but the judges, being consulted,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> -assured them they could end it an they -would. A month after (December 9, -1783) the gallows was at work in front of -Newgate, and Old London lost its most -exciting spectacle. Dr. Johnson frankly -regretted the change:—“Executions are intended -to draw spectators, if they do not -draw spectators they lose their reason. The -old method was more satisfactory to all -parties. The public was gratified by a procession, -the criminal was supported by it. -Why is all this to be swept away?” In -truth, the change of scene was an illogical -compromise: the picturesque effect was gone—save -for an occasional touch, as after -Holling’s execution, when the dead hand was -thrust into a woman’s bosom, to remove a -mark or wen—the disorderly mob remained, -nay, was a greater scandal at the centre than -in the suburbs. Dickens is but one of many -writers who knowing their London well -described the unedifying walk and talk of -the crowd before Newgate; and in 1868 -private was substituted for public execution -throughout the land. I do not criticise any<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> -system: I do but point out that of the two -sets of opposing forces noted as working on -the criminal’s mind, the latter, in a private -execution, is entirely suppressed.</p> - -<p>Tyburn and its memories, its criminals, its -Hangmen, its Ordinaries, filled a great space -in popular imagination, and have frequent -mention in our great writers. Shakespeare -himself has “The shape of Love’s Tyburn”; -and Dryden’s “Like thief and parson in a -Tyburn cart” is a stock quotation. But I -cannot string a chaplet of these pearls. Yet -two phrases I must explain. A felon who -“prayed his clergy” was during some centuries -branded on the crown of his thumb with the -letter T, ere he was released, to prevent a -second use of the plea. This was called, in -popular slang, the Tyburn T. Ben Jonson -was so branded (October, 1598) for killing -Gabriel Spencer, the actor, in a duel. Again -a statute of 1698 (10 Will. III. c. 12), provided -for those who prosecuted a felon to -conviction a certificate freeing them from -certain parochial duties. This was known as -a “Tyburn ticket.” It had a certain money<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> -value, because if unused it could be assigned -once. The privilege was abolished in 1827 -(7 and 8 Geo. IV. c. 27), but it was allowed -as late as 1856 to a certain Mr. Pratt, of -Bond Street, who by showing his ticket -(which must have been thirty years old) -escaped service on an Old Bailey jury.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> -<h2 class="nobreak">Pillory and Cart’s-Tail</h2></div> - -<blockquote> - -<p class="hangingindent">Hood and Lamb on the Pillory—Its Various Shapes—Butcher -and Baker—Brawler and Scold—Fraudulent -Attorneys—End of the Pillory and of Public -Whipping—Literary Martyrs—De Foe—Prynne, -Bastwick, and Burton—Case of Titus Oates—The -Tale of a Cart—Some Lesser Sufferers.</p></blockquote> - - -<p><span class="smcap">Hood</span> has comically told of his pretended -experiences in the Pillory:—“It is a sort of -Egg-Premiership: a place above your fellows, -but a place which you have on trial. You -are not without the established political vice, -for you are not exempt from turning,”—with -more punning cogitations of a like nature. -Of rarer humour is Charles Lamb’s <i>Reflections -in the Pillory</i>, with its invocation to them -that once stood therein:—“Shades of Bastwick -and of Prynne hover over thee—Defoe -is there, and more greatly daring Shebbeare—from -their (little more elevated) stations -they look down with recognitions. Ketch,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> -turn me!” A century or so earlier these -ingenious wits had possibly stood therein—in -fact and not in fancy. It was a way our -old-time rulers had of rewarding ingenious -wits. And not wits alone: since for many -centuries it was in daily use throughout the -length and breadth of Merrie England.</p> - -<p>Our treatment of crime is the exact opposite -of our forefathers’. Our criminal toils, -is flogged, is hanged in private; the old idea -was to make punishment as public as possible, -for so penalty and effect (it was thought) -were heightened and increased. The Pillory -was the completest expression of this idea. -A man was exposed for sixty minutes in the -market-place at the busiest hour of the day, -and the public itself was summoned to -approve of and aid the punishment. The -thing was known in old Saxon days. In the -laws of Withred it is called <i>healsfang</i>. The -mediæval Latin name for it was <i>collistrigium</i>. -Both terms = a “catch for the neck.” Its -form varied. The simplest was a wooden -frame or screen, with three holes in it, elevated -some feet above the ground. The culprit stood<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> -behind upon a platform, his head and hands -caught in and stuck through the aforesaid -holes. This was much like the stocks, save -that there the patient sat instead of stood -and had his feet enclosed instead of his head -and hands. In popular phrase this was “to -peep through the nut-crackers.” Again, the -structure swung on a pivot; so that the -inmate might face the compass points in -turn. Sometimes, though this was rather a -foreign fashion, it was so commodious that it -would take a nosegay of twelve; at the same -time that it went revolving and revolving—a -very far from merry-go-round! Now (as -at Dublin) it was the kernel of a large and -imposing structure of stone. Now (as at -Coleshill, in Warwickshire) it stood a deft -arrangements of uprights, boards, and holes, -and did triple duty—as stocks, as whipping-post, -as Pillory. Now, yet again (as at -Marlborough, in Wiltshire), the frame turned -on a swivel at the will of the patient, whose -deft twistings in dodging missiles hugely -delighted the grinning mob. With pen and -pencil Mr. Llewellyn Jewitt and other antiquarians<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> -have preserved for our delectation -yet other forms.</p> - -<p>The Pillory was first used for dishonest -bakers, brewers, corn-sellers, and the like. -Then, its offices were extended to divers -kinds of misdemeanants. Later, it was the -lot of your scurrile pamphleteer, your libeller, -and your publisher of unlicensed volumes. -The victim was not always pelted; for feeling -might run high against the Government; and -when he was acclaimed his shame became -his glory. So the thing served as a weather-glass -of popular opinion.</p> - -<p>I turn to some historic instances. Under -Henry III., by the Assize of Bread and Ale, -it was decreed that knavish bakers, brewers, -and butchers be “set on the pyllory.” It -was also provided that “The pyllory shal be -of a metely strengthe, so that they that be -fautye may be thereon without any jeopardye -of their lyvys.” (The platform must not -seldom have broken down, leaving the “worm -of the hour” suspended by the neck—that -had been securely fastened—in peril of -strangulation, in a case of this sort, under<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> -Elizabeth, he sued the town, and recovered -damages.) The articles of usage for the -City of London, published under Edward I., -set forth some evil humours of the time. -Rustical simplicity fell, then as now, an -easy prey to urban cunning. What rascals -these mediæval cits were, to be sure! Thus, -your corn dealer would take in grain from -harmless necessary bumpkins, to whom he -would give an earnest, telling them to come -to his house for payment. Here he met -them with a long face:—his wife had gone -out with the key of the cash-box; would his -country friends call again? And when they -do, he is “not in.” (Ah! That “call -again” and that “not in!” Were they -stale so many centuries ago?) If the rogue -were discovered, he impudently denied his -debt:—he had never seen the gentlemen -before; or, raising some dispute about the -price, he told him to take back his goods—when -the corn was found too wet for removal. -“By these means the poor men lose half -their pay in expenses before they are settled -with;” and the wrong-doer is to be amerced<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> -heavily. Being unable to pay, “then he -shall be put on the Pillory, and remain there -an hour in the day at least; a Serjeant of -the City standing by the side of the Pillory -with good hue-and-cry as to the reason why -he is punished.” The wicked butcher suffered -after the same fashion; while the baker, who -put off bad bread, was drawn—for the first -offence upon a hurdle from the Guildhall to -his own house, by “the great streets that -are most dirty, with the faulty loaf hanging -about his neck,” a spectacle to gods and a -cockshy for men. For the second offence he -processioned as before; and, to boot, he -must stand in the Pillory for an hour. -Offending for the third time, he was judged -incorrigible: his oven was dismantled, and -he might bake within the city bounds no -more. Sure, the ancient London loaf, be it -<i>manchet</i>, or <i>chete</i>, or mere <i>mystelon</i>, must -ever have been of good quality? When, -indeed, did the falling off begin? Was it -when the city fathers unwisely took to -regulating men’s morals? In the seventh of -Richard II. this punishment was ordained for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> -the man of evil life:—“Let his head and -beard be shaved except a fringe on the head -two inches in breadth, and let him be taken -to the Pillory, with minstrels, and set thereon -for a certain time, at the discretion of the -Mayor and Aldermen.” As for the erring -sister, she was taken from the prison into -Aldgate with a hood of ray and a white -wand in her hand. From Aldgate minstrels -played her to the Thew (a species of Pillory -for women). Thence, her offence being proclaimed, -she was led “through Chepe and -Newgate to Cokkes Lane, there to take up -her abode.” Again, the brawler or the scold -must hold a distaff with tow in hand—and -so on; for your old-time law-giver lusted -after variation.</p> - -<p>Once the Pillory was an indispensable -ornament of the market-place. Nay, were it -not kept fit for use, the very right to hold a -market might be lost. As an emblem of -power, it was claimed by the great lords: -often, indeed, it went with the lordship of -the manor. Thus at Beverley, in the -twenty-first of Edward I., John, Archbishop<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> -of York, claims the right of Pillory with the -right of gallows and gibbet; and with the -right of Pillory the right of tumbrell, which -was the dung-cart wherein minor malefactors -were shamefully trundled through the town. -Legislative ingenuity was ever striving to -devise fresh marks of ignominy. Stow relates -that, in the seventh of Edward IV., certain -common jurors must (for their partial -conduct) ride in paper mitres from Newgate -to the Pillory in Cornhill, and there do -penance for their fault. Again, in the first -of Henry VIII. (1509), Smith and Simpson, -ringleaders of false inquests, rode the City -(also in paper mitres) with their faces to the -horse’s tail; and they were set on the Pillory -in Cornhill; and they were brought again to -Newgate, where they died from very shame. -The like fate, it seems, befell a much later -offender, one James Morris, who was pilloried -(April 2, 1803) for fraud in the market -place at Lancaster. Next morning he was -found dead in his bed, and the coroner’s jury -brought it in as “visitation of God.” Oft-times -the sufferer came less mysteriously to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> -his end. The mobility was, in effect, invited, -as it were, to italicise his sentence in terms -of anything you please, from rotten eggs to -brickbats. Not seldom it did so to the -sternest purpose. On June 22, 1732, contemporary -prints report:—“Last night the -corpse of John Walker, who was killed in -the Pillory on Tuesday last, was buried at -St. Andrew’s, Holborn;” and among the -casualties of the December of that same year, -the case of another poor wretch is dismissed -with “murder’d in the pillory.” In 1756 -Egon and two others were pilloried for procuring -the commission of a robbery, in order -to get a reward for its detection. Egon was -stoned to death. On one or two occasions—notably -when Elizabeth Collier was pilloried -by order of Jeffreys in 1680—the authorities -were ordered to see that the peace was kept and -that the culprit suffered the exposure alone.</p> - -<p>A long list might be given of misdemeanours -punished by the Pillory:—as, practising -the art magick; cutting a purse; placing a -piece of iron in a loaf of bread; selling bad -oats, stinking eels, strawberry pottles half<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> -fall of fern; vending ale by measures not -sealed and thickening the bottom of such -measures with pewter. As (also) lies, defamations, -and libels of all sorts. If the lie -were notorious, or were told of the mayor -or any other dignitary, the liar was pilloried -with a whetstone round his neck: whence -it came that a whetstone was the popular -reward for audacious mendacity, and “lying -for the whetstone” was a current phrase.</p> - -<p>Late Tudor and Stuart times edged and -weighted the punishment of the Pillory. It -might be preceded by a flogging at the Cart’s-tail. -Stripped to the waist, the culprit, man -or woman, was tied to the hinder end (our -fathers used a shorter phrase) of a cart, -and was thus lashed through the streets. -(This vulgarly was called, “Shoving the -tumbler,” or “Crying carrots and turnips.”) -Or, as Butler’s couplet reminds us, the -patient’s ears were nailed to the wood:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">Each window like a Pillory appears,</div> -<div class="verse">With heads thrust through, nail’d by the ears.</div> -</div></div> - -<p>Or his ears were cropped, and not seldom his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> -nose was slit likewise. In 1570, Timothy -Penredd was pilloried in Chepe on two successive -market-days for counterfeiting the -seal of the Queen’s Bench. Each time an -ear was nailed; and this poor member he -must free “by his own proper motion.” If -the wrench were too great for human fortitude, -the thoughtful authorities lent some aid. -In one case (1552) the culprit would not “rent -his eare”; so that in the long run “one of -the bedles slitted yt upwards with a penkniffe -to loose it.” Indeed, the law had a strong -grudge against the ears of malefactors. The -fourteenth of Elizabeth, cap. 5, ordered that -vagrants be grievously whipped and burned -through the gristle of the right ear, unless -some credible person took them to service (if -they relapsed they were hanged). The punishments -of the time show a curious alternation -between Pillory and Cart. Thus, whilst -keepers of immoral houses were carted about -the town to the music of ringing basins, in -the eleventh of James I., William Barnwell, -“gentleman” (an inaccurate description had -vitiated the indictment), and his wife<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> -Thomasina, criminals of the same class, were -whipped at the Cart’s-tail from the prison to -their house, and back again. Thus, too, were -handled those who lived by cards and dice; but, -for witchcraft, Dorothy Magicke was set four -times a year upon the Pillory, and must thereon -make public confession. This man capers dolefully -at the Cart’s-tail for stealing lead; that -must take his turn in the Pillory for snatching -three-pence worth of hairs from a mare’s -tail. Later, it was thought excellent -for fraudulent attorneys. In November -1786 one “Mr. A——” (the name is thus -disguised), a legal gentleman, was brought -from Newgate in a hackney cab and pilloried -for an hour hard by the gate of Westminster -Hall. What he did, and how he fared, we -are not told; so it may be that his hap was -even as Thomas Scott’s, pilloried for a false -accusation in January 1804. Scott was -pelted with rotten eggs, filth, and dirt of the -street. Also, the neighbouring ragamuffins -had thoughtfully collected good store of -dead cats and rats “in the vicinity of the -metropolis” that morning.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>Was it so very edifying after all? Opinions -began to differ. Yet Lord Thurlow solemnly -cracked it up “as a restraint against licentiousness -provided by the wisdom of our -ancestors”; and in 1814 Lord Ellenborough -ordered Lord Cochrane to be pilloried for -conspiring to spread false news. The justice -of this last abominable sentence was questioned. -Sir Francis Burdett, Cochrane’s -fellow-member for Middlesex, vowed that he -would stand with him on the day of punishment; -but the Government did not venture -to carry out the sentence. Two years later, -in 1816, the punishment of Pillory was -restricted to persons guilty of perjury; and -in 1837, by the 1 Vict. cap. 23, it was -abolished altogether. The last person who -suffered it is said to have been Peter James -Bossy, pilloried in front of the Old Bailey, -June 24, 1830. The public whipping of -women went in 1817; the private followed -in 1820 by 1 Geo. IV. cap. 57. The -whipping of men for a common law misdemeanour -has never been formally abolished; -but the punishment is now inflicted only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> -under the Garrotters Act (1863) for robbery -with violence; which, of course, has nothing -to do with existing statutory provisions for -the flogging of juvenile male offenders. I -should add that in America Pillory and -Whipping-Post were “an unconscionable -time a-dying”; lingered especially in the -State of Delaware; and that their restoration -has been urged.</p> - -<p>The Finger Pillory deserves a word. It -was fixed up inside churches (that of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, -for instance) and halls. Boys -who misbehaved during service, and offenders -at festive times against the mock reign of -the lord of misrule, alike expiated their -offences therein.</p> - -<p>I note some remarkable cases. First, and -most important, is the group of literary -martyrs. The Stuart Government could not -crush the press; but author, printer, and -publisher all worked in peril of the Pillory. -The author of <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> was, perhaps, -its most famous inmate.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">Earless on high stood unabash’d De Foe,</div> -<div class="verse">And Tutchin flagrant from the scourge below,</div> -</div></div> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>sings Pope in the <i>Dunciad</i> with reckless inaccuracy. -In 1703, De Foe, for his <i>Shortest -Way with the Dissenters</i>, was condemned to -stand thrice in the Pillory before the Royal -Exchange, near the Conduit in Cheapside, -and at Temple Bar. The mob, he tells us, -treated him very well, and cheered long and -loud when he was taken out of what he calls -a “Hieraglyphick state machine; Contrived -to punish fancy in” (<i>Hymn to the Pillory</i>). -He comforts himself by reflecting that the -learned Selden narrowly escaped it, and turns -the whole thing to ridicule; but then mutilation -was no port of the sentence. Pope’s -reference to John Tutchin is still wider of the -mark. Tutchin, having narrowly escaped -death for his share in Monmouth’s rebellion, -was sentenced by Jeffreys, on his famous -Western Circuit (1685), to seven years’ imprisonment, -during which he must, once a -year, be whipped through every market-town -in Dorsetshire. The very clerk of the court -was moved to protest that this meant a -whipping once a fortnight; but the sentence -remained. Out of bravado, or in desperation,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> -the prisoner petitioned the King to be hanged -instead of whipped; but, in the result, he -was neither whipped nor hanged. He fell -ill of the small-pox; passion cooled; and, -intelligently bribing, he escaped, to visit -Jeffreys in the Tower. Apparently he went -to gloat, but remained to accept the ruined -Chancellor’s explanation, that he had only -obeyed instructions. “So after he had -treated Mr. <i>Tutchin</i> with a glass of wine, -Mr. <i>Tutchin</i> went away.”</p> - -<p>Another of Pope’s examples is “old -Prynne,” cropped (in 1632) in the Pillory -for his <i>Histriomastic</i>, or Players’ Scourge, -which was held to reflect on Charles I.’s -Queen. Again he stood there in 1637, -when the executioner cruelly mangled the -ancient stumps. A quite incorrigible person -was this same William Prynne, described by -Marchmont Needham as “one of the greatest -paper worms that ever crept about a library.” -He wrote some forty works remarkable for -virulence even in that age of bitter polemics. -He strenuously supported the Restoration, -and the new Government was at its wit’s end<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> -what to do with him till Charles himself -solved the difficulty with happy humour. -“Let him amuse himself with writing against -the Catholics and poring over the records in -the Tower,” said the king; and silenced him -with the Keepership of the Records and -£500 a year. Prynne’s second appearance -was for a bitter attack on Laud; and he had -as fellow-sufferers John Bastwick, who had -written a sort of mock <i>Litanie</i>, and Henry -Burton. Bastwick was “very merrie.” His -wife “got on a stool and kissed him;” and, -“his ears being cut off, she called for them, -put them in a clean handkerchief, and carried -them away with her.” There was a great -crowd, which “cried and howled terribly, -especially when Burton was cropped.” Being -angered by the jeers and execrations of the -mob, the executioner did his work very -brutally. Pope’s Billingsgate is classic, but -it remains Billingsgate. The Pillory shows -often in his verse. Edmund Curl was a pet -aversion of his, and for publishing the -<i>Memoirs of Ker of Kersland</i> Curl suffered -the punishment at Charing Cross on Feb. 23,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> -1728. Pope hints (<i>Dunciad</i>, II. 3 and 4) that -he was badly handled by the mob. In truth -he came off very well, owing, it seems, to an -explanatory circular he got distributed among -the spectators.</p> - -<p>As time wore on the punishment reverted -to its earlier and milder form. Thus, in -1630, Dr. Leighton, for his <i>Zion’s Plea -against Prelacy</i>, was pilloried, branded, -cropped, and whipped; but the authors of -the eighteenth century were punished by -exposure alone, and were often solaced by -popular sympathy. In 1765 Williams, the -bookseller, stood in the Pillory for re-publishing -<i>The North Briton</i>: he held a sprig -of laurel in his hand, and a large collection -was made for him then and there. In derision -of authority the mob displayed (<i>inter -alia</i>) the famous Bootjack—the popular -reference to Lord Bute, the late Prime -Minister. Still more farcical was the exposure -(1759) of Dr. Shebbeare for publishing -political libels. He was attended on the -platform by a servant in livery holding an -umbrella over his head, and his neck and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> -arms were not confined. The court thought -the under-sheriff of Middlesex something -more than remiss: wherefore he was fined -and imprisoned, it being judicially decided -that the culprit must stand not merely <i>on</i> -but <i>in</i> the Pillory. In this connexion I will -only further mention the case of Eton the -publisher, “a very old man,” who in 1812 -was pilloried for printing Paine’s <i>Age of -Reason</i>. Here, again, the crowd, by the -respect it heaped upon the prisoner, altogether -eliminated the sting from the punishment. -The minor scribe of to-day is -supposed to court an action, nay, a criminal -prosecution, as a stimulus to circulation; a -former age saw in the Pillory the best possible -advertisement for the Grub Street hack. In -Foote’s <i>Patron</i>, Puff, the publisher, urges -Dactyl to produce a satire; and, when the -proposed risk is hinted at, retorts: “Why, -I would not give twopence for an author who -was afraid of his ears.... Why, zooks, -sir! I never got salt for my porridge till I -mounted at the Royal Exchange, that was -the making of me.... The true Castalian<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> -stream is a shower of eggs and a Pillory the -poet’s Parnassus.”</p> - -<p>Among cases other than literary, a notable -one is that of Titus Oates (1685), who, being -convicted of perjury, was sentenced to stand -in the Pillory and be whipped at the Cart’s-tail. -The lashing was so cruelly done that -you feel some pity even for that arch rascal. -The curious computed that he received 2256 -strokes with a whip of six thongs—13,536 -strokes in all. Yet the wretch lived to enjoy -a pension after the Revolution! There was -another remarkable instance that same year. -Thomas Dangerfield, convicted of libelling -the King when Duke of York, was sentenced -to a fine, to the Pillory, and to be whipped -from Aldgate to Newgate, and from Newgate -to Tyburn. The dreadful work was -over, and he was returning prisonwards in a -coach, when there steps forward Robert -Francis, a barrister of Gray’s Inn, with the -cruel jibe, “How now, friend? Have you -had your heat this morning?” Dangerfield -turned on him with bitter curses (“Son of a -wh——” is the elegant sample preserved by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> -the records). Francis, much enraged, thrust -at the aching, smarting, bleeding wretch with -a small cane, and by mischance put out an -eye, so that in two hours Dangerfield was -dead; and no great while thereafter he himself -was tried, condemned, and hanged. According -to the testimony of the Rev. Mr. Samuel -Smith, Ordinary at Newgate, he made a very -edifying end.</p> - -<p>Quite interesting is the case of Japhet -Crook, <i>alias</i> Sir Peter Stringer, whose unhappy -memory is preserved in some of Pope’s -most biting lines. In 1731, poor Japhet -stood in the Pillory at Charing Cross for -forging a deed; when the hangman, dressed -like a butcher, “with a knife like a gardener’s -pruning knife cut off his ears, and with a pair -of scissors slit both his nostrils.” The -wretch endured all this with great patience; -but at the searing “the pain was so great -that he got up from his chair.” No wonder! -Two years after Eleanor Beare, keeper of -“The White Horse,” Nuns Green, Derby, -was pilloried (August 1732) after just -escaping the gallows for murder. She<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> -mounted the platform “with an easy air”; -thus exasperating a mob already ill-disposed, -which bombarded her with apples, -eggs, turnips, and so forth; so that “the -stagnate kennels were robbed of their contents, -and became the cleanest part of the -street.” Managing to escape, she dashed off, -“a moving heap of filth,” but was presently -seized and lugged back; and at the end of -the hour she was carried to prison, “an object -which none cared to touch.” A week after -she was again forced to take her stand. The -officer noted that her head was wondrous -swelled, and he presently stripped it of “ten -or twelve coverings,” whereof one was a -pewter plate. Her aspect was most forlorn, -but the crowd, no whit moved, pelted its -hardest, and she was borne away more dead -than alive. Yet she too not only lived, but -“recovered her health, her spirits, and her -beauty.” Two lighter instances, and I have -done. In the early stages of Monmouth’s -rebellion, an astrologer, consulting the stars, -saw that the duke would be presently King of -England. After Sedgemoor he was cast into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> -Dorchester Gaol for this unlucky prediction. -Again falling to his observations, he clearly -read “that he would be whipped at the -Cart’s ——”; and this time the planets -spoke true. In 1783, the poet Cowper -reports one humorous case from his own -experience. At Olney a man was publicly -whipped for theft; he whealed with every -stroke; but that was only because the beadle -drew the scourge against a piece of red ochre -hidden in his hand. Noting the fraud, the -parish constable laid his cane smartly about -the shoulders of the all too-lenient official, -whereat a country wench, in high dudgeon, -set to pomelling the constable. And of the -three the thief alone escaped punishment.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> -<h2 class="nobreak">State Trials for Witchcraft</h2></div> - -<blockquote> - -<p class="hangingindent">Early Laws against Witchcraft—The Essex Witches—The -Devon Witches—The Bury St. Edmunds -Case—Bewitched Children—The Scepticism of -Serjeant Keeling—Evidence of Sir Thomas Browne—The -Judge’s Charge—The End of it All—The -Trial of Richard Hathaway—The Comic Side of -Superstition—A Rogue’s Punishment—A Word in -Conclusion.</p></blockquote> - - -<p><span class="smcap">I propose</span> to examine the Witchcraft cases -in Howell’s twenty-one bulky volumes of -State Trials. The general subject, even in -England, is too vast for detailed treatment -here; also it is choked with all manner of -absurdities. In a trial some of these are -pared away: you know what the people saw, -or believed they saw, and you have the -declarations of the witches themselves. Only -five cases, all between 1616 (13 Jac. I.) and -1702 (1 Anne) are reported. The selection -is capricious, for some famous prosecutions<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> -as that of the Lancashire witches are omitted, -but it is fairly representative.</p> - -<p>In the early times Witchcraft and sorcery -were left to the Church. In 1541, 33 Hen. -VIII. c. 8, made both felony without “benefit -of clergy;” and by the 1 Jac. I. c. 12, all -persons invoking any evil spirit, or taking up -dead bodies from their graves to be used in -any Witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment, -or killing or otherwise hurting any -person by such infernal arts, shall be guilty -of felony without “benefit of clergy,” and -suffer death. King James’s views on Witchcraft -and his skill (whereon he greatly plumed -himself) as witch-finder are famed. Royal -influence went hand-in-hand with popular -superstition. In less than a century and a -half, legislative if not vulgar ideas were -altered, and in 1736, by 9 Geo. II. c. 5, the -laws against Witchcraft were swept away, -though charlatans professing the occult -sciences were still punished as cheats.</p> - -<p>I pass as of little interest Howell’s first -case, that of Mary Smith, in 1616. More -worthy of note are the proceedings against<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> -the Essex witches, some twenty in number, -condemned at the Chelmsford Sessions on -July 29, 1645, before the Earl of Warwick -and other Justices. One noted witch -was Elizabeth Clarke to whom the devil -had appeared “in the shape of a proper -gentleman with a laced band, having the -whole proportion of a man.” She had certain -imps, whom she called Jamara (“a -white dogge with red spots”), Vinegar Tom, -Hoult, and Sack and Sugar. So far the information -of Matthew Hopkins, of Manningtree, -gent., who further said that the same -evening whereon the accused confessed those -marvels to him, “he espied a white thing -about the bignesse of a kitlyn,” which bit a -piece out of his greyhound, and in his own -yard that very night “he espied a black -thing proportioned like a cat, only it was -thrice as big, sitting on a strawberry-bed, and -fixing the eyes on this informant.”</p> - -<p>John Sterne, gent., had equal wonders of -imps the size of small dogs, and how Sack -and Sugar were like to do him hurt. ’Twere -well, said the malevolent Elizabeth, “that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> -this informant were so quick, otherwise the -said impe had soone skipped upon his face, -and perchance had got into his throate, and -then there would have been a feast of toades -in this informant’s belly.” The witch -Clarke ascribed her undoing to Anne Weste, -widow, here usually called Old Beldam Weste, -who, coming upon her as she was picking up -a few sticks, and seeming to pity her for -“her lamenesse (having but one leg) and her -poverty,” promised to send her a little kitten -to assist her. Sure enough, a few nights -after two imps appeared, who vowed to -“help her to an husband who should maintain -her ever after.” A country justice’s -notions of evidence are not supposed to be -exact even to-day; what they were then let -the information of Robert Tayler, also of -Manningtree, show. It seems Clarke had -accused one Elizabeth Gooding as a confederate. -Gooding was refused credit at -Tayler’s for half a pound of cheese, whereupon -“she went away muttering and -mumbling to herself, and within a few hours -came again with money and bought a pound<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> -of cheese of this informant.” That very -night Tayler’s horse fell grievously ill and -four farriers were gravelled to tell what ailed -it, but this portentous fact was noted: “the -belly of the said horse would rumble and -make a noyse as a foule chimney set on fire.” -In four days it was dead. Tayler had also -heard that certain confessed witches had -“impeached the said Elizabeth Gooding -for killing of this said horse,” moreover -Elizabeth kept company with notorious -witches—after which scepticism was scarce -permissible. Rebecca Weste, a prisoner -awaiting trial in Colchester, confessed how -at a witches’ meeting the devil appeared -to her in the shape of a dog and kissed her. -In less than six months he came again and -promised to marry her. “Shee said he -kissed her, but was as cold as clay, and -married her that night in this manner: he -tooke her by the hand and led her about the -chamber and promised to be a loving husband -to death, and to avenge her of her -enemies.”</p> - -<p>One Rawbood had taken a house over<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> -the head of Margaret Moon, another of the -accused, with highly unpleasant consequences. -Thus, Mrs. Rawbood, though a “very tydy -and cleanly woman, sitting upon a block, -after dinner with another neighbour, a little -before it was time to go to church upon an -Easter Day, the said Rawbood’s wife was on -a sudden so filled with lice that they might -have been swept off her clothes with a stick; -and this informant saith he did see them, -and that they were long and lean, and not -like other lice.” More gruesome were the -confessions of Rebecca Jones, of Osyth. One -fine day some twenty-five years past she, a -servant lass at Much-Clacton, was summoned -by a knock at the door, where she saw “a -very handsome young man, as shee then -thought, but now shee thinks it was the -devil.” Politely inquiring how she did, he -desired to see her left wrist, which being -shown him, he pulled out a pin “from this -examinant’s owne sleeve, and pricked her -wrist twice, and there came out a drop of -bloud, which he took off with the top of -his finger, and so departed”—leaving poor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> -Rebecca’s heart all in a flutter. About four -months afterwards as she was going to -market to sell butter, a “man met with her, -being in a ragged state, and having such -great eyes that this examinant was very -much afraid of him.” He presented her -with three things like to “moules,” which -she afterwards used to destroy her neighbours’ -cattle, and now and again her neighbours -themselves. In evidence against other -suspects there was mention of a familiar -called Elimanzer, who was fed with milk pottage, -and of imps called Wynowe, Jeso, Panu, -with many other remarkable particulars.</p> - -<p>The foregoing was collected before trial -as information upon oath; but this testimony -of Sir Thomas Bowes, knight, was -given from the bench during the trial -of Anne Weste, whom it concerned. He -reported that an honest man of Manningtree -passing Anne Weste’s door at the very -witching hour of night, in bright moonlight -saw four things like black rabbits emerge. -He caught one of them, and beat the head -of it against his stick, “intending to beat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> -out the braines of it,” failing in which benevolent -design, he next tried to tear off its -head, “and as he wrung and stretched the -neck of it, it came out between his hands -like a lock of wooll;” then he went to a -spring to drown it, but at every step he fell -down, yet he managed to creep to the water, -under which he held the thing “a good -space.” Thinking it was drowned he let go, -whereupon “it sprang out of the water into -the aire, and so vanished away.” There was -but one end possible for people who froze -the rustic soul with such pranks. Each and -all were soon dangling from the gallows.</p> - -<p>The case of the Devon witches tried at -Exeter in August 1682 is much like the -Essex business. The informations are stuffed -with grotesque horrors, yet it is hard to -believe that the accused—three poor women -from Bideford, two of them widows—had -been convicted but for their own confessions, -which are full of copious and minute details -of their dealings with Satan. Going to -their death, they were worried by Mr. H——, -a nonconformist preacher and (as is evident)<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> -a very pestilent fellow. “Did you pass -through the keyhole of the door, or was the -door open?” was one query. The witch -asserted that like other people she entered -by the door, though “the devil did lead me -upstairs.” Mr. H—— went on, “How do -you know it was the devil?” “I knew it by -his eyes,” she returned. Again, “Did you -never ride over an arm of the sea on a cow?”—an -exploit which the poor woman sturdily -disclaimed. Mr. H——, a little dissatisfied, -one fancies, prayed at them a while, after -which two of the women were turned off the -ladder. Mr. Sheriff tried his hand at the -survivor: he was curious as to the shape or -colour of the devil, and was answered that -he appeared “in black like a bullock.” He -again pressed her as to whether she went in -“through the keyhole or the door,” but she -alleged the more commonplace and (for a -witch) unorthodox mode of entry, “and so -was executed.”</p> - -<p>Between these two cases one occurred -wherein the best legal intellect of the day -was engaged—and with no better result. In<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> -March 1665, Rose Cullender and Amy Duny, -widows, were indicted at the Assizes at Bury -St. Edmunds for bewitching certain people. -Sir Matthew Hale, Lord Chief Baron of the -Exchequer, presided. “Still his name is of -account.” To an earlier time he seemed a -judge “whom for his integrity, learning, and -law, hardly any age, either before or since, -could parallel.” William Durant, an infant, -was one victim; his mother had promised -Amy Duny a penny to watch him, but she -was strictly charged not to give him suck. -To what end? queried the court reflecting -on Amy’s age. The mother replied: firstly, -Amy had the reputation of a witch, and -secondly, it was a custom of old women thus -to please the child, “and it did please the -child, but it sucked nothing but wind, which -did the child hurt.” The two women had a -quarrel on the subject: Amy was enraged, -and departed after some dark sayings, and -the boy forthwith fell into “strange fits of -swounding.” Dr. Jacob, of Yarmouth, an -eminent witch-doctor, advised “to hang up -the child’s blanket in the chimney-corner all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> -day, and at night when she put the child to -bed to put it into the said blanket, and if -she found anything in it she should not be -afraid, but throw it into the fire.” The -blanket was duly hung up, and taken down, -when a great toad fell out, which being -thrown into the fire made (not unnaturally) -“a great and horrible noise;” followed a -crack and a flash, and—exit the toad! The -court with solemn foolishness inquired if the -substance of the toad was not seen to consume? -and was stoutly answered “No.” -Next day Amy was discovered sitting alone -in her house in her smock without any fire. -She was in “a most lamentable condition,” -having her face all scorched with fire. This -deponent had no doubt as to the witch’s -guilt, “for that the said Amy hath been -long reputed to be a witch and a person -of very evil behaviour, whose kindred and -relations have been many of them accused -for witchcraft, and some of them have been -condemned.”</p> - -<p>Elizabeth Pacy was another bewitched -child. By direction of the judge, Amy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> -Duny was made to touch her, whereupon the -child clawed the Old Beldam till the blood -came—a portentous fact, for everybody knew -that the bewitched would naturally scratch -the tormentor’s face and thus obtain relief. -The father of the child, Samuel Pacy (whose -soberness and moderation are specially commended -by the reporter), now told how Amy -Duny thrice came to buy herrings, and, being -as often refused, “went away grumbling, but -what she said was not perfectly understood.” -Immediately his child Deborah fell sick, -whereupon Amy was set in the stocks. Here -she confessed that, when any of her offspring -were so afflicted, “she had been fain to open -her child’s mouth with a tap to give it -vitals,” which simple device the sapient Pacy -practised upon his brats with some effect, but -still continuing ill they vomited “crooked -pins and one time a twopenny nail with a -very broad head, which pins, amounting to -forty or more, together with the twopenny -nail, were produced in court,” so what room -was there for doubt? The children, continually -accusing Amy Duny and Rose Cullender<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> -as cause of their sickness, were packed off by -their distracted father to his sister at Yarmouth, -who now took up the wondrous -tale. When the younger child was taking -the air out of doors, “presently a little thing -like a bee flew upon her face, and would have -gone into her mouth.” She rushed indoors, -and incontinent vomited up a twopenny nail -with a broad head, whose presence she accounted -for thus: “the bee brought this nail -and forced it into her mouth”; from all which -the guilt of the witches was ever more evident.</p> - -<p>Even that age had its sceptics. Some people -in court, chief among them Mr. Serjeant -Keeling, whose position and learning made -it impossible to disregard their opinion, -“seemed much unsatisfied.” The learned -serjeant pointed out that even if the children -were bewitched, there was no real evidence -to connect the prisoners with the fact. -Then Dr. Browne, of Norwich, “a person of -great knowledge” (no other, alas! than the -Sir Thomas Browne of the <i>Religio Medici</i>), -made a very learned if confusing dissertation -on Witchcraft in general, with some curious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> -details as to a late “great discovery of -witches” in Denmark; which no whit advanced -the matter. Then there was another -experiment. Amy Duny was brought to one -of the children whose eyes were blinded. -The child was presently touched by another -person, “which produced the same effect as -the touch of the witch did in the court.” -The sceptical Keeling and his set now roundly -declared the whole business a sham, which -“put the court and all persons into a stand. -But at length Mr. Pacy did declare that -possibly the maid might be deceived by a -suspicion that the witch touched her when -she did not.” This was the very point the -sceptics were making, and was anything but -an argument in reply, though it seems to -have been accepted as such. And how to -suppose, it was urged, that innocent children -would tell such terrible lies? It was the -golden age of the rod; never was there fitter -occasion for its use. Once fancies a few -strokes had produced remarkable confessions -from the innocents! However, the court -went on hearing evidence. The judge<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> -summed up with much seeming impartiality, -much wooden wisdom, and the usual judicial -platitudes, all which after more than two -centuries you read with considerable irritation. -The jury upon half an hour’s deliberation -returned a verdict of guilty. Next -morning the children were brought to the -judge, “and Mr. Pacy did affirm that within -less than half an hour after the witches were -convicted they were all of them restored.” -After this, what place was left for doubt? -“In conclusion the judge and all the court -were fully satisfied with the verdict, and -thereupon gave judgment against the witches -that they should be hanged.” Three days -afterwards the poor unfortunates went to -their death. “They were much urged to -confess, but would not.”</p> - -<p>Finally, you have this much less tragic -business. In the first year of Queen Anne’s -reign (1702), Richard Hathaway was tried -at the Surrey Assizes before Lord Chief -Justice Holt for falsely accusing Sarah -Morduck of bewitching him. The offence -being a misdemeanour, the prisoner had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> -counsel, an advantage not then fully given -to those charged with felony. The trial -reads like one in our own day. The case -for the Crown had been carefully put together. -Possibly the authorities were striking -at accusations of and prosecutions for -Witchcraft. Sarah Morduck had been tried -and acquitted at Guildford Assizes for bewitching -Hathaway, whereupon this -prosecution had been ordered. Dr. Martin, -parish minister in Southwark, an able and -enlightened divine, had saved Sarah from -the mob, and so was led on to probe the -matter. He found Hathaway apparently -blind and dumb, but giving his assent by a -sign to the suggestion that he should scratch -Morduck, and so (according to the superstition -already noted) obtain relief. Dr. -Martin brought Sarah and a woman of the -same height called Johnson to the room -where the impostor lay, seemingly, at death’s -door. Morduck announced her willingness -to be scratched, and then Johnson’s hand was -put into his. Hathaway was suspicious, and -felt the arm very carefully, whereat the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> -parson “spoke to him somewhat eagerly: -If you will not scratch I will begone.” -Whereupon he clawed so lustily that Johnson -near fainted. She was forthwith hustled -out of the room and Morduck pushed -forward; but the rogue, fearing a trap, lay -quiet till Dr. Martin encouraged him by -simulated admiration. Then he opened -wide his eyes, “caught hold of the apron -of Sarah Morduck, and looked her in the -face,” thus implying that his supposed -scratching of her had restored his eyesight. -Being informed of his blunder he “seemed -much cast down,” but his native impudence -soon asserting itself, he gave himself out for -worse than ever, whilst Sarah Morduck, -anxious to be clear at any cost, declared that -not she but Johnson was the witch. The -popular voice roundly abused Dr. Martin for -a stubborn sceptic. Charges of bribery against -him, as well as against the judge and jury who -had acquitted Morduck, were freely bandied -about. Dr. Martin had got Bateman a friend -of his to see Hathaway, one of whose symptoms -was the vomiting of pins. His evidence<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> -was that the rogue scattered the pins about -the room by sleight of hand; Bateman had -taken several parcels of them, almost by -force, out of his pocket. Kensy, a surgeon, -further told how Hathaway, being committed -to his care, at first would neither eat nor -drink. Kensy being afraid that he would -starve himself to death sooner than have -his cheat discovered, arranged a pretended -quarrel with his maid Baker, who supplied -the patient with food as if against his orders. -Indeed, she plied him so well with meat and -drink that, so she told the court, “he was -very merry and danced about, and took the -tongs and played upon them, but after that -he was mightily sick and vomited sadly”—but -there were no pins and needles! She -further told how four gentlemen, privily -stored away in the buttery and coal-hole, -witnessed Hathaway’s gastronomic feats. -Serjeant Jenner for the defence called -several witnesses, who testified to the prisoner’s -abstinence from food for quite -miraculous periods. The force of this -evidence was much shaken by the pertinent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> -cross-examination of the judge, who asked -the jury in his summing up, “Whether you -have any evidence to induce you to believe it -to be in the power of all the witches in the -world, or all the Devils in Hell, to fast -beyond the usual time that nature will allow: -they cannot invert the order of nature.” -The jury, “without going from the bar, -brought him in Guilty.” He was sentenced -to a fine, a sound flogging, the pillory, and -imprisonment with hard labour. The last -conviction for Witchcraft in England was -that of Jane Wenham, at Hertford, in 1712. -She was respited by the judge and afterwards -pardoned. The case is not here -reported.</p> - -<p>These trials throw a curious light on the -ideas of the time; unfortunately they exhibit -human nature in some of its worst aspects. -The victims were women, old, poor, helpless, -and the persecution to which they were subjected -was due partly to superstition, partly -to that delight in cruelty so strong in the -natural man. The “confessions” of the accused -are easily accounted for. The popular<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> -beliefs so impressed their imaginations that -they believed in their own malevolent power, -also the terror they inspired lacked not -charm, it procured them consideration, some -money, even some protection. Not seldom -their “confessions” were merely terrified -assents to statements made about them by -witch-finders, clergymen, and justices. And -the judges? Sometimes, alas! they callously -administered a law in which they -had no belief. Is there not still something -inexplicable? Well, such things as mesmerism, -thought-reading, and so forth exhibit -remarkable phenomena. A former age -ascribed all to Satan: we believe them -natural though we cannot as yet solve all -their riddles. I must add that the ancient -popular horror of witches is partly explained -by the hideous and grotesque details given -at the trials, but those obscenities I dare not -reproduce.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> -<h2 class="nobreak">A Pair of Parricides</h2></div> - -<blockquote> - -<p class="hangingindent">The State Trials—The Dry Bones of Romance—Pictures -of the Past—Their Value for the Present—The -Case of Philip Standsfield—The Place of the -Tragedy—The Night of the Murder—The Scene in -Morham Kirk—The Trial—“The Bluidy Advocate—Mackenzie”—The -Fate of Standsfield—The Case -of Mary Blandy, Spinster—The Villain of the Piece—The -Maid’s Gossip—Death of Mr. Blandy—The -“Angel” Inn at Henley-on-Thames—The Defence—Miss -Blandy’s Exit.</p></blockquote> - - -<p><span class="smcap">There</span> is a new series of <i>State Trials</i> continuing -the old, and edited with a skill and -completeness altogether lacking in its predecessor; -yet its formal correctness gives -an impression of dulness. You think with -regret of Howell’s thirty-three huge volumes, -that vast magazine of curiosities and horrors, -of all that is best and worst in English -history. How exciting life was long ago, to -be sure, and how persistently it grows duller! -What a price we pay for the smug comfort<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> -of our time! People shuddered of yore; did -they yawn quite so often? Howell and the -folk he edits knew how to tell a story. -Judges, too, were not wont to exclude interesting -detail for that it wasn’t evidence, and -the compilers did not end with a man’s condemnation. -They had too keen a sense of -what was relished of the general: the last -confession and dying speech, the exit on the -scaffold or from the cart, are told with infinite -gusto. What a terrible test earth’s great -unfortunates underwent! Sir Thomas More’s -delicate fencing with his judges, the exquisite -courtesy wherewith he bade them farewell, -make but half the record; you must hear -the strange gaiety which flashed in the condemned -cell and by the block ere you learn -the man’s true nature. And to know Raleigh -you must see him at Winchester under the -brutal insults of Coke; “Thou art a monster, -thou hast an English face but a Spanish -heart;” again, “I thou thee, thou traitor!” -and at Palace Yard, Westminster, on that -dreary October morning urging the sheriff to -hurry, since he would not be thought fear-shaken<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> -when it was but the ague; for these -are all-important episodes in the life of that -richly dressed, stately, and gallant figure your -fancy is wont to picture in his Elizabethan -warship sweeping the Spanish Main. Time -would fail to tell of Strafford and Charles -and Laud and a hundred others, for the -collection begins with Thomas à Becket in -1163 and comes down to Thistlewood in 1820. -Once familiar with those close packed, badly -printed pages, you find therein a deeper, a -more subtle charm than cunningest romance -can furnish forth. The account of Mary -Stuart’s ending has a finer hold than Froude’s -magnificent and highly decorated picture—Study -at first hand “Bloody Jeffreys,” his -slogging of Titus Oates, with that unabashed -rascal’s replies during his trial for perjury; or -again, my Lord’s brilliant though brutal -cross-examination of Dunn in the “Lady” -Alice Lisle case, during the famous or infamous -Western Circuit, and you will find -Macaulay’s wealth of vituperative rhetoric, -in comparison, tiresome and pointless verbiage. -Also you will prefer to construct your own<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> -Braxfield from trials like those of Thomas -Muir in 1793, and of Alexander Scott and -Maurice Margarot in 1794, rather than -accept the counterfeit presentment which -Stevenson’s master-hand has limned in <i>Weir -of Hermiston</i>.</p> - -<p>But the interests are varied. How full of -grotesque and curious horrors are the prosecutions -for witchcraft! There is that one, -for instance, in March 1665 at Bury St. -Edmunds before Sir Matthew Hale, with -stories of bewitched children, and plague-stricken -women, and satanic necromancy. -Again, there is the diverting exposure of -Richard Hathaway in 1702, and how the -rogue pretended to vomit pins and abstain -from meat or drink for quite miraculous -periods. But most of those things I deal -with elsewhere in this volume. The trials -of obscurer criminals have their own charm. -Where else do you find such Dutch pictures -of long-vanished interiors or exteriors? -You touch the <i>vie intime</i> of a past age; you -see how kitchen and hall lived and talked; -what master and man, mistress and maid<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> -thought and felt; how they were dressed, -what they ate, of what they gossiped. -Again, how oft your page recalls the -strange, mad, picturesque ways of old English -law! <i>Benefit of clergy</i> meets you at -every turn, the <i>Peine Fort et Dure</i> is -explained with horrible minuteness, the lore -of <i>Ship Money</i> as well as of <i>Impressment -of Seamen</i> is all there. Also is an occasional -touch of farce. But what phase of -man’s life goes unrecorded in those musty -old tomes?</p> - -<p>Howell’s collection only comes down to -1820. Reform has since then purged our law, -and the whole set is packed off to the Lumber -Room. In a year’s current reports you may -find the volumes quoted once or twice, but -that is “but a bravery,” as Lord Bacon -would say, for their law is “a creed outworn.” -Yet the human interest of a story remains, -however antiquated the setting, incapable of -hurt from Act of Parliament. So, partly -for themselves, partly as samples of the bulk, -I here present in altered form two of these -tragedies, a Pair of Parricides: one Scots of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> -the seventeenth, the other English of the -eighteenth century.</p> - -<p>The first is the case of Philip Standsfield, -tried at Edinburgh, in 1688, for the murder -of his father, Sir James Standsfield, of New -Mills, in East Lothian. To-day New Mills -is called Amisfield; it lies on the south bank -of the Tyne, a mile east of Haddington. -There is a fine mansion-house about a century -old in the midst of a well wooded -park, and all round are the superbly tilled -Lothian fields, as <i>dulcia arva</i> as ever the -Mantuan sang. Amisfield got its present -name thus: Colonel Charteris, infamed (in -the phrase of Arbuthnot’s famous epitaph) -for the “undeviating pravity of his manners” -(hence lashed by Pope in many a stinging -line), purchased it early in the last century -and re-named it from the seat of his -family in Nithsdale. Through him it passed -by descent to the house of Wemyss, still its -owners. Amongst its trees and its waters the -place lies away from the beaten track and is -now as charmingly peaceful a spot as you -shall anywhere discover. Name gone and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> -aspect changed, local tradition has but a -vague memory of the two-centuries-old -tragedy whereof it was the centre.</p> - -<p>Sir James Standsfield, an Englishman by -birth, had married a Scots lady and spent -most of his life in Scotland. After the -Restoration he had established a successful -cloth factory at the place called New Mills, -and there lived, a prosperous gentleman. -But he had much domestic trouble chiefly -from the conduct of his eldest son Philip, -who, though well brought up, led a wild life. -Whilst “this profligate youth” (so Wodrow, -who tells the story, dubs him) was a student -at the University of St. Andrews, curiosity -or mischief led him to attend a conventicle -where godly Mr. John Welch was holding -forth. Using a chance loaf as a missile, he -smote the astonished divine, who, failing to -discover the culprit, was moved to prophecy. -“There would be,” he thundered, “more present -at the death of him who did it, than -were hearing him that day; and the multitude -was not small.” Graver matters than this -freak stained the lad’s later career. Serving<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> -abroad in the Scots regiment, he had been -condemned to death at Treves, but had -escaped by flight. Certain notorious villainies -had also made him familiar with the interior -of the Marshalsea and the prisons of Brussels, -Antwerp, and Orleans. Sir James at last -was moved to disinherit him in favour of his -second son John. Partly cause and partly -effect of this, Philip was given to cursing his -father in most extravagant terms (of itself a -capital offence according to old Scots law); -he affirmed his parent “girned upon him -like a sheep’s head in a tongs;” on several -occasions he had even attempted that parent’s -life: all which is set forth at great length in -the “ditty” or indictment upon which he -was tried. No doubt Sir James went in -considerable fear of his unnatural son. A -certain Mr. Roderick Mackenzie, advocate, -testifies that eight days before the end he -met the old gentleman in the Parliament -Close, Edinburgh, whereupon “the defunct -invited him to take his morning draught.” -As they partook Sir James bemoaned his -domestic troubles. “Yes,” said Mackenzie,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> -but why had he disherished his son? -And the defunct answered: “Ye do not -know my son, for he is the greatest debauch -in the earth. And that which troubles -me most is that he twice attempted my own -person.”</p> - -<p>Upon the last Saturday of November -1687, the elder Standsfield travelled from -Edinburgh to New Mills in company with -Mr. John Bell, minister of the Gospel, who -was to officiate the next day in Morham -Church (Morham is a secluded parish on the -lower slope of the Lammermoors, some -three miles south-west of New Mills; the -church plays an important part in what -follows). Arrived at New Mills the pair -supped together, thereafter the host accompanied -his guest to his chamber, where he -sat talking “pertinently and to good -purpose” till about ten o’clock. Left alone, -our divine gat him to bed, but had scarce -fallen asleep when he awoke in terror, for a -terrible cry rang through the silence of the -winter night. A confused murmur of voices -and a noise of folk moving about succeeded.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> -Mr. Bell incontinently set all down to “evil -wicked spirits,” so having seen to the bolts -of his chamber door, and having fortified -his timid soul with prayers, he huddled in -bed again; but the voices and noises continuing -outside the house he crept to the -window, where peering out he perceived -nought in the darkness. The noises died -away across the garden towards the river, -and Bell lay quaking till the morning. An -hour after day Philip came to his chamber -to ask if his father had been there, for he -had been seeking him upon the banks of the -water. “Why on the banks of that water?” -queried Bell in natural amazement. Without -answer Philip hurriedly left the room. -Later that same Sunday morning a certain -John Topping coming from Monkrig to New -Mills, along the bank of the Tyne, saw a -man’s body floating on the water. Philip, -drawn to the spot by some terrible fascination, -was looking on (you picture his face). -“Whose body was it?” asked the horror-struck -Topping, but Philip replied not. -Well <i>he</i> knew it was his father’s corpse.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> -It was noted that, though a hard frosty morning, -the bank was “all beaten to mash with -feet and the ground very open and mellow.” -The dead man being presently dragged forth -and carried home was refused entry by -Philip into the house so late his own, “for -he had not died like a man but like a beast,”—the -suggestion being that his father had -drowned himself,—and so the poor remains -must rest in the woollen mill, and then in a -cellar “where there was very little light.” -The gossips retailed unseemly fragments of -scandal, as “within an hour after his father’s -body was brought from the water, he got -the buckles from his father’s shoes and put -them in his;” and again, there is note of a -hideous and sordid quarrel between Lady -Standsfield and Janet Johnstoun, “who was -his own concubine,” so the prosecution -averred, “about some remains of the Holland -of the woonding-sheet,” with some incriminating -words of Philip that accompanied.</p> - -<p>I now take up the story as given by -Umphrey Spurway, described as an Englishman -and clothier at New Mills. His<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> -suspicions caused him to write to Edinburgh -that the Lord Advocate might be warned. -Philip lost no time in trying to prevent an -inquiry. At three or four of the clock on -Monday morning Spurway, coming out of -his house, saw “great lights at Sir James’ -Gate;” grouped round were men and horses. -He was told they were taking away the -body to be buried at Morham, whereat -honest Umphrey, much disturbed at this -suspicious haste, sighed for the “crowner’s -quest law” of his fatherland. But on the -next Tuesday night after he had gone to -bed a party of five men, two of them surgeons, -came post haste to his house from -Edinburgh, and showing him an order -“from my Lord Advocat for the taking -up again the body of Sir James Standsfield,” -bid him rise and come. Philip also must go -with the party to Morham. Here the grave -was opened, the body taken out and carried -into the church, where the surgeons made -their examination, which clearly pointed to -death by strangulation not by drowning -(possibly it struck Spurway as an odd use<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> -for a church; it had not seemed so to a -presbyterian Scot of the period). The dead -being re-dressed in his grave clothes must -now be set back in his coffin. A terrible -thing happened. According to Scots custom -the nearest relative must lift the body, -and so Philip took the head, when lo! the -corpse gushed forth blood on his hands! -He dropped the head—the “considerable -noise” it made in falling is noted by one -of the surgeons—frantically essayed to wipe -off the blood on his clothes, and with -frenzied cries of “Lord have mercy upon -me, Lord have mercy upon us!” fell half -swooning across a seat. Strong cordials -were administered, and in time he regained -his sullen composure.</p> - -<p>A strange scene to ponder over, but how -terrible to witness! Think of it! The -lonely church on the Lammermoors, the -dead vast and middle of the dreary night -(November 30, 1687), the murdered man, -and the Parricide’s confession (it is so set -forth in the “ditty”) wrung from him (as -all believed) by the direct interposition of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> -Providence. What fiction ever equalled -this gruesome horror? Even his mother, -who had sided with him against the father, -scarce professed to believe his innocence. -“What if they should put her bairn in -prison?” she wailed. “Her bairn” was -soon hard and fast in the gloomy old -Tolbooth of Edinburgh, to which, as the -<i>Heart of Midlothian</i>, Scott’s novel was in -future days to give a world-wide fame.</p> - -<p>The trial came on February 6 ensuing. -In Scotland there is no inquest or public -magisterial examination to discount the -interest of the story, and the crowd that -listened in the Parliament House to the -evidence already detailed had their bellyful -of surprises and horrors. The Crown had -still in reserve this testimony, sensational -and deadly. The prosecution proposed to -call James Thomson, a boy of thirteen, and -Anna Mark, a girl of ten. Their tender -years were objected. My Lords, declining to -receive them as witnesses, oddly enough -consented at the request of the jury to take -their declaration. The boy told how Philip<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> -came to his father’s house on the night of -the murder. The lad was hurried off to -bed, but listened whilst the panel, Janet -Johnstoun, already mentioned, and his -father and mother softly whispered together -for a long time, until Philip’s rage got the -better of his discretion, and he loudly -cursed his father and threatened his life. -Next Philip and Janet left the house, and -in the dead of night his father and mother -followed. After two hours they crept back -again; and the boy, supposed to be sleeping, -heard them whisper to each other the -story of the murder, how Philip guarded -the chamber door “with a drawn sword and -a bendit pistol,” how it was strange a man -should die so soon, how they carried the -body to the water and threw it in, and how -his mother ever since was afraid to stay -alone in the house after nightfall. The -evidence of Anna Mark was as to certain -criminating words used by her mother Janet -Johnstoun.</p> - -<p>Up to this time the panel had been defended -by four eminent advocates mercifully<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> -appointed thereto by the Privy Council; -there had been the usual Allegations, Replyes, -and Duplies, with frequent citations -from Mattheus, Carpzovius, Muscard, and -the other fossils, as to the matters contained -in the “ditty” (indictment), and they had -strenuously fought for him till now, but after -the statement of the children they retired. -Then Sir George Mackenzie rose to reply for -the Crown. Famous in his own day, his name -is not yet forgotten. He was “the bluidy -advocate Mackenzie” of Covenanting legend -and tradition, one of the figures in Wandering -Willie’s tale in <i>Redgauntlet</i> (“who for -his worldly wit and wisdom had been to the -rest as a god”). He had been Lord Advocate -already, and was presently to be Lord -Advocate again. Nominally but second -counsel he seems to have conducted the -whole prosecution. He had a strong case, -and he made the most of it. Passionate -invective and prejudicial matter were mixed -with legal argument. Cultured politician -and jurist as he was, he dwelt with terrible -emphasis on the scene in Morham kirk.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> -“God Almighty Himself was pleased to bear -a share in the testimonies which we produce.” -Nor was the children’s testimony forgotten. -“I need not fortifie so pregnant a probation.” -No! yet he omitted not to protest -for “an Assize of Error against the inquest -in the case they should assoilzie the pannal”—a -plain intimation to jury that if they -found Philip Standsfield “not guilty” they -were liable to be prosecuted for an unjust -verdict. But how to doubt after such evidence? -The jury straightway declared the -panel guilty, and my lords pronounced a -sentence of picturesque barbarity. Standsfield -was to be hanged at the Mercat Cross -of Edinburgh, his tongue cut out and burned -upon the scaffold, his right hand fixed -above the east port of Haddington, and his -dead body hung in chains upon the Gallow -Lee betwixt Leith and Edinburgh, his name -disgraced for ever, and all his property forfeited -to the Crown. According to the old -Scots custom the sentence was given “by -the mouth of John Leslie, dempster of -court”—an office held along with that of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> -hangman. “Which is pronounced for doom” -was the formula wherewith he concluded.</p> - -<p>On February 15 Standsfield though led -to the scaffold was reprieved for eight -days “at the priest’s desire, who had been -tampering to turn Papist” (one remembers -these were the last days of James II., or as -they called him in Scotland, James VII.’s -reign). Nothing came of the delay, and -when finally brought out on the 24th “he -called for Presbyterian ministers.” Through -some slipping of the rope, the execution -was bungled; finally the hangman strangled -his patient. The “near resemblance of his -father’s death” is noted by an eye-witness. -“Yet Edmund was beloved.” Leave was -asked to bury the remains. One fancies -this was on the part of Lady Standsfield, -regarding whose complicity and doting -fondness, strange stories were current. The -prayer was refused, but the body was -found lying in a ditch a few days after, and -again the gossips (with a truly impious -desire to “force the hand” of Providence) -saw a likeness to the father’s end. Once<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> -more the body was taken down and presently -vanished.</p> - -<p>Lord Fountainhall, a contempory of Standsfield, -and Sir Walter Scott, both Scots -lawyers of high official position, thought -the evidence of Standsfield’s guilt not altogether -conclusive, and believed something -might be urged for the alternative theory of -suicide. Whilst venturing to differ, I note -the opinion of such eminent authorities with -all respect.</p> - -<p>Standsfield maintained his innocence to -the last. Three servants of his father’s—two -men and a woman—were seized and tortured -with the thumbikins. They confessed nothing. -Now, torture was frequently used -in old Scots criminal procedure, but if you -did not confess you were almost held to -have proved your innocence.</p> - -<p>I cannot discover the after fate of these -servants, and probably they were banished—a -favourite method with the Scots authorities -for getting rid of objectionable -characters whose guilt was not sufficiently -proved.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>The second case, not so romantic albeit a -love-story is woven through its tangled -threads, is that of Mary Blandy, spinster, -tried at Oxford in 1752, before two of the -Barons of the Exchequer, for the murder of -her father, Francis Blandy, attorney, and -town clerk of Henley-on-Thames. Prosecuting -counsel described her as “genteel, agreeable, -sprightly, sensible.” She was an only -child. Her sire being well off she seemed -an eligible match, and yet wooers tarried. -Some years before the murder, the villain of -the piece, William Henry Cranstoun, a -younger son of the Scots Lord Cranstoun and -an officer recruiting at Henley for the army, -comes on the scene. Contemporary gossip -paints him the blackest colour. “His shape -no ways genteel, his legs clumsy, he has -nothing in the least elegant in his manner.” -He was remarkable for his dulness; he was -dissipated and poverty-stricken. More fatal -than all he had a wife and child in Scotland, -though he brazenly declared the marriage -invalid spite the judgment of the Scots -courts in its favour. Our respectable attorney,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> -upon discovering these facts, gave the Captain, -as he was called, the cold shoulder. The -prospect of a match with a Lord’s son was too -much for Miss Blandy, now over thirty, and -she was ready to believe any ridiculous yarn -he spun about his northern entanglements. -Fired by an exaggerated idea of old Blandy’s -riches, he planned his death, and found in -the daughter an agent and, as the prosecution -averred, an accomplice.</p> - -<p>The way was prepared by a cunning use of -popular superstitions. Mysterious sounds of -music were heard about; at least Cranstoun -said so; indeed, it was afterwards alleged he -“hired a band to play under the windows.” -If any one asked “What then?” he whispered -“that a wise woman, one Mrs. Morgan, -in Scotland,” had assured him that such was -a sign of death to the head of the house -within twelve months. The Captain further -alleged that he held the gift of second sight -and had seen the worthy attorney’s ghost; -all which, being carefully reported to the -servants by Miss Blandy raised a pleasing -horror in the kitchen. Cranstoun, from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> -necessity or prudence, left Henley before the -diabolical work began in earnest, but he supplied -Mary with arsenic in powder, which -she administered to her father for many -months. The doses were so immoderate that -the unfortunate man’s teeth dropped whole -from their sockets, whereat the undutiful -daughter “damn’d him for a toothless old -rogue and wished him to hell.” Cranstoun, -under the guise of a present of Scotch pebbles, -sent her some more arsenic, nominally to rub -them with. In the accompanying letter, -July 18, 1751, he glowingly touched on the -beauties of Scotland as an inducement to -her, it was supposed, to make haste. Rather -zealous than discreet, she near poisoned Anne -Emmett, the charwoman, by misadventure, -but brought her round again with great -quantities of sack whey and thin mutton -broth, sovereign remedies against arsenic.</p> - -<p>Her father gradually became desperately -ill. Susannah Gunnell, maidservant perceiving -a white powder at the bottom of a -dish she was cleaning had it preserved. It -proved to be arsenic, and was produced at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> -the trial. Susannah actually told Mr. -Blandy he was being poisoned; but he only -remarked, “Poor lovesick girl! what will not -a woman do for the man she loves?” Both -master and maid fixed the chief, perhaps the -whole, guilt on Cranstoun, the father confining -himself to dropping some strong hints -to his daughter, which made her throw -Cranstoun’s letters and the remainder of the -poison on the fire, wherefrom the drug was -in secret rescued and preserved by the servants.</p> - -<p>Mr. Blandy was now hopelessly ill, and -though experienced doctors were at length -called in, he expired on Wednesday, August -14, 1751. The sordid tragedy gets its most -pathetic and highest touch from the attempts -made by the dying man to shield his daughter -and to hinder her from incriminating admissions -which under excitement and (one -hopes) remorse she began to make. And in -his last hours he spoke to her words of -pardon and solace. That night and again -on Thursday morning the daughter made -some distracted efforts to escape. “I ran<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> -out of the house and over the bridge, and -had nothing on but a half-sack and petticoat -without a hoop—my petticoats hanging -about me.” But now all Henley was -crowded round the dwelling to watch the -development of events. The mob pressed after -the distracted girl, who took refuge at the -sign of the Angel, a small inn just across the -bridge. “They were going to open her father,” -she said, and “she could not bear the house.” -She was taken home and presently committed -to Oxford Gaol to await her trial. Here she -was visited by the high sheriff, who “told -me by order of the higher powers he must -put an iron on me. I submitted as I always do -to the higher powers” (she had little choice). -Spite her terrible position and these indignities -she behaved with calmness and courage.</p> - -<p>The trial, which lasted twelve hours, took -place on February 29, 1752, in the Divinity -School of the University. The prisoner -was “sedate and composed without levity -or dejection.” Accused of felony, she had -properly counsel only for points of law, -but at her request they were allowed to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> -examine and cross-examine the witnesses. -Herself spoke a defence possibly prepared -by her advisers, for though the style be artless, -the reasoning is exceeding ingenious. -She admitted she was passionate and thus -accounted for some hasty expressions; the -malevolence of servants had exaggerated -these. Betty Binfield, one of the maids, was -credibly reported to have said of her, “she -should be glad to see the black bitch go up -the ladder to be hanged.” But the powder? -Impossible to deny she had administered -that. “I gave it to procure his love.” -Cranstoun, she affirmed, had sent it from -Scotland, assuring her that it would so work, -and Scotland, one notes, seemed to everybody -“the shores of old romance,” the home of -magic incantations and mysterious charms. -It was powerfully objected that Francis -Blandy had never failed in love to his -daughter, but she replied that the drug was -given to reconcile her father to Cranstoun. -She granted he meant to kill the old man in -hopes to get his money, and she was the -agent, but (she asserted) the innocent agent,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> -of his wicked purpose. This theory though -the best available was beset with difficulties. -She had made many incriminating statements, -there was the long time over which -the doses had been spread, there was her -knowledge of its effects on Anne Emmett -the charwoman, there was the destruction -of Cranstoun’s letters, the production -of which would have conclusively shown -the exact measure in which guilty knowledge -was shared. Finally, there was the -attempt to destroy the powder. Bathurst, -leading counsel for the Crown, delivered two -highly rhetorical speeches, “drawing floods -of tears from the most learned audience that -perhaps ever attended an English Provincial -Tribunal.” The jury after some five -minutes’ consultation in the box returned a -verdict of “guilty,” which the prisoner -received with perfect composure. All she -asked was a little time “till I can settle my -affairs and make my peace with God,” and -this was readily granted. She was left in -prison five weeks.</p> - -<p>The case continued to excite enormous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> -interest, increased by an account which she -issued from prison of her father’s death and -her relations with Cranstoun. She was constant -in her professions of innocence, “nor -did anything during the whole course of her -confinement so extremely shock her as the -charge of infidelity which some uncharitable -persons a little before her death brought -against her.” Some were convinced and -denied her guilt, “as if,” said Horace Walpole, -“a woman who would not stick at -parricide would scruple a lie.” Others said -she had hopes of pardon “from the Honour -she had formerly had of dancing for several -nights with the late P——e of W——s, and -being personally known to the most sweet-tempered -P—ess in the world.” The press -swarmed with pamphlets. The Cranstoun -correspondence, alleged not destroyed, was -published—a very palpable Grub Street -forgery! and a tragedy, <i>The Fair Parricide</i>, -dismal in every sense, was inflicted on the -world. The last scene of all was on April 6, -1752. “Miss Blandy suffered in a black -bombazine short sack and petticoat, with a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> -clean white handkerchief drawn over her -face. Her hands were tied together with a -strong black riband, and her feet at her own -request almost touched the ground” (“Gentlemen, -don’t hang me high for the sake of -decency,” an illustration of British prudery -which has escaped the notice of French -critics). She mounted the ladder with some -hesitation. “I am afraid I shall fall.” For -the last time she declared her innocence, and -soon all was over. “The number of people -attending her execution was computed at -about 5000, many of whom, and particularly -several gentlemen of the university, were -observed to shed tears” (tender-hearted -“gentlemen of the university”!) “In -about half an hour the body was cut down -and carried through the crowd upon the -shoulders of a man with her legs exposed -very indecently.” Late the same night she -was laid beside her father and mother in -Henley Church.</p> - -<p>Cranstoun fled from justice and was outlawed. -In December that same year he died -in Flanders.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> -<h2 class="nobreak">Some Disused Roads to Matrimony</h2></div> - -<blockquote> - -<p class="hangingindent">Marriage according to the Canon Law—The English -Law—Peculiars—The Fleet Chapel—Marriage -Houses—“The Bishop of Hell”—Ludgate Hill in -the Olden Time—Marriages Wholesale—The Parsons -of the Fleet—Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act—The -Fleet Registers—Keith’s Chapel in May Fair—The -Savoy Chapel—The Scots Marriage Law—The -Strange Case of Joseph Atkinson—Gretna -Green in Romance and Reality—The Priests—Their -Clients—A Pair of Lord High Chancellors—Lord -Brougham’s Marriage Act—The Decay of -the Picturesque.</p></blockquote> - - -<p>“<span class="smcap">The</span> fear of the Lord is the beginning of -wisdom. The marrying in the Fleet is the -beginning of eternal woe.” So scribbled -(1736) Walter Wyatt, a Fleet Parson, in -one of his note-books. He and his likes are -long vanished, and his successor the blacksmith -priest (in truth he was neither one -nor other) of Gretna is also gone; yet their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> -story is no less entertaining than instructive, -and here I set it forth.</p> - -<p>Some prefatory matter is necessary for -the right understanding of what follows. -Marriage, whatever else it may or may not -be, is a contract of two consenting minds; -but at an early age the church put forth the -doctrine that it was likewise a sacrament -which could be administered by the contracting -parties to each other. Pope Innocent -III., in 1215, first ordained—so some -authorities say—that marriages must be -celebrated in church; but it was not yet -decreed that other and simpler methods were -without effect. According to the canon law, -“espousals” were of two kinds: <i>sponsalia -per verba de præsenti</i>—which was an agreement -to marry forthwith; and <i>sponsalia per -verba de futuro</i>—which was a contract to -wed at a future time. Consummation gave -number two the effect of number one, and -civilly that effect was the same as of duly -celebrated nuptials; inasmuch as the church, -while urging the religious ceremony upon -the faithful as the sole proper method, admitted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> -the validity of the others—<i>quod non -fieri debit id factum valeat</i> (so the maxim -ran). The common law adopting this, held -that (1) marriage might be celebrated with -the full rites of the church; or (2) that the -parties might take each other for man and -wife; or (3), which obviously followed, that -a priest might perform the ceremony outside -the church, or without the full ceremonial—with -maimed rites, so to speak. Whatever -penalties were incurred by following other -than the first way the marriage itself held -good.</p> - -<p>I must here note that in 1844, in the case -of <i>The Queen against Millis</i>, the House of -Lords <i>seemed</i> to decide that there could not -have been a valid marriage in England, even -before Lord Hardwicke’s Act, which in 1753 -completely changed the law, in the absence -of an ordained ecclesiastic. The arguments -and the judgment fill the half of one of -Clark and Finnelly’s bulky volumes, and -never was matter more thoroughly threshed, -and winnowed, and garnered. The House -was equally divided; and the opinion of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> -Irish Court of Queen’s Bench, which maintained -the necessity of the priest’s presence, -was affirmed. The real explanation, I think, -is that, though the old canon law and the -old common law were as I have stated, yet -English folk had got so much into the habit -of calling in the Parson that his presence -came to be regarded as essential. The -parties, even when they disobeyed the church -by leaving undone much they were ordered -to do, would still have “something religious” -about the ceremony. In 1563 the Council -of Trent declared such marriages invalid as -were not duly celebrated in church; but -Elizabeth’s reign was already five years gone, -both England and Scotland had broken -decisively with the old faith, and the Council’s -decrees had no force here.</p> - -<p>In England both church and state kept -tinkering the Marriage Laws. In 1603 the -Convocation for the Province of Canterbury -declared that no minister shall solemnise -matrimony without banns or licence upon -pain of suspension for three years. Also, all -marriages were to be in the parish church<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> -between eight and twelve in the forenoon. -Nothing so far affected the validity of the -business; and “clandestine marriages,” as -they were called, became frequent. In 1695, -an Act of William III. fined the Parson who -assisted at such couplings one hundred -pounds for the first offence, and for the -second suspended him for three years. This -enactment was followed almost immediately -by another, which mulcted the clergyman -who celebrated or permitted any such -marriage in his church as well as the bridegroom -and the clerk. The main object of this -legislation was to prevent the loss of duties -payable upon regularly performed marriages; -but it strengthened ecclesiastical discipline.</p> - -<p>Thus your correct wedding, then as now, -had its tedious preliminaries; but the fashion -of the time imposed some other burdens. -There was inordinate feasting with music -and gifts and altogether much expense and -delay. Poor folk could ill afford the business; -now and again the rich desired a private -ceremony; here and there young people -sighed for a runaway match. Also, outside<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> -this trim and commonplace century the -nation’s life had not that smoothness which -seems to us such a matter of course. Passion -was stronger and worse disciplined; law, -though harsh, was slow and uncertain. How -tempting, then, the inducement to needy -persons to marry cheaply and without -ceremony! Now, London had a number of -places of worship called <i>Peculiars</i>, which, as -royal chapels, possessions of the Lord Mayor -and alderman, or what not, claimed, rightly -or wrongly, exemption from the visitation of -the ordinary. These were just the places for -irregular or clandestine marriages. Peculiars -or not, as many as ninety chapels favoured -such affairs. Chief among them were the -Savoy, the Minories, Mayfair Chapel, and -(above all) the Fleet, which—from a very -early date to half a century ago—was a -famous prison especially for debtors, standing -on what is now the east side of Farringdon -Street. It had a chapel where marriages -were properly solemnised by 1613, and (it -may be) earlier; but the records are somewhat -scanty. Now, a number of dissolute<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> -Parsons were “fleeted” (as the old phrase -ran) for one cause or another, and some -might live outside the walls but within the -<i>rules</i> or <i>liberties of the Fleet</i>, as the ground -about the prison was called. These obtained -the use of the chapel, where, for a reasonable -consideration, they were willing to couple -any brace forthwith. What terror had the -law for them? Men already in hold for -debt laughed at a fine, and suspension was a -process slow and like to be ineffectual at the -last. The church feebly tried to exercise -discipline. On June 4, 1702, the Bishop of -London held a visitation <i>in carcere vulgo -vocat’ ye Fleet in civitate London</i>. He found -one Jeronimus Alley coupling clients at a -great rate. ’Twas hinted that Jeronimus -was not a Parson at all, and proof of his -ordination was demanded; “but Mr. Alley -soon afterwards fled from <i>ye said prison</i> and -never exhibited his orders.” Another record -says that he obtained “some other preferment” -(probably he was playing the like game -elsewhere).</p> - -<p>The legislature, in despair, as it might<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> -seem, now struck at more responsible heads. -In 1712 a statute (10 Ann. c. 19) imposed the -penalty of a hundred pounds on keepers of -gaols permitting marriage without banns or -licence within their walls. This closed the -Fleet Chapel to such nuptials, but private -houses did just as well. Broken-down -Parsons, bond or free, were soon plentiful as -blackberries; and taverns stood at every -corner; so at the “Two Fighting Men and -Walnut Tree,” at “The Green Canister,” at -“The Bull and Garter,” at “The Noah’s -Ark,” at “The Horseshoe and Magpie,” at -“Jack’s Last Shift,” at “The Shepherd and -Goat,” at “The Leg” (to name no more), a -room was fitted up in a sort of caricature of -a chapel; and here during the ceremony a -clock with doubly brazen hands stood ever -at one of the canonical hours though without -it might be midnight or three in the -morning. A Parson, hired at twenty shillings -a week, “hit or miss,” as ’twas curiously -put, attended. The business was mostly -done on Sundays, Thursdays, and Fridays; -but ready, ay ready, was the word. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> -landlord or a servingman played clerk, and -what more was wanted?</p> - -<p>There were many orders of Fleet Parsons, -some not parsons at all. At the top of the -tree was the “famous Dr. John Gaynam,” -known as the “Bishop of Hell:” he made -a large income and in his time coupled -legions; and at the bottom were a parcel -of fellows who would marry any couple -anywhere for anything. The Fleet Parson -of standing kept a pocket-book in which -he roughly jotted down the particulars -of each marriage, transcribing the more -essential details to a larger register at -home. Certificates, at a varying charge, -were made out from these, and the books -being thus a source of profit were preserved -with a certain care. To falsify such documents -was child’s play. Little accidents (as -a birth in the midst of the ceremony) were -dissembled by inserting the notice of the -marriage in some odd corner of a more or -less ancient record. This antedating of -registers was so common as almost to deprive -them of any value as evidence. Worse still,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> -certificates were now and again issued, -though there had been no marriage. Sometimes -the taverners kept registers of their -own, but how to establish a fixed rule?</p> - -<p>Not all the “marriage houses,” as they -were called, were taverns. They were often -distinguished by some touching device: as a -pair of clasping hands with the legend -“Marriages Performed Within.” A feature -of the system was the <i>plyer</i> or <i>barker</i>, who, -dressed in ragged and rusty black, touted for -Parson or publican, or it might be for self, -vaunting himself the while clerk and register -to the Fleet. “These ministers of wickedness” -(thus, in 1735, a correspondent of -<i>The Grub Street Journal</i>) “ply about -Ludgate Hill, pulling and forcing the people -to some peddling alehouse or a brandy-shop -to be married, even on a Sunday stopping -them as they go to church, and almost -tearing their clothes off their backs.” If -you drove Fleetwards with matrimony in -your eye, why, then you were fair game:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">Scarce had the coach discharg’d its trusty fare,</div> -<div class="verse">But gaping crowds surround th’ amorous pair.</div> -<div class="verse">The busy plyers make a mighty stir,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></div> -<div class="verse">And whisp’ring, cry, “D’ye want the Parson, Sir?”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>Yet the great bulk of Fleet marriages -were in their own way orderly and respectable. -Poor people found them shortest and -cheapest. Now and again there are glimpses -of rich or high-born couples: as, in 1744, -the Hon. H. Fox with Georgina Caroline, -eldest daughter of Charles, second Duke of -Richmond, of which union Charles James -was issue. One odd species was a parish -wedding: the churchwardens thought it an -ingenious device to bribe some blind or halting -youth, the burden of a neighbouring -parish, to marry a female pauper chargeable -to them; for, being a wife she immediately -acquired her husband’s settlement, and they -were rid of her. In one case they gave -forty shillings and paid the expense of a -Fleet marriage; the rag, tag, and bobtail -attended in great numbers and a mighty -racket was the result. According to the law -then and long after, a woman by marrying -transferred the burden of her debts to her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> -husband. So some desperate spinsters hied -them Fleetwards to dish their creditors; -plyer or Parson soon fished up a man; and -though, under different <i>aliases</i>, he were -already wived like the Turk, what mattered -it? The wife had her “lines,” and how to -prove the thing a sham? Husbands, again, -had a reasonable horror of their wives’ antenuptial -obligations. An old superstition, -widely prevalent in England, was that if you -took nothing by your bride you escaped -liability. Obviously, then, the thing to do -was to marry her in what Winifred Jenkins -calls “her birthday soot,” or thereabouts. -So “the woman ran across Ludgate Hill in -a shift,” for thus was her state of destitution -made patent to all beholders.</p> - -<p>When the royal fleet came in, the crews, -“panged” full of gold and glory, made -straight for the taverns of Ratcliffe Highway, -and of them, there footing it with their -Polls and Molls, some one asked, “Why not -get married?” Why not, indeed? Coaches -are fetched; the party make off to the -Fleet; plyers, Parsons, and publicans, all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> -welcome them with open arms; the knots are -tied in less than no time; there is punch -with the officiating cleric; the unblushing -fair are crammed into the coaches; Jack, his -pocket lighter, his brain heavier, climbs up -on the box or holds on behind; the populace -acclaims the procession with old shoes, dead -cats, and whatever Fleet Ditch filth comes -handy; and so back to their native <i>Radcliffe</i>, -to spend their honeymoon in “fiddling, -piping, jigging, eating,” and to end the bout -with a divorce even less ceremonious than -their nuptials. “It is a common thing,” -reports a tavern-keeper of that sea-boys’ -paradise, “when a fleet comes in to have two -or three hundred marriages in a week’s time -among the sailors.”</p> - -<p>The work was mostly done cheap: the -Parson took what he could get, and every one -concerned must have his little bit. Thus, -“the turnkey had a shilling, Boyce (the -acting clerk) had a shilling, the plyer had a -shilling, and the Parson had three and sixpence”—the -total amounting to six shillings -and sixpence. This was a fair average,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> -though now and again the big-wigs netted -large sums.</p> - -<p>A Fleet marriage was as valid as another; -but in trials for bigamy the rub was: Had -there been any marriage at all? Some -accused would strenuously maintain the -negative. In 1737 Richard Leaver was -indicted at the Old Bailey for this offence; -and “I know nothing about the wedding,” -was his ingenuous plea. “I was fuddled overnight -and next morning I found myself -a-bed with a strange woman and ‘Who are -you? How came you here?’ says I. ‘O, -my dear,’ says she, ‘we were marry’d last -night at the Fleet.’” More wonderful still -was the story told by one Dangerfield, -charged the preceding year for marrying -whilst Arabella Fast, his first wife, was still -alive. Arabella and he, so he asserted, had -plotted to blackmail a Parson with whom -the lady entertained relations all too fond. -At ten at night he burst in upon them as -had been arranged. “‘Hey’ (says I), ‘how -came you a-bed with my spouse?’ ‘Sir,’ -(says he), ‘I only lay with her to keep my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> -back warm.’” The explanation lacked probability, -and “in the morning” the erring -divine acknowledged his mistake:—“I must -make you a present if you can produce a -certificate” (he suspected something wrong, -you see). Dangerfield was gravelled. Not -so the resourceful Arabella. “‘For a crown -I can get a certificate from the Fleet,’ she -whispered; and ‘I gave her a crown, and in -half an hour she brings me a certificate.’” -The jury acquitted Dangerfield.</p> - -<p>The clergyman said to have officiated in -both cases was the “famous Dr. Gaynam” -(so a witness described him), the aforesaid -“Bishop of Hell.” How could he recollect -an individual face, he asked, for had he not -married his thousands? But it must be -right if it was in his books: <i>he</i> never altered -or falsified <i>his</i> register. “It was as fair a -register as any church in England can produce. -I showed it last night to the foreman -of the jury, and my Lord Mayor’s clerk at -the London punch-house” (a noted Fleet -tavern): so Gaynam swore at Robert Hussey’s -trial for bigamy in 1733. A familiar figure<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> -was the “Bishop” in Fleet taverns and Old -Bailey witness-box. At Dangerfield’s trial -neither counsel nor judge was very complimentary -to him; but he was moved not a -whit; he was used to other than verbal -attacks, and some years before this he was -soundly cudgelled at a wedding—in a dispute -about his fees, no doubt. “A very lusty, -jolly man,” in full canonicals, a trifle bespattered -from that Fleet Ditch on whose -banks he had spent many a scandalous -year, his florid person verging on over-ripeness, -even decay, for he vanishes four years -later. Was he not ashamed of himself? -sneered counsel. Whereupon “he (bowing) -<i>video meliora, deteriora sequor</i>.” Don’t you -see the reverend rogue complacently mouthing -his tag? He “flourished” ’twixt 1709 -and 1740. On the fly-leaf of one of his -pocket-books he wrote:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">The Great Good Man w<sup>m</sup> fortune may displace,</div> -<div class="verse">May into scarceness fall, but not disgrace,</div> -<div class="verse">His sacred person none will dare profane,</div> -<div class="verse">Poor he may be, but never can be mean,</div> -<div class="verse">He holds his value with the wise and good,</div> -<div class="verse">And prostrate seems as great as when he stood.</div> -</div></div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>The personal application was obvious; -but alas for fame! Even in Mr. Leslie -Stephen’s mighty dictionary his record is to -seek.</p> - -<p>Time would fail to trace the unholy succession -of Fleet Parsons. There was Edward -Ashwell (1734-1743), “a most notorious -rogue and impostor.” There was Peter -Symson (1731-1754), who officiated at the -“Old Red Hand and Mitre,” headed his -certificates G.R., and bounced after this -fashion:—“Marriages performed by authority -by the Reverend Mr. Symson, educated at -the University of Cambridge, and late Chaplain -to the Earl of Rothes. N.B.—Without -imposition.” Then there was James Landow -(1737-1743), late Chaplain to His Majesty’s -ship <i>Falkland</i>, who advertised “Marriage -with a licence, certificate, and a crown stamp -at a guinea, at the New Chapel, next door -to the China Shop, near Fleet Bridge, London.” -Of an earlier race was Mr. Robert -Elborrow (1698-1702): “a very ancient man -and is master of ye chapple” (he seems to -have been really “the Parson of the Fleet”).<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> -His chief offence was leaving everything to -his none too scrupulous clerk, Bassett. -There is some mention also of the Reverend -Mr. Nehemiah Rogers, a prisoner, “but -goes at large to his living in Essex and all -places else.” Probably they were glad to -get rid of him for “he has struck and boxed -ye bridegroom in ye Chapple and damned -like any com’on souldier.” <i>Mulli praeterea, -quos fama obscura recondit.</i> How to fix the -identity of the “tall black clergyman” who, -hard by “The Cock” in Fleet Market, -pressed his services on loving couples? Was -he one with the “tall Clergyman who plies -about the Fleet Gate for Weddings,” and -who in 1734 was convicted “of swearing -forty-two Oaths and ordered to pay -£4 2<i>s.</i>”?</p> - -<p>In 1753 Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act -(26 Geo. II. cap. 3) put a sudden stop to -the doings of those worthies. Save in the -case of Jews and Quakers, all marriages -were void unless preceded by banns or licence -and celebrated according to the rites of the -Church of England in a church or chapel of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> -that communion. The Priest who assisted -at an irregular or clandestine marriage was -guilty of a felony punishable by fourteen -years’ transportation. The Bill was violently -opposed; and, according to Horace Walpole, -was crammed down the throats of both -Houses; but its policy, its effects, as well as -later modifications of the marriage law, are -not for discussion here.</p> - -<p>I turn to the registers wherein the doings -of the Fleet Parsons are more or less carefully -recorded. In 1783 most of those still extant -had got into the hands of Mr. Benjamin -Panton. “They weighed more than a ton”; -were purchased by the Government for -£260 6<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i>, and to-day you may inspect -them at Somerset House. There are between -two and three hundred large registers and -a thousand or more pocket-books (<i>temp.</i> -1674-1753). Not merely are the records of -marriages curious in themselves, but also -they are often accompanied by curious comments -from the Parson, clerk, taverner, or -whoever kept the book. The oddest collection -is in a volume of date 1727-1754. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> -writer used Greek characters, though his -words are English, and is as frank as Pepys, -and every bit as curious. Here are a few -samples from the lot: “Had a noise for four -hours about the money” was to be expected -where there were no fixed rates; but “stole -my clouthes-brush,” and “left a pott of -4 penny to pay,” and “ran away with the -scertifycate and left a pint of wine to pay -for,” were surely cases of exceptional roguery. -Curious couples presented themselves:—“Her -eyes very black and he beat about ye -face very much.” Again, the bridegroom -was a boy of eighteen, the bride sixty-five, -“brought in a coach by four thumping -ladies” (the original is briefer and coarser) -“out of Drury Lane as guests”; and yet the -Parson had “one shilling only.” He fared -even worse at times. Once he married a -couple, money down, “for half a guinea,” -after which “it was extorted out of my -pocket, and for fear of my life delivered.” -Even a Fleet Parson had his notion of propriety. -“Behav’d very indecent and rude -to all,” is one entry; and “N.B. behav<sup>d</sup><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> -rogueshly. Broke the Coachman’s Glass,” is -another. Once his reverence, “having a -mistrust of some Irish roguery,” though the -party seemed of better rank than usual, -asked indiscreet questions. The leader -turned on him with the true swagger of -your brutal Georgian bully. “What was -that to me? G—— dem me, if I did not -immediately marry them he would use me -ill; in short, apprehending it to be a conspiracy, -I found myself obliged to marry -them <i>in terrorem</i>.” Again, he had better -luck on another occasion: “handsomely -entertained,” he records; and of a bride of -June 11, 1727, “the said Rachel, the -prettiest woman I ever saw.” (You fancy -the smirk wherewith he scrawled that single -record of the long vanished beauty!) He is -less complimentary to other clients. His -“appear<sup>d</sup> a rogue” and “two most notorious -thieves” had sure procured him a broken -pate had his patrons known! How gleefully -and shamelessly he chronicles his bits of -sharp practice! “Took them from Brown -who was going into the next door with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> -them,” was after all merely business; but what -follows is <i>not</i>. In 1729 he married Susannah -Hewitt to Abraham Wells, a butcher. -The thing turned out ill; and in 1736 she -came back, and suggested annulment by the -simple expedient of destroying the record; -when “I made her believe I did so, for which -I had a half a guinea.” Nor was there much -honour among the crew of thieves. “Total -three and sixpence, but honest Wigmore -kept all the money so farewell him,” is an -entry by the keeper of a marriage house, -whom a notorious Fleet Parson had dished. -Another is by a substitute for the same -divine:—“Wigmore being sent for but was -drunk, so I was a stopgap.” I confess to a -sneaking fondness for those entertaining -rascals, but enough of their pranks.</p> - -<p>Of the other places where irregular marriages -were celebrated two demand some -notice. One was Keith’s Chapel in Mayfair, -“a very bishopric of revenue” to that notorious -“marriage broker” the Reverend -Alexander Keith. His charge was a guinea, -and, being strictly inclusive, covered “the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> -Licence on a Crown Stamp, Minister’s and -Clerk’s fees, together with the certificate.” -No wonder he did a roaring trade! Keith -seemed a nobler quarry than the common -Fleet Parson, and the ecclesiastical authorities -pursued him in their courts. In October -1742, he was excommunicated: with matchless -impudence he retorted by excommunicating -his persecutors from the Bishop -downwards. Next year they stuck him in -the Fleet; but, through Parsons as reckless -as himself, he continued to “run” his chapel. -In 1749 he made his wife’s death an occasion -for advertisement: the public was informed -that the corpse, being embalmed, was removed -“to an apothecary’s in South Audley -Street, where she lies in a room hung with -mourning, and is to continue there until -Mr. Keith can attend her funeral.” Then -follows an account of the chapel. One -authority states that six thousand marriages -were celebrated there within twelve months; -but this seems incredible. That sixty-one -couples were united the day before Lord -Hardwicke’s Act became law is like enough.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> -Here took place, in 1752, the famous marriage -of the fourth Duke of Hamilton to the -youngest of the “beautiful Miss Gunnings,” -“with a ring of the bed curtain half an hour -after twelve at night,” as Horace Walpole -tells. And here, in September 1748, at a -like uncanny hour, “handsome Tracy was -united to the butterman’s daughter in -Craven Street.” Lord Hardwicke’s Act was -elegantly described as “an unhappy stroke -of fortune” by our enterprising divine. At -first he threatened another form of competition:—“I’ll -buy two or three acres of -ground and by God I’ll under-bury them -all.” But in the end he had to own himself -ruined. He had scarce anything, he moaned, -but bread and water, although he had been -wont to expend “almost his whole Income -(which amounted yearly to several Hundred -Pounds per Annum) in relieving not only -single distressed Persons, but even whole -Families of wretched Objects of Compassion.” -The world neither believed nor pitied; and -he died in the Fleet on December 17, -1758.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>Last of all comes the Savoy. There, <i>The -Public Advertiser</i> of January 2, 1754, announced, -marriages were performed “with -the utmost privacy, decency, and regularity, -the expense not more than one guinea, the -five shilling stamp included. There are five -private ways by land to this chapel, and two -by water.” The Reverend John Williamson, -“His Majesty’s Chaplain of the Savoy,” asserted -that as such he could grant licences; -and despite the Act he went on coupling. -In 1755 he married the enormous number of -one thousand one hundred and ninety; half -the brides being visibly in an interesting -condition. The authorities, having warned -him time and again to no purpose, at last -commenced proceedings. But he evaded -arrest by skipping over roofs and vanishing -through back doors, in a manner inexplicable -to us to-day; and went on issuing -licences, while his curate, Mr. Grierson, did -the actual work at the altar. Grierson, -however, was seized and transported for -fourteen years: then his chief surrendered -(1756), stood his trial, and received a like<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> -sentence; the irregular marriages both had -performed being declared of no effect.</p> - -<p>What now were the amorous to do? Well, -there were divers makeshifts. Thus, at -Southampton (<i>temp.</i> 1750), a boat was held -ever ready to sail for Guernsey with any -couple able and willing to pay five pounds. -Ireland did not impress itself on the lovers’ -imagination: it may be that the thought of -that gruesome middle passage “froze the -genial current of their souls.” But there -was a North as well as a South Britain; and—what -was more to the purpose—the Scots -marriage law was all that heart could wish. -Marriage (it held) is a contract into which -two parties not too young and not too -“sib” might enter at any time, all that was -necessary being that each party clearly and -in good faith expressed consent. Neither -writing nor witnesses, however important -for proof, were essential to a valid union. -Not that the Scots law, civil or ecclesiastical, -favoured this happy despatch; but the very -punishment it imposed only tied the knot -tighter. Couples of set purpose confessed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> -their vows, got a small fine inflicted, and -there was legal evidence of their union! -Ecclesiastical discipline was strict enough to -prevent regularly instituted Scots ministers -from assisting at such affairs. But any man -would do (for, after all, he was but a witness), -and the first across the Border as well as -or better than another. Now, by a well-known -principle of international law, the -<i>lex loci contractus</i> governs such contracts: -the marriage being valid in Scotland where -it took place, was also recognised as valid in -England where its celebration would have -been a criminal offence! This was curiously -illustrated early in the century by the case -of Joseph Atkinson. The Border, I must -explain, had all along been given to irregular -marriages, and different localities in Scotland -were used as best suited the parties. -Lamberton Toll Bar, N.B., lay four miles -north of Berwick-on-Tweed; and here our -Atkinson did a thriving business in the -coupling line. One fine day he had gone to -Berwick when a couple sought his service at -the toll-house. A quaint fiction presumes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> -that everybody knows the law; but here it -turned out that nobody did, for the bride -and groom instead of uniting themselves -before the first comer rushed off to Berwick, -and were there wedded by Lamberton. And -not only was the affair a nullity; but the -unfortunate coupler was sentenced to seven -years’ transportation for offending against -the English marriage laws.</p> - -<p>Most of them, however, that went North -on marriage bent, took the Carlisle road. A -few miles beyond that city the little river -Sark divides the two countries. Just over -the bridge is the toll-house: a footpath to -the right takes you to Springfield. Till -about 1826 the North road lay through this -village; then, however, the way was changed, -and ran by Gretna Green, which is nine and a -half miles from Carlisle. These two places, -together with the toll-house, are all in -Gretna parish; but of course the best known is -Gretna Green: “the resort” (wrote Pennant) -“of all amorous couples whose union the -prudence of parents or guardians prohibits.” -The place acquired a world-wide fame: that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> -English plays and novels should abound in -references to it, as they had done to the -Fleet, was only natural; but one of George -Sand’s heroes elopes thither with a banker’s -daughter, and even Victor Hugo hymns it in -melodious verse, albeit his pronunciation is a -little peculiar:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">La mousse des près exhale</div> -<div class="verse">Avril, qui chante drin, drin,</div> -<div class="verse">Et met une succursale</div> -<div class="verse">De Cythère à Gretna Green.</div> -</div></div> - -<p>And how to explain the fact that people -hurried from the remotest parts of Scotland -as well as from England, though any square -yard of soil “frae Maidenkirk to Johnny -Groat’s” had served their purpose just as -well? The parishioners, indeed, sought not -the service of their self-appointed priest; -but is there not an ancient saying as to the -prophet’s lack of honour among his own -people?</p> - -<p>Now, if you travelled North in proper -style, in a chaise and four, with post-boys -and so forth, you went to the “King’s -Head” at Springfield, or, after the change<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> -of road, more probably to Gretna Hall; but -your exact halting-place was determined at -Carlisle. The postillions there, being in -league with one or other of the Gretna innkeepers, -took you willy-nilly to one or the -other hostelry. Were you poor and tramped -it, you were glad to get the knot tied at the -toll-house. Most of the business fell into a -few hands. Indeed, the landlords of the -various inns instead of performing the rite -themselves usually sent for a so-called -priest. A certificate after this sort was -given to the wedded couple:—“Kingdom of -Scotland, County of Dumfries, Parish of -Gretna: these are to certify to all whom it -may concern that (here followed the names) -by me, both being present and having declared -to me that they are single persons, -have now been married after the manner of -the law of Scotland.” This the parties and -their witnesses subscribed.</p> - -<p>I shall not attempt to trace the obscure -succession of Gretna Green priests. Joseph -Paisley, who died in 1811, aged eighty-four, -was, it seems, the original blacksmith; but he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> -was no son of Tubal Cain, though he had -been fisher, smuggler, tobacconist. He united -man with woman even as the smith welds iron -with iron—thus the learned explain his title. -After Paisley, and connected with him by -marriage, there was Robert Elliott, and -several people of the name of Laing. In -some rather amusing memoirs Elliott assures -us that between 1811 and 1839 he performed -three thousand eight hundred and seventy-two -marriages; also that his best year was -1825, when he did one hundred and ninety-eight, -and his worst 1839, when he did but -forty-two. At the toll-bar there was a -different line, whose most picturesque figure -was Gordon, the old soldier. Gordon officiated -in full regimentals, a large cocked hat on his -head and a sword by his side. Here, too, -Beattie reigned for some years before 1843. -His occupation went to his head, for latterly -he had a craze for marrying, so that he would -creep up behind any chance couple and begin -to mumble the magic words that made them -one. The law has ever terrors for the unlettered, -and the rustic bachelor fled at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> -Beattie’s approach, as if he had been the -pest. The “priests” sometimes used a -mangled form of the Church of England -service: which irreverence was probably -intended as a delicate compliment to the -nationality of most of their clients. The -fees were uncertain. When the trembling -parties stood hand in hand in inn or toll-bar, -whilst the hoofs of pursuing post-horses -thundered ever nearer, ever louder, or it -might be that irate father or guardian -battered at the door, it was no time to -bargain. The “priest” saw his chance; -and now and again he pouched as much as a -hundred pounds.</p> - -<p>Each house had its record of famous -marriages. There was the story of how -Lord Westmoreland sought the hand of the -heiress of Child, the banker, and was repulsed -with “Your blood, my Lord, is good, -but money is better.” My Lord and the -young lady were speedily galloping towards -the border, while Mr. Child “breathed hot -and instant on their trace.” He had caught -them too, but his leader was shot down or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> -his carriage disabled by some trick (the -legends vary), and he was too late after all. -He made the best of it, of course, and in due -time Lady Sophia Fane, daughter of the -marriage, inherited grandpa’s fortune and -his bank at Temple Bar. Odder still was -the marriage, in 1826, of Edward Gibbon -Wakefield to Ellen Turner. It was brought -about by an extraordinary fraud, and a week -after the far from happy couple were run -to earth at Calais by the bride’s relatives. -They “quoted William and Mary upon me -till I was tired of their Majesties’ names,” was -Wakefield’s mournful excuse for submitting -to a separation. He was afterwards tried -for abduction, found guilty, and sentenced to -three years’ imprisonment; while a special -Act of Parliament (7 and 8 Geo. IV. c. 66) -declared the marriage null and void. Wakefield -ended strangely as a political economist. -Is not his “theory of colonisation” writ large -in all the text books? A pair of Lord High -Chancellors must conclude our list. In -November 1772, John Scott, afterwards Lord -Eldon, was married at Blackshiels, in East<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> -Lothian, to Bessie Surtees, the bridegroom -being but twenty-one. Though the Rev. -Mr. Buchanan, minister of an Episcopal congregation -at Haddington, officiated, it was a -runaway match and an irregular marriage. -Lord Erskine, about October 1818, was -wedded at the “King’s Head,” Springfield, -to Miss Mary Buck (said to have been his -housekeeper). He was about seventy, and, -one fears, in his dotage. A number of extravagant -legends still linger as to the ceremony. -He was dressed in woman’s clothes, -and played strange pranks. He and his intended -spouse had with them in the coach a -brace of merry-begots (as our fathers called -them), over whom he threw his cloak during -the ceremony in order to make them his -heirs. It is still a vulgar belief in the North -that if the parents of children born out of -wedlock are married, the offspring, to be -legitimised, must be held under their mother’s -girdle through the nuptial rites. Now, by -the law of Scotland, such a marriage produces -the effect noted; but the presence or -absence of the children is void of legal consequence.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> -As far as is known, Erskine had -one son called Hampden, born December 5, -1821, and no other by Mary Buck. It is -worth noting that Robert Burns, on his road -to Carlisle in 1787, fell in by the way “with -a girl and her married sister”; and “the -girl, after some overtures of gallantry on my -side, sees me a little cut with the bottle, and -offers to take me in for a Gretna Green -affair.” Burns was already wed, Scots fashion, -to Jean Armour. And the thing did not -come off, so that bigamy is not to be reckoned -among the poet’s sins.</p> - -<p>They were rather sordid affairs in the end, -those Gretna Green marriages. So, at least, -the Reverend James Roddick, minister of -the parish, writing of the place in 1834 in -the <i>New Statistical Account</i>, would have us -believe. There were three or four hundred -marriages annually: “the parties are chiefly -from the sister kingdom and from the lowest -rank of the population.” A number came -from Carlisle at fair-time, got married, spent -a few days together, and then divorced themselves. -Competition had brought down the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> -priest’s fee to half-a-crown, and every tippling-house -had its own official. Nay, the -very roadman on the highway that joined -the kingdoms pressed his services on all -and sundry! And then the railway came -to Gretna, and you had the spectacle of -“priests” touting on the platform. Alas for -those shores of old Romance! In 1856, Lord -Brougham’s Act (19 & 20 Vict. cap. 96), -made well-nigh as summary an end of Gretna -as Lord Hardwicke’s had of the Fleet unions. -It provided that at least one of the parties -to an irregular Scots marriage must be -domiciled in Scotland, or have resided there -during the twenty-one days immediately -preceding the espousals; else were they -altogether void. What an enemy your -modern law-giver is to the picturesque! And -what an entertaining place this world must -once have been!</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> -<h2 class="nobreak">The Border Law</h2></div> - -<blockquote> - -<p class="hangingindent">The Border Country—Its Lays and Legends—The -Wardens and Other Officers—Johnie Armstrong—Merrie -Carlisle—Blackmail—The Border Chieftain -and His Home—A Raid—“Hot-trod”—“To-names”—A -Bill of Complaint—The Day of Truce—Business -and Pleasure—“Double and Salffye”—Border Faith—Deadly -Feud—The Story of Kinmont Willie—The -Debateable Land—The Union of the Crowns -and the End of Border Law.</p></blockquote> - - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Leges marchiarum</span></i>, to wit, the Laws of the -Marches; so statesmen and lawyers named -the codes which said, though oft in vain, -how English and Scots Borderers should -comport themselves, and how each kingdom -should guard against the other’s deadly unceasing -enmity. I propose to outline these -laws, and the officials by whom and courts -wherein they were enforced.</p> - -<p>But first a word as to country and people. -From Berwick to the Solway—the extreme -points of the dividing line between North<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> -and South Britain—is but seventy miles in -a crow’s flight. But trace its windings, and -you measure one hundred and ten. Over -more than half of this space the division is -arbitrary. It happed where the opposing -forces balanced. The Scot pushed his way -a little farther south here, was pushed back a -little farther north there; and commissioners -and treaties indelibly marked the spots. The -conflict lasted over three centuries, and must -obviously be fiercest on the line where the -kingdoms met. If it stiffened, yet warped, -the Scots’ character, and prevented the -growth of commerce and tilth and comfort -in Scotland proper, what must have been its -effect on the Scots Borderer, ever in the -hottest of the furnace? The weaker, poorer, -smaller kingdom felt the struggle far more -than England, yet the English were worse -troubled than the Scots Borders: being the -richer, they were the more liable to incursion; -their dalesmen were not greatly -different from other Englishmen; they were -kept in hand by a strong central authority; -they had thriving towns and a certain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> -standard of wealth and comfort. Now, the -Scots clansmen developed unchecked; so it is -mainly from them that we take our ideas of -Border life.</p> - -<p>The Border country is a pleasant pastoral -land, with soft, rounded hills, and streams -innumerable, and secluded valleys, where the -ruins of old peels or feudal castles intimate a -troubled past. That past, however, has left -a precious legacy to letters, for the Border -ballads are of the finest of the wheat. They -preserve, as only literature can, the joys and -sorrows, the aspirations, hopes and fears, and -beliefs of other days and vanished lives. -They are voices from the darkness, yet we oft -feel:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">He had himself laid hand on sword</div> -<div class="verse">He who this rime did write!</div> -</div></div> - -<p>The most of them have no certain time or -place. Even the traditional stories help but -little to make things clear. Yet they tell -us more, and tell it better, than the dull -records of the annalists. We know who -these men really were—a strong, resolute<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> -race, passionate and proud, rough and cruel, -living by open robbery, yet capable of deathless -devotion, faithful to their word, hating -all cowards and traitors to the death; not -without a certain respect and admiration for -their likes across the line, fond of jest and -song, equal on occasion to a certain rude -eloquence; and, before all, the most turbulent -and troublesome. The Scots Borderers -were dreaded by their own more peaceful -countrymen; and to think of that narrow -strip of country, hemmed in by the Highlands -to the north and the Border clans on -the south, is to shudder at the burden <i>it</i> had -to endure. For a race, whatever its good -qualities, that lives by rapine, is like to be -dangerous to friends as well as foes. Some -Border clans, as the Armstrongs and the -Elliots, were girded at as “always riding”; -and they were not particular as to whom they -rode against. Nay, both governments suspected -the Borderers of an inexplicable -tenderness for their neighbours. When -they took part in a larger expedition, they -would attack each other with a suspicious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> -lack of heart. At best they were apt to -look at war from their own point of view, -and fight for mere prisoners or plunder.</p> - -<p>To meet such conditions the Border Laws -were evolved. They were administered in -chief by special officers called Wardens. -Either Border was portioned out into three -Marches: the East, the Middle, and the -West (the Lordship of Liddesdale was included -in the Scots Middle March, but sometimes -it had a special Keeper of almost equal -dignity with a Warden.) Each of the three -Scots Wardens had a hundred pounds of -yearly fee; he could appoint deputies, captains -of strongholds, clerks, sergeants, and -dempsters; he could call out the full force -of his district to invade or beat back invasion; -he represented the Sovereign, and was -responsible for crimes. He must keep the -Border clans in order by securing as hostages -several of their most conspicuous sons, and -either these were quartered on nobles on the -other side of the Firth, or they were held in -safer keeping in the king’s castles. He also -held Justice Courts for the trial of Scots<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> -subjects accused of offences against the laws -of their own country. He was commonly a -great noble of the district, his office in early -times being often hereditary; and, as such -noble, he had power of life and death, so that -the need for holding special courts was little -felt. A pointed Scots anecdote pictures an -angry Highlander “banning” the Lords of -Session as “kinless loons,” because, though -some were relatives, they had decided a case -against him. These Wardens were <i>not</i> -“kinless loons,” and they often used their -office to favour a friend or depress a foe. -On small pretext they put their enemies “to -the horn,” as the process of outlawry (by -trumpet blast) was called. True, the indifference -with which those enemies “went to the -horn” would scandalise the legal pedants.</p> - -<p>Sometimes a superior officer, called “Lieutenant,” -was sent to the Borders; the -Wardens were under him; he more fully -represented the royal power. Now and -again the Sovereign himself made a progress, -administering a rough and ready justice, and -so “dantoning the thieves of the Borders,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> -and making the rush bush keep the cow.” -So it was said of James V.’s famous raid in -1529. The chief incident was the capture -of Johnie Armstrong of Gilnockie, the ruins -of whose picturesque tower at the Hollows -still overlook the Esk. Gilnockie came to -meet his King with a great band of horsemen -richly apparelled. He was captain of -Langholm Castle, and the ballad tells how -he and his companions exercised themselves -in knightly sports on Langholm Lee, whilst -“The ladies lukit frae their loft windows. -‘God bring our men well hame agen!’” the -ladies said; and their apprehensions were -more than justified, for Johnie’s reception -was not so cordial as he expected. “What -wants yon knave that a King should have?” -asked James in angry amaze, as he ordered -the band to instant execution. Gilnockie -and company were presently strung up on -some convenient yew-trees at Carlenrig, -though, in accordance with romantic precedent, -one is said to have escaped to tell the -tale. Many of Johnie’s name, among them -Ill Will Armstrong, tersely described as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> -“another stark thieff,” went to their doom; -but the act, however applauded at Edinburgh, -was bitterly condemned on the -Borders. Gilnockie only plundered the -English, it was urged, and the King had -caught him by a trick unworthy a Stuart. -The country folk loved to tell how the dule-trees -faded away, and they loved to point -out the graves of the Armstrongs in the -lonely churchyard. But the stirring ballad -preserves the name better than all else. -It unblushingly commends Gilnockie’s love of -honesty, his generosity, his patriotism, and -directly accuses his Sovereign of treachery, -in which accusation there is perhaps some -truth. Anyhow, his execution was the -violent act of a weak man, and had no permanent -effect.</p> - -<p>The Wardens had twofold duties: first, -that of defence against the enemy; second, -that of negotiation in times of peace with -their mighty opposites. Thus the Border laws -were part police and part international, -and were administered in different courts. -Offences of the first class were speaking or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> -conferring with Englishmen without permission -of the King or the Warden, and the -warning Englishmen of the Scots’ alertness -in the matter of forays. In brief, aiding, -abetting, or in any way holding intercourse -with the “auld enemy” was march -treason (to adopt a convenient English -term).</p> - -<p>In England the Wardens were finally -chosen for their political and military skill, -not because of their territorial position. -Now, the Warden of the East Marches was -commonly Governor and Castellan of Berwick. -The castle of Harbottell was allotted to -the Warden of the Middle Marches; -whilst for the West, Carlisle, where again -Governor and Warden were often one, was -the appointed place. Sometimes a Lord -warden-general was appointed, sometimes a -Lieutenant, but the Wardens were commonly -independent. At the Warden courts -Englishmen were punished for march -treason, a branch of which was furnishing -the Scots with articles of merchandise or -war. And here I note that Carlisle throve<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> -on this illegal traffic. At Carlisle Fair the -Carlisle burgher never asked the nationality -of man or beast. The first got his money -or its equivalent; the second was instantly -passed through the hands of butcher and -skinner. Though the countryside were -wasted, the burghers lay safe within their -strong walls, and waxed fat on the spoils of -borderman and dalesman alike. Small -wonder the city was “Merrie Carlisle.” -The law struck with as little force against -blackmail, or protection money, which it -was an offence to pay to any person, Scots -or English. From this source, Gilnockie -and others, coining the terror of their name, -drew great revenue. Another provision was -against marriage with a Scotswoman without -the Warden’s consent, for in this way -traitors, or “half-marrows,” arose within the -gate. Complete forms are preserved of the -procedure at those Warden courts. There -were a grand jury and an ordinary jury, and -the Warden acted very much as a judge of -to-day. One or two technical terms I shall -presently explain. Here I but note that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> -criminal guilty of march treason was beheaded -“according to the customs of the -marches.”</p> - -<p>The international duties of the Wardens -were those of conference with each other, and -the redressing of approved wrongs, which -wrongs were usually done in raids or forays. -Of these I must now give some account. -The smaller Border chieftain dwelt in a peel -tower, stuck on the edge of a rock or at the -break of a torrent. It was a rude structure -with a projecting battlement. A stair or -ladder even held its two stories together, and -about it lay a barnkin—a space of some sixty -feet encompassed by a wall; the laird’s -followers dwelling in huts hard by. For -small parties the tower was self-sufficient in -defence, and if it lay in the way of a hostile -army, the laird was duly warned by scouts or -beacon fires, and withdrew to some fastness -of rock or marsh, carrying his few valuables, -driving his live stock before him, leaving the -foeman nothing to burn and nothing to take -away. With his followers he lived on milk, -meat, and barley, together with the spoils of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> -the forest and stream. The marchmen are -reported temperate—no doubt from necessity. -Their kine, recruited by forays, were herded -in a secluded part of the glen, and when the -herd waxed small, and the laird was tired of -hunting, and his women lusted after new -ornament, and old wounds were healed, and -the retainers were growing rusty, then it was -time for a raid. Was the laird still inactive? -In struck his lady’s sharper wit, and the story -goes that Wat Scott of Harden was ever -and anon served with a dish which, being -uncovered, revealed a pair of <i>polished</i> spurs. -Thus his wife, Mary Scott, the “Flower of -Yarrow”—a very practical person, despite -her romantic name—urged him to profitable -rapine. Well: his riders were bidden to a -trysting-place; and hither, armed in jacks -(which are leathern jerkins plated with iron) -and mounted on small but active and hardy -horses, they repaired at evenfall. The laird -and some superior henchmen wore also sleeves -of mail and steel bonnets; all had long -lances, swords, axes, and in later times such -rude firearms—serpentines, half-haggs, harquebusses,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> -currys, cullivers, and hand-guns -are mentioned—as were to be had. In the -mirk night the reivers crossed the Border; -and to do this unseen was no easy matter. -The whole line from Berwick to Carlisle was -patrolled by setters and searchers, watchers -and overseers, having sleuth-hounds to track -the invader; also, many folk held lands by -the tenure of cornage, and by blowing horns -must warn the land of coming raids. Where -the frontier line was a river the fords were -carefully guarded; those held unnecessary -were staked up; narrow passes were blocked -in divers ways, so that chief element in -Border craft was the knowledge of paths and -passes through moorland and moss, and of -nooks and coigns of security deep in the -mountain glens.</p> - -<p>Our party crosses in safety and makes to -one of those hidden spots, as near as may be -to the scene of action. Here it rests and -refreshes itself during the day, and next -night it swoops down on its appointed foray. -The chief quest was ever cattle, which were -eatable and portable. But your moss-trooper<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> -was not particular. He took everything -inside and outside house and byre. -Many lists are preserved of things lifted, -whereof one notes a shroud and children’s -clothes. A sleuth-hound was a choice prize. -Possibly its abduction touched the Borderer’s -sense of humour. Scott of Harden, escaping -from a raid, with “a bow of kye and a -bassen’d (brindled) bull,” passed a trim haystack. -He sighed as he thought of the lack -of fodder in his own glen. “Had ye but -four feet ye should not stand lang there,” he -muttered as he hurried onwards. Not to -him, not to any rider was it given to tarry by -the way, for the dalesmen were not the folk -to sit down under outrage. The warder, as -he looked from the “Scots gate” of Carlisle -castle, and saw the red flame leaping forth -into the night from burning homestead or -hamlet, was quick to warn the countryside -that a reiving expedition was afoot. Even -though the prey were lifted unobserved, that -only caused a few hours’ delay, and soon a -considerable body, carrying a lighted piece -of turf on a spear, as a sign, was instant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> -on the invader’s trace. This “following of -the fraye” was called “hot-trod,” and was -done with hound and horn, and hue and cry. -Certain privileges attached to the “hot-trod.” -If the offender was caught red-handed he -was executed; or, if thrift got the better of -rage, he was held to ransom. As early as -1276 a curious case is reported from Alnwick, -of a Scot attacking one Semanus, a -hermit, and taking his clothes and one -penny! Being presently seized, the culprit -was beheaded by Semanus in person, who -thus recovered his goods and took vengeance -of his wrong. A later legend illustrates the -more than summary justice that was done. -The Warden’s officers having taken a body -of prisoners, asked my Lord his pleasure. -His Lordship’s mind was “ta’en up wi’ affairs -o’ the state,” and he hastily wished the -whole set hanged for their untimely intrusion. -Presently he was horrified to find that -his imprecations had been taken as literal -commands, and literally obeyed. Even if the -reivers gained their own border, the law of -“hot-trod” permitted pursuit within six<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> -days of the offence. The pursuer, however, -must summon some reputable man of the -district entered to witness his proceedings. -Nay, the inhabitants generally must assist -him—at least, the law said so.</p> - -<p>But if all failed, the <i>Leges Marchiarum</i> -had still elaborate provisions to meet his -case. He had a shrewd guess who were his -assailants. The more noted moss-troopers -were “kenspeckle folk.” The very fact that -so many had the same surname caused them -to be distinguished by what were called “to-names,” -based on some physical or moral -characteristic, which even to-day photographs -the man for us. Such were Eddie Great-legs, -Jock Half-lugs, Red-neb Hob, Little -Jock Elliott, Wynkyng Wyll, Wry-crag, Ill -Wild Will, Evil Willie, David the Leddy, -Hob the King; or some event in a man’s -history provided a “to-name.” Ill Drooned -Geordy, you fancy, had barely escaped a -righteous doom, and Archie Fire-the-Braes -was sure a swashbuckler of the first magnitude. -Others derived from their father’s -name.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">The Lairdis Jok</div> -<div class="verse">All with him takis.</div> -</div></div> - -<p>Thus, Sir Thomas Maitland, who has preserved -some of these appellations in his -<i>Complainte Aganis the Thievis of Liddisdail</i>, -apparently the only weapon he—though -Scots Chancellor—could use against them. -Other names, the chroniclers affirm, are more -expressive still; but modern prudery forbids -their recovery. They were good enough -headmark, whatever their quality; and a -harried household had but to hear one -shouted in or after the harrying to know -who the harriers were. The slogan, or war-cry, -of the clan would rap out in the excitement, -and there again he knew his men. -The cross of St. Andrew showed them to be -Scots, the cross of St. George affirmed them -English. A letter sewn in a cap, a kerchief -round the arm, were patent identification. -The chieftain’s banner was borne now and -again, even in a daylight foray—a mode -affected by the more daring spirits.</p> - -<p>Divining in some sort his spoiler, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> -aggrieved and plundered sought legal redress. -Now the Laws of the Marches, agreed on by -royal commissioners from the two kingdoms, -regulated intercourse from early times. Thus -as early as 1249, eleven knights of Northumberland, -and as many from the Scots Border, -drew up a rough code: for the recovery of -debts, the surrender of fugitive bondsmen, -and the trial by combat of weightier matters -in dispute. All Scotsmen, save the king -and the bishops of St. Andrews and -Dunkeld, accused of having committed a -crime in England, must fight their accuser -at certain fixed places on the Marches; and -there were corresponding provisions when -the accused was an Englishman. What -seems a form of the <i>judicium Dei</i> appears in -another provision. An animal said to be -stolen, being brought to the Tweed or the -Esk, where either formed the boundary, was -driven into the water. If the beast sank the -defendant paid. If it swam to the farther -shore, the claimant had him as his own. If -it scrambled back to the bank whence it -started, the accused might (perchance) retain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> -it with a clear conscience. But as to this -event the record is silent; and, indeed, the -whole business lacks intelligibility. The -combats, however, were many, and were -much denounced by the clergy, who had -to provide a champion, and were heavily -mulcted if he lost. The priest suffered no -more than the people; but he could better -voice his wrongs. All such things were -obviously adaptations of the trial by -ordeal, or by combat, and the treason -duel of chivalry, to the rough life of the -Border. Again, the matter was settled, even -in late times, by the oath of the accused. -The prisoner was sworn:—“By Heaven -above you, Hell beneath you, by your part -of Paradise, by all that God made in six -days and seven nights, and by God Himself,” -that he was innocent. In a superstitious -age this might have some effect; -and there was ever the fear of being -branded as perjured. But it can have -been used only when there was no proof, -or when the doubt was very grave: when -the issue, that is, seemed as the cutting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> -of a knot, the loosing whereof passed man’s -wit.</p> - -<p>In the century preceding the Union of the -Crowns, the international code was very -highly developed, and the procedure was -strictly defined. As England was the larger -nation, and as its law was in a more highly -developed and more firm and settled state, -its methods were followed on the whole. -The injured party sent a bill of complaint -to his own Warden; and the bill, even as -put into official form, was simplicity itself. -It said that A. complained upon B. for that—and -then followed a list of the stolen -goods, or the wrongs done. It was verified -by the complainant’s oath, and thereafter -sent to the opposite Warden, whose duty was -to arrest the accused or at least to give him -notice to attend on the next Day of Truce. -[One famous fray (June 17, 1575) is commemorated -in <i>The Raid of the Reidswire</i>, a -ballad setting forth many features of a Day of -Truce.] The Wardens agreed on the Day, and -the place was usually in the northern kingdom, -where most of the defendants lived. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> -meeting was proclaimed in all the market -towns on either side. The parties, each -accompanied by troops of friends, came in; -and a messenger from the English side -demanded that assurance should be kept till -sunrise the following day. This was granted -by the Scots, who proceeded to send a similar -message, and were presently secured by a -similar assurance. Then each Warden held -up his hand as a sign of faith, and made -proclamation of the Day to his own side (the -evident purpose of this elaborate ritual was -to keep North and South from flying, on -sight, at each other’s throats). The English -Warden now came to his Scots brother, -whom he saluted and embraced; and the -business of the Day of Truce (or Diet, or -Day Marche, or Warden Court, as it was -variously called) began. That business was -commerce, and pleasure, as well as law. -Merchants come with their wares; booths -were run up; a brisk trade ran in articles -tempting to the savage eye. Both sides -were ready for the moment to forget their -enmities. If they could not fight, they could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> -play, and football was ever your Borderers’ -favourite pastime (from the desperate mauls -which mark that exhilarating sport as -practised along the Border line, one fancies -that the “auld riding bluid” still stirs in -the veins of the players). Gambling, too, -was a popular excitement. There was much -of feasting and drinking, and sure some -Border Homer, poor and old and blind, even -as him of Chios, was there to charm and -melt his rude hearers with the storied loves -and wars of other days. The conclave fairly -hummed with pleasure and excitement. -Yet with such inflammable material, do you -wonder that the meeting ended now and -again in most admired disorder?</p> - -<p>For our bill of complaint, it might be -tried in more than one way. It might be by -“the honour of the Warden,” who often had -knowledge, personal or acquired, of the case, -and felt competent to decide the matter off-hand. -On his first appearance he had taken -an oath (yearly renewed) in presence of the -opposite Warden and the whole assemblage -to do justice, and he now officially “fyled”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> -or “cleared the bill” (as the technical -phrase ran) by writing on it the words -“foull (or ‘clear’), as I am verily persuaded -upon my conscience and honour”—a -deliverance after the method wherein -individual peers give their voice at a trial of -one of their order. This did not of necessity -end the matter, for the complainant could -present a new bill and get the verdict of a -jury thereon, which also was the proper -tribunal where the Warden declined to -interfere. It was thus chosen: The English -Warden named and swore in six Scots, the -Scots Warden did the like to six Englishmen. -The oath ran in these terms:—“Yea -shall cleare noe bill worthie to be fild, yea -shall file no bill worthie to be cleared,” and -so forth. Warden sergeants were appointed -who led the jury to a retired place; the bills -were presented; and the jurymen fell to -work. It would seem that they did so in -two sections, each considering complaints -against its own nationality. If the bill was -“fyled,” the word “foull” was written upon -it (of course, a verdict of guilty); but how<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> -to get such a verdict under such conditions? -The assize had more than a fellow-feeling -for the culprit: like the jury in Aytoun’s -story, they might think that Flodden (then -no distant memory) was not yet avenged. -There were divers expedients to this end. -Commissioners were sometimes appointed by -the two crowns to solve a difficulty a Warden -Court had failed to adjust. Again, it was -strangely provided that “If the accused be -not quitt by the oathe of the assize it is a -conviction.” One very stubborn jury (<i>temp.</i> -1596) sat for a day, a night, and a day on -end, “almost to its undoeinge.” The -Warden, enraged at such conduct and -yet fearing for the men’s lives, needs must -discharge them. I ought to mention an -alleged third mode of trial by vower, who, -says Sir Walter Scott, was an umpire to -whom the dispute was referred. Rather was -he a witness of the accused’s own nation. -Some held such evidence essential to conviction; -if honest, it was practically conclusive.</p> - -<p>Well! Suppose the case too clear and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> -man too friendless, and the jury “fyled” the -bill. If the offence were capital, the prisoner -was kept in safe custody, and was hanged or -beheaded as soon as possible. But most -affairs were not capital. Thus the Border -Law forbad hunting in the other kingdom -without the express leave of the owner of -the soil. Just such an unlicensed hunting is -the theme of <i>Chevy Chase</i>. Thus:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">The Percy owt of Northumberland,</div> -<div class="indent">And a vow to God mayd he,</div> -<div class="verse">That he wolde hunte in the mountayns</div> -<div class="indent">Off Cheviot within dayes thre,</div> -<div class="verse">In the mauger of doughty Douglas,</div> -<div class="indent">And all that ever with him be.</div> -</div></div> - -<p>Douglas took a summary mode of redress -where a later and tamer owner had lodged -his bill. In a common case of theft, if the -offender were not present (the jury would -seem to have tried cases in absence), the -Warden must produce him at the next Day -of Truce. Indeed, whilst the jury was deliberating, -the officials were going over the -bills “filed” on the last Day, and handing -over each culprit to the opposite Warden;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> -or sureties were given for him; or the -Warden delivered his servant as pledge. If -the pledge died, the body was carried to the -next Warden Court.</p> - -<p>The guilty party, being delivered up, must -make restitution within forty days or suffer -death, whilst aggravated cases of “lifting” -were declared capital. In practice a man -taken in fight or otherwise was rarely put to -death. Captive and captor amicably discussed -the question of ransom. That fixed, -the captive was allowed to raise it; if -he failed he honourably surrendered. The -amount of restitution was the “Double and -Salffye,” to wit, three times the value of the -original goods, two parts being recompense, -and the third costs or expenses. Need I say -that this triple return was too much for -Border honesty? Sham claims were made, -and these, for that they obliged the Wardens -“to speire and search for the thing that -never was done,” were rightly deemed a great -nuisance. As the bills were sworn to, each -false charge involved perjury; and in 1553 -it was provided that the rascal claimants<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> -should be delivered over to the tender -mercies of the opposite Warden. Moreover, -a genuine bill might be grossly exaggerated -(are claims against insurance and railway -companies always urged with accuracy of -detail?). If it were disputed, the value was -determined by a mixed jury of Borderers.</p> - -<p>I have had occasion to refer to Border -faith. In 1569 the Earl of Northumberland -was implicated in a rising against Elizabeth. -Fleeing north, he took refuge with an Armstrong, -Hector of Harelaw, who sold him -to the Regent Murray. Harelaw’s name -became a byword and a reproach. He died -despised and neglected; and “to take Hector’s -cloak” was an imputation of treachery years -after the original story had faded. Thus, in -Marchland the deadliest insult against a -man was to say that he had broken faith. -The insult was given in a very formal and -deliberate manner, called a Baugle. The -aggrieved party procured the glove or picture -of the traitor, and whenever there was -a meeting (a Day of Trace was too favourable -an opportunity to be neglected) he gave notice<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> -of the breach of faith to friend and foe, -with blast of the horn and loud cries. The -man insulted must give him the lie in his -throat, and a deadly combat ensued. The -Laws of the Marches attempted to substitute -the remedy by bill, that the matter might -not “goe to the extremyte of a baughle,” -or where that was impossible, to fix rules for -the thing itself. Or, the Wardens were advised -to attend, with less than a hundred of -retinue, to prevent “Brawling, buklinge, -quarrelinge, and bloodshed.” Such things -were a fruitful source of what a Scots Act -termed “the heathenish and barbarous custom -of Deadly Feud.” When one slew his -fellow under unfair conditions, the game of -revenge went see-sawing on for generations. -The Border legislators had many ingenious -devices to quench such strife. A Warden -might order a man complained of to sign in -solemn form a renunciation of his feud; and -if he refused, he was delivered to the opposite -Warden till he consented. In pre-Reformation -days the church did something by -enjoining prayer and pilgrimage. A sum of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> -money (Assythement) now and again settled -old scores; or there might be a treaty of -peace cemented by marriage. Sometimes, -again, there was a fight by permission of the -Sovereign. (<i>Cf.</i> the parallel case of the clan-duel -in the <i>Fair Maid of Perth</i>.) Still, -prearranged single combats, duels in fact, -were frequent on the Border. Turner, or -Turnie Holme, at the junction of the Kirshope -and Liddel, was a favourite spot for them.</p> - -<p>And now business and pleasure alike are -ended, and the day (fraught with anxiety to -official minds) is waning fast. Proclamation -is made that the multitude may know the -matters transacted. Then it is declared that -the Lord Wardens of England and Scotland, -and Scotland and England (what tender -care for each other’s susceptibilities!) appoint -the next Day of Truce, which ought not to -be more than forty days hence, at such and -such a place. Then, with solemn salutations -and ponderous interchange of courtesy, each -party turns homeward. As noted, the Truce -lasted till the next sunrise. As the nations -were at peace (else had there been no meeting),<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> -this recognised the fact that the Borders -were always, more or less, in a state of -trouble. Also it prevented people from -violently righting themselves forthwith. A -curious case in 1596, where this condition -was broken, gave rise to a Border foray of -the most exciting kind, commemorated in -the famous ballad of <i>Kinmont Willie</i>. A -Day of Truce had been held on the Kershope -Burn, and at its conclusion Willie Armstrong -of Kinmont, a noted Scots freebooter, rode -slowly off, with a few companions. Some -taunt, or maybe the mere sight of one who -had done them so much wrong, was too -much for the English party, and Kinmont -was speedily laid by the heels in Carlisle -Castle. Buccleuch was Keeper of Liddisdale. -He had not been present at the Day -of Truce; but when they told him that -Kinmont had been seized “between the -hours of night and day,” he expressed his -anger in no uncertain terms:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">He has ta’en the table wi’ his hand,</div> -<div class="verse">He garr’d the red wine spring on hie.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse"><span class="gap">*</span><span class="gap">*</span><span class="gap">*</span><span class="gap">*</span></div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And have they ta’en him, Kinmont Willie,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></div> -<div class="verse">Against the truce of Border tide?</div> -<div class="verse">And forgotten that the bauld Buccleuch</div> -<div class="verse">Is keeper here on the Scottish side?</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Negociations failing to procure redress, -Buccleuch determined to rescue Kinmont -himself. In the darkness of a stormy night -he and his men stole up to Carlisle, broke -the citadel, rescued Kinmont, and carried -him off in safety, whilst the English lawyers -were raising ingenious technical justifications -(you can read them at length in the collection -of Border Papers) of the capture. -Those same papers show that the ballad -gives the main features of the rescue with -surprising accuracy. But I cannot linger -over its cheerful numbers. The event might -once have provoked a war, but the shadow -of the Union was already cast. James would -do nothing to spoil the splendid prize almost -within his grasp, and Elizabeth’s statesmen -were not like to quarrel with their future -master.</p> - -<p>Half a century before the consummation -one great cause of discord had been removed.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> -From the junction of the Liddel and Esk to -the Solway was known as the Debateable -Land, a sort of No-Man’s Land, left in -doubt from the time of Bruce. Both nations -pastured on it from sunrise to sunset, but in -the night any beasts left grazing were lawful -prey to the first comer. Enclosures or houses -on it could be destroyed or burned without -remedy. Apparently the idea was to make -it a “buffer State” between the two kingdoms. -It was, however, a thorn in the flesh -to each, for the Bateables, as the in-dwellers -were called, were broken men, and withal -the most desperate ruffians on the Border. -In 1552 a joint Commission divided the -Debateable Land between England and -Scotland. The Bateables were driven out, -and a dyke was built as boundary line. All -the same, here was, for many years, the wildest -in the whole wild whirlpool; so that long -after the Union, when somebody told King -James of a cow which, taken from England -to Scotland, had broken loose and got home -of itself, the British Solomon was sceptical. -It gravelled him, he confessed, to imagine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> -any four-footed thing passing unlifted -through the Debateable Land.</p> - -<p>With the death of Elizabeth (1603) came -the Union of the Crowns, and the Scots -riders felt their craft in danger, for they -forthwith made a desperate incursion into -England, with some idea (it is thought) of -staying the event. But they were severely -punished, and needs must cower under the -now all-powerful Crown. The appointment -of effective Wardens presently ceased. In -1606, by the Act 4 Jac. I., cap. 1, the -English Parliament repealed the anti-Scots -laws, on condition that the Scots Parliament -reciprocated; and presently a kindred -measure was touched with the sceptre at -Edinburgh. The administration of the -Border was left to the ordinary tribunals, -and the <i>Leges Marchiarum</i> vanished to the -Lumber Room.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> -<h2 class="nobreak">The Serjeant-at-Law</h2></div> - -<blockquote> - -<p class="hangingindent">The Black Patch on the Wig—A King’s Serjeant—The -Old English Law Courts—The Common Pleas—Queen’s -Counsel—How Serjeants were Created—Their -Feasts—Their Posies—Their Colts—Chaucer’s -Serjeant-at-Law—The Coif—The Fall -of the Order—Some Famous Serjeants.</p></blockquote> - - -<p><span class="smcap">You</span> have no doubt, at some time or other, -walked through the Royal Courts of Justice -and admired the Judges in their scarlet or -other bravery. One odd little detail may -have caught your eye: a black patch on the -top differences the wig of the present (1898) -Master of the Rolls from those of his brethren. -It signifies that the wearer is a Serjeant-at-Law, -and when he goes to return no more, with -him will probably vanish the Order of the -Coif. Verily, it will be the “end o’ an auld -sang,” of a record stretching back to the -beginning of English jurisprudence, of an -order whose passing had, at one time, seemed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> -as the passing of the law itself. Here in bare -outline I set forth its ancient and famous -history. And, first, as to the name. Under -the feudal system land was held from the -Crown upon various tenures. Sometimes -special services were required from the -holders; these were called Serjeants, and a -tenure was said to be by Serjeanty. Special -services, though usually military, now and -again had to do with the administration of -justice. A man enjoyed his plot because he -was coroner, keeper of the peace, summoner, -or what not; and, over and above the land, -he had the fees of the office. A few offices, -chiefly legal, came to have no land attached—were -only paid in fees. Such a business -was a Serjeanty in gross, or at large, as one -might say. Again, after the Conquest, whilst -the records of our law courts were in Latin, -the spoken language was Norman-French—a -fearful and wondrous tongue that grew to be—“as -ill an hearing in the mouth as law-French,” -says Milton scornfully—and indeed -Babel had scarce matched it. But from the -first it must have been a sore vexation to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> -thick-witted Saxon haled before the tribunal -of his conquerors. He needs must employ a -<i>counter</i>, or man skilled in the <i>conter</i>, as the -pleadings were called. The business was a -lucrative one, so the Crown assumed the -right of regulation and appointment. It was -held for a Serjeanty in gross, and its holders -were <i>servientes regis ad legem</i>. The word -<i>regis</i> was soon omitted except as regards -those specially retained for the royal service. -The literal translation of the other words is -Serjeants-at-law, still the designation of the -surviving fellows of the order. The Serjeant-at-law -was appointed, or, in form at least, -commanded to take office by writ under the -Great Seal. He was courteously addressed -as “you,” whilst the sheriff was commonly -plain “thou” or “thee.” The King’s or -Queen’s Serjeants were appointed by letters -patent; and though this official is extinct as -the dodo, he is mentioned after the Queen’s -Attorney-General as the public prosecutor in -the proclamation still mumbled at the opening -of courts like the Old Bailey.</p> - -<p>Now, in the early Norman period the <i>aula -regis</i>,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> or Supreme Court, was simply the King -acting as judge with the assistance of his -great officers of state. In time there developed -therefrom among much else the three -old common law courts; whereof the Common -Pleas settled the disputes of subjects, -the King’s Bench, suits concerning the King -and the realm, the Exchequer, revenue -matters. Though the last two by means of -quaint fictions afterwards acquired a share -of private litigation, yet such was more properly -for the Court of Common Pleas. It -was peculiarly the Serjeants’ court, and for -many centuries, up to fifty years ago, they -had the exclusive right of audience. Until -the Judicature Acts they were the body of -men next to the judges, each being addressed -from the bench as “Brother,” and from them -the judges must be chosen, also until 1850 -the assizes must be held before a judge or a -Serjeant of the coif.</p> - -<p>A clause in Magna Charta provided that -the Common Pleas should not follow the -King’s wanderings, but sit in a fixed place; -this fixed place came to be near the great<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> -door of the Hall at Westminster. With -the wind in the north the spot was cold and -draughty, so after the Restoration some -daring innovator proposed “to let it (the -Court) in through the wall into a back room -which they called the treasury.” Sir Orlando -Bridgeman, the Chief Justice, would on no -account hear of this. To move it an inch -were flagrant violation of Magna Charta. -Might not, he darkly hinted, all its writs be -thus rendered null and void? Was legal -pedantry ever carried further? In a later -age the change was made without comment, -and in our own time the Common Pleas itself -has gone to the Lumber Room. No doubt -this early localising of the court helped to -develop a special Bar. Other species of -practitioners—barristers, attorneys, solicitors—in -time arose, and the appointment of -Queen’s Counsel, of whom Lord Bacon was -the earliest, struck the first real blow at the -Order of the Coif; but the detail of such -things is not for this page. In later days -every Serjeant was a more fully developed -barrister, and then and now, as is well known,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> -every barrister must belong to one of the -four Inns of Court—the two Temples, Gray’s -Inn, and Lincoln’s Inn to wit, whose history -cannot be told here; suffice it to say they -were voluntary associations of lawyers, which -gradually acquired the right of calling to -the Bar those who wished to practise.</p> - -<p>Now, the method of appointment of Serjeants -was as follows: The judges, headed -by the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, -picked out certain eminent barristers as -worthy of the dignity, their names were -given in to the Lord Chancellor, and in due -time each had his writ, whereof he formally -gave his Inn notice. His House entertained -him at a public breakfast, presented him -with a gold or silver net purse with ten -guineas or so as a retaining fee, the chapel -bell was tolled, and he was solemnly rung -out of the bounds. On the day of his call -he was harangued (often at preposterous -length) by the Chief Justice of the King’s -Bench, he knelt down, and the white coif of -the order was fitted on his head; he went in -procession to Westminster and “counted”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> -in a real action in the Court of Common -Pleas. For centuries he did so in law-French. -Lord Hardwicke was the first -Serjeant who “counted” in English. The -new-comer was admitted a member of -Serjeants’ Inn, in Chancery Lane, in ancient -times called Farringdon Inn, whereof all the -members were Serjeants. Here they dined -together on the first and last days of term; -their clerks also dined in hall, though at a -separate table—a survival, no doubt, from -the days when the retainer feasted, albeit -“below the salt,” with his master. Dinner -done and the napery removed, the board of -green cloth was constituted, and under the -presidency of the Chief Judge the business of -the House was transacted. There was a -second Serjeants’ Inn in Fleet Street, but in -1758 its members joined the older institution -in Chancery Lane. When the Judicature -Acts practically abolished the order, the Inn -was sold and its property divided among the -members, a scandalous proceeding and poor -result of “the wisdom of an heep of lernede -men”!</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>The Serjeant’s feast on his appointment -was a magnificent affair, <i>instar coronationis</i>, -as Fortescue has it. In old times it lasted -seven days; one of the largest palaces in the -metropolis was selected, and kings and -queens graced its quaint ceremonial. Stow -chronicles one such celebration at the call of -eleven Serjeants, in 1531. There were consumed -“twenty-four great beefes, one -hundred fat muttons, fifty-one great veales, -thirty-four porkes,” not to mention the -swans, the larkes, the “capons of Kent,” the -“carcase of an ox from the shambles,” and -so forth. One fancies these solids were -washed down by potations proportionately -long and deep. And there were other -attractions and other expenses. At the -feast in October 1552, “a standing dish of -wax representing the Court of Common -Pleas” was the admiration of the guests; -again, a year or two later, it is noted that -each Serjeant was attended by three gentlemen -selected by him from among the -members of his own Inn to act as his sewer, -his carver, and his cup-bearer. These<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> -Gargantuan banquets must have proved a -sore burden: they were cut down to one -day, and, on the union of the Inns in 1758, -given up as unsuited to the newer times.</p> - -<p>One expense remained. Serjeants on their -call must give gold rings to the Sovereign, -the Lord Chancellor, the judges, and many -others. From about the time of Elizabeth -mottoes or “posies” were engraved thereon. -Sometimes each Serjeant had his own device, -more commonly the whole call adopted the -same motto, which was usually a compliment -to the reigning monarch or an allusion to -some public event. Thus, after the Restoration -the words ran: <i>Adeste Corolus Magnus</i>. -With a good deal of elision and twisting the -Roman numerals for 1660 were extracted -from this, to the huge delight of the learned -triflers. <i>Imperium et libertas</i> was the word -for 1700, and <i>plus quam speravimus</i> that of -1714, which was as neat as any. The rings -were presented to the judges by the Serjeant’s -“colt,” as the barrister attendant on him -through the ceremony was called (probably -from <i>colt</i>, an apprentice); he also had a ring.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> -In the ninth of Geo. II. the fourteen new -Serjeants gave, as of duty, 1409 rings, valued -at £773. That call cost each Serjeant -nearly £200. This ring-giving continued -to the end; another custom, that of giving -liveries to relatives and friends, was discontinued -in 1759. In mediæval times the -new Serjeants went in procession to St. -Paul’s, and worshipped at the shrine of -Thomas à Becket; then to each was allotted -a pillar, so that his clients might know -where to find him. The Reformation put a -summary end to the worship of St. Thomas, -but the formality of the pillar lingered on -till Old St. Paul’s and Old London blazed in -the Great Fire of 1666.</p> - -<p>The mediæval lawyer lives for us to-day in -Chaucer’s famous picture:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">A Sergeant of Lawe, war and wys,</div> -<div class="verse">That often hadde ben atte parvys,</div> -<div class="verse">Ther was also, ful riche of excellence.</div> -<div class="verse">Discret he was, and of great reverence:</div> -<div class="verse">He semede such, his wordes weren so wise,</div> -<div class="verse">Justice he was ful often in assise,</div> -<div class="verse">By patente, and by pleyn commissioun;</div> -<div class="verse">For his science, and for his heih renoun,</div> -<div class="verse">Of fees and robes hadde he many oon.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></div> -<div class="verse">So gret a purchasour was nowher noon.</div> -<div class="verse">Al was fee symple to him in effecte,</div> -<div class="verse">His purchasyng mighte nought ben enfecte.</div> -<div class="verse">Nowher so besy a man as he ther nas,</div> -<div class="verse">And yit he seemede besier than he was.</div> -<div class="verse">In termes hadde he caas and domes alle;</div> -<div class="verse">That fro the tyme of kyng William were falle.</div> -<div class="verse">Therto he couthe endite, and make a thing,</div> -<div class="verse">Ther couthe no wight pynche at his writyng;</div> -<div class="verse">And every statute couthe he pleyn by roote.</div> -<div class="verse">He rood but hoomly in a medlé coote,</div> -<div class="verse">Gird with a seynt of silk, with barres smale</div> -<div class="verse">Of his array telle I no lenger tale.</div> -</div></div> - -<p>How lifelike that touch of the fussy man, -who “seemede besier than he was”! But -each line might serve as text for a long -dissertation! The old court hours were -early: the judges sat from eight till eleven, -when your busy Serjeant would, after bolting -his dinner, hie him to his pillar where he -would hear his client’s story, “and take notes -thereof upon his knee.” The parvys or -pervyse of Paul’s—properly, only the church -door—had come to mean the nave of the -cathedral, called also “Paul’s Walk,” or -“Duke Humphrey’s Walk,” from the supposed -tomb of Duke Humphrey that stood<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> -there. In Tudor times it was the great -lounge and common newsroom of London. -Here the needy adventurer “dined with -Duke Humphrey,” as the quaint euphemism -ran; here spies garnered in popular -opinion for the authorities. It was the very -place for the lawyer to meet his client, yet -had he other resorts: the round of the Temple -Church and Westminster are noted as in use -for consultations.</p> - -<p>Chaucer’s Serjeant “rood but hoomly” -because he was travelling; in court he had a -long priest-like robe, with a furred cape -about his shoulders and a scarlet hood. The -gowns were various, and sometimes parti-coloured. -Thus, in 1555 we find each new -Serjeant possessed of one robe of scarlet, one -of violet, one of brown and blue, one of -mustard and murrey, with tabards (short -sleeveless coats) of cloths of the same colours. -The cape was edged, first with lambskin, afterwards -with more precious stuff. In Langland’s -<i>Vision of Piers Plowman</i> (1362) there -is mention of this dress of the Serjeants, they -are jibed at for their love of fees and so forth,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> -after a fashion that is not yet extinct! But -<i>the</i> distinctive feature in the dress was the -coif, a close-fitting head covering made of -white lawn or silk. A badge of honour, it -was worn on all professional occasions, nor -was it doffed even in the King’s presence. -In monumental effigies it is ever prominent. -When a Serjeant resigned his dignity he was -formally discharged from the obligation of -wearing it. To discuss its exact origin were -fruitless, yet one ingenious if mistaken conjecture -may be noticed. Our first lawyers -were churchmen, but in 1217 these were -finally debarred from general practice in the -courts. Many were unwilling to abandon so -lucrative a calling, but what about the -tonsure? “They were for decency and -comeliness allowed to cover their bald pates -with a coif, which had been ever since retained.” -Thus the learned Serjeant Wynne -in his tract on the antiquity and dignity of -the order (1765). In Tudor times, if not -before, fashion required the Serjeant to wear -a small skull-cap of black silk or velvet on -the top of the coif. This is very clearly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> -shown in one of Lord Coke’s portraits. -Under Charles II. lawyers, like other folk, -began to wear wigs, the more exalted they -were the bigger their perukes. It was wittily -said that Bench and Bar went into mourning -on Queen Anne’s death, and so remained, -since their present dress is that then adopted. -Serjeants were unwilling to lose sight of their -coifs altogether, and it was suggested on the -wig by a round patch of black and white, -representing the white coif and the cap which -had covered it. The limp cap of black cloth -known as the “black cap” which the judge -assumes when about to pass sentence of death -was, it seems, put on to veil the coif, and as -a sign of sorrow. It was also carried in the -hand when attending divine service, and was -possibly assumed in pre-Reformation times -when prayers were said for the dead.</p> - -<p>A few words will tell of the fall of the -order. As far back as 1755 Sir John Willis, -Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, proposed -to throw open that court as well as the -office of judge to barristers who were not -Serjeants, but the suggestion came to nothing.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> -In 1834, the Bill for the establishment of a -Central Criminal Court contained a clause -to open the Common Pleas; this was -dropped, but the same object was attained -by a royal warrant, April 25, 1834. The -legality of this was soon questioned and, -after solemn argument before the Privy -Council, it was declared invalid. In 1846 -a statute (the 9 & 10 Vict. c. 54) to the -same effect settled the matter, and the -Judicature Act of 1873 provided that no -judge need in future be a Serjeant. On the -dissolution of Serjeants’ Inn its members -were received back into the Houses whence -they had come.</p> - -<p>As for centuries all the judges were -Serjeants, the history of the order is that of -the Bench and Bar of England; yet some -famous men rose no higher, or for one reason -or other became representative members. -Such a one was Sir John Maynard (1602-1690). -In his last years William III. commented -on his venerable appearance: “He -must have outlived all the lawyers of his -time.” “If your Highness had not come I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> -should have outlived the law itself,” was the -old man’s happy compliment. Pleading in -Chancery one day, he remarked that he had -been counsel in the same case half a century -before, he had steered a middle course in -those troubled times, but he had ever leant -to the side of freedom against King and -Protector alike. His share in the impeachment -of Strafford procured him a jibe in -Butler’s <i>Hudibras</i>, yet it was said that all -parties seemed willing to employ him, and -that he seemed willing to be employed by -all. Jeffreys, who usually deferred to him, -once blustered out, “You are so old as to -forget your law, Brother Maynard.” “True, -Sir George, I have forgotton more law than -ever you knew,” was the crushing retort. -Macaulay has justly praised his conduct at -the Revolution for that he urged his party -to disregard legal technicalities and adopt -new methods for new and unheard-of circumstances. -Edmund Plowden (1518-1585) deserves -at least equally high praise. He was -so determined a student that “for three -years he went not once out of the Temple.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> -He is said to have refused the Chancellorship -offered him by Elizabeth as he would not -desert the old faith. He was attacked again -and again for nonconformity, but his profound -knowledge of legal technicalities enabled -him on each occasion to escape the -net spread for him. He was an Englishman -loyal to the core, and Catholic as he was -opposed in 1555 the violent proceedings of -Queen Mary’s Parliament. The Attorney-General -filed a bill against him for contempt, -but “Mr. Plowden traversed fully, and the -matter was never decided.” “A traverse full -of pregnancy,” is Lord Coke’s enthusiastic -comment. On his death in 1584 they buried -him in that Temple Church whose soil must -have seemed twice sacred to this oracle of -the law. An alabaster monument whereon -his effigy reposes remains to this day. A -less distinguished contemporary was William -Bendloes (1516-1584), “Old Bendloes,” men -called him. A quaint legend reports him -the only Serjeant at the Common Pleas bar -in the first year of Elizabeth’s reign. Whether -there was no business, or merely half-guinea<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> -motions of course, or the one man argued on -both sides, or whether the whole story be a -fabrication, ’tis scarce worth while to inquire.</p> - -<p>I pass to more modern times. William -Davy was made Serjeant-at-law in 1754. -His wit combats with Lord Mansfield are -still remembered. His lordship was credited -with a desire to sit on Good Friday; our -Serjeant hinted that he would be the first -judge that had done so since Pontius Pilate! -Mansfield scouted one of Davy’s legal propositions. -“If that be law I must burn all -my books.” “Better read them first,” was -the quiet retort. In recent days two of the -best known Serjeants were Parry and Ballantine, -the first a profound lawyer, the second -a great advocate, but both are vanished from -the scene.</p> - - -<p class="center">Printed by <span class="smcap">Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.</span><br /> -London & Edinburgh</p> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAW’S LUMBER ROOM (2ND SERIES) ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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