Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/601

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s. i. JUNE is, low.] NOTES AND QUERIES.


497


then read or entered on the rolls, commencing with the words hoc die, "on this day?..." This wild suggestion seems as good as many that have been published. O. O. H.

MAY MONUMENT (10 th S. i. 449). I believe the effigy of Dame Mary May was buried under the floor of the chancel when the church was "restored." My first visit to Midlavant Church was in 1885, and my informant was either the parish clerk or one of his family. E. H. W. D.

"HANGED, DRAWN, AND QUARTERED" (10 th S. i. 209, 275, 356, 371, 410). I never had a moment's doubt that the ultra- judicial pro- ceedings described in the pages of 'N. & Q.' should be, in the actual order of the facts, "drawn, hanged, and quartered." That before he was hanged a convict was ever "drawn" in the manner practised by cooks upon poultry never entered my mind. That the "drawing" consisted in going to the gallows in the manner described by MR. A. MARKS is manifested in several engravings of various dates, but all contemporaneous with the events they profess to represent, which are comprised in the collections of Historical and Satirical Prints in the British Museum. These are distinct gatherings, of prodigious value in their way, yet very seldom studied by anybody, least of all by historians. In the latter of the two collections is ample confirmation of what has been said above. For example, No. 1004, representing a wheel, or ' T" Radt van Avont- veren,' or ' The Wheel of Fortune,' which was published at Amsterdam c. 30 January, 1661, comprises, among other designs filling the angles of the plate, ' Kromwels Graf,' or rather the hanging of the bodies of the Pro- tector Oliver, Bradshaw, and Ireton upon a gibbet. The corpse of the first hangs with that of one of the others, while that of the third is dragged by the heels from the sledge on which it was drawn to the place. None of the figures has been disembowelled. No. 1065 in the same collection of prints is called 'The Plotter Executed,' and, with other events, represents how Edward Cole- man was dealt with for treason, 3 December, 1678. It gives, on p. 29 of a ballad which was ordered to be sung to the then popular tune of ' Packington's Pound,' a woodcut showing an executioner standing near a bench (on which is a great knife) and a hurdle, where lies a human figure. A fire burns near the latter. This illustration is in the 'Roxburghe Ballads, 'iii. (British Museum Library, press-mark C. 20. f.). In No. 1088, same collection, we have a broadside entitled


'The Popish Damnable Plot,' <fcc., and con- sisting of an engraving in twelve divisions. No. iv. of which delineates the deaths of Coleman, Ireland, Grove, Pickering, and others. This division is in two parts. In one of these a man is drawn by a horse to the place of execution. The convict wears a hat, wig, and beard, and is reading. Behind, a man is hanging from a gallows ; the execu- tioner stands on a ladder placed against the gibbet. In the other compartment the corpse of a man lies naked upon a table ; an execu- tioner is leaning over it, holding in his right hand a heart, and in his left hand a large knife. Near the head of the corpse a large fire is burning. The reference is to the so- called Meal-Tub Plot, and the broadside is in the Luttrell Collection (B.M. Library, C. 20. f.), vol. iii. p. 142. No. 1123, same series, de- scribes 'A History of the New Plot,' and derives from a broadside "Printed for Ran- dolph Taylor, 1683." In this the fourth of eight compartments shows how Walcot, Hone, and Rouse were executed at Tyburn. Here we are shown a gibbet with three corpses pendent from it. A man is drawn to the gallows, and we have the disembowelling of a convict, who lies naked on a table ; the executioner stoops over him, and, raising a heart in his hand, exclaims, " The Heart of a Traitor." Q.

In the translation of Baldseus's description of Ceylon, printed in vol. iii. of Churchill's ' Collection of Voyages and Travels ' (1703), we read that, after the discovery of a plot against the Dutch in Jaffna in 1658,

"the three chief Heads of this Conspiracy

were laid upon the Wheel or a Cross, and after they had receiv'd a Stroke with the Ax in the Neck and on the Breast, had their Entrails taken out, and the Heart laid upon the Mouth."

The translator has here, as throughout the work, taken liberties with the original, which says that after the strokes on the throat and breast the victims had " the heart pulled out and thrown in the treacherous face." Pro- bably the translator, when making the above addition, had in his mind the horrible English custom of "drawing" (in the later sense), and may also have thought the insertion justified by the very realistic engraving that accompanies the text, in which the execu- tioner is shown in the act of (apparently) disembowelling one of the culprits.

DONALD FERGUSON. Croydon,

THE LAST OF THE WAR Bow (10 th S. i. 225, 278, 437). I can give a still later instance of the use of bows and arrows in war. During