404
NOTES AND QUERIES. no s. XL MAY 22, im
following songs composed by the above author
may be had at 6d. each :
Grog aboard and girl ashore.
And let the spirit move thee.
I don't believe a word on 't.
Old chairs to mend.
C'est ce qu'pn ne voit Guere.
L'oro del crin.
Kind Melancholy.
Ye maids, our lesson.
OUT ship's safe moor'd in port.
We Ve always paid for peeping.
Ye jobbers, underwriters.
Forgive me if thus I presuming.
N.B. All the songs in ' The Padlock ' single,
- ind every new song of his as soon as published."
Begins : " Come, come, my lads, the war is over.
Single song : " Blow, Boreas, blow, or, The Undaunted Sailor, a favourite song. Written and composed by Mr. Dibdin. London, Preston & Son." Begins : " Blow, Boreas, blow, thy surly winds."
1788. "The Chelsea Pensioner, a celebrated song, written, composed and sung by Mr. Dibdin, London, printed and sold by Preston & Son at their warehouse, 97, Strand, and Exeter Change. Price Qd."
Sheet Song, 3 pp., the first two numbered 16 and 17. At back is an arrangement " for German flute and guittar." This song is from
- The Whim of the Moment,' and is generally
.named 'The Soldier's Grave.' It begins: " Of all sensations pity brings."
FRANK KID SON.
5, Hamilton Avenue, Leeds.
HANGING ALIVE IN CHAINS.
(See ante, pp. 221, 303.)
BUT we can carry proof still further. It seemed likely enough that if " hanging in chains " conveyed to contemporaries that hanging alive was meant, no case would b found in which that is expressly stated. It would only be by something like accident that a writer, not foreseeing the disuse of the punishment of hanging alive, would add words which, in the circumstances, were superfluous. I have, however, dis- covered two such cases in which the exact nature of the punishment is stated. It is but natural that each should be found in the reign of Henry VIII., the great era of hanging in chains.
When the Northern Rebellion broke out in 1536 Henry gave orders to " burn, spoil, and destroy their goods, wives, and children with all extremity." In 1537 he wrote to the Duke of Norfolk :
" You must cause such dreadful execution upon a good number of the inhabitants, hanging them on trees, quartering them, and setting their heads and quarters in every town, as shall be
- fearful warning."
Perhaps we have an echo of this hanging
on trees in the lines in ' Macbeth ' :
Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive
TUl famine cling thee.
The Duke of Norfolk was nothing loath, though he believed that the sole cause of rebellion was that " the poor caitiffs " had been so sore handled in times past. He wrote to Henry :
" As many as chains of iron can be made for in this town and in the country shall be hanged in them : the rest in ropes. Iron is marvellous scarce. And, sir, though the number be nothing so great as their deserts did require to have suffered, yet I think the like number hath not been heard of put to execution at one time."
We read of two canons of Warton, two yeomen, the sub-prior of Watton, a head- yeoman, Anthony Pecok all hanged in chains. " All in this shire [Yorkshire] were hanged in chains." In Westmorland and Cumberland seventy-four bodies were taken down by the wives of the men hanged greatly to Henry's disgust (' Calendars of State Papers, Henry VIII.,' Gairdner, xi. 226 ; xii. part i. pp. 226-7, 234, 533, 559). It is to this time that our cases belong.
John Rochester and James Walworth were two monks of the London Charter- house who, a year after the execution of the prior, John Houghton, were sent to a house in Yorkshire. In May, 1537, they were brought to trial, condemned, and executed at York. Chauncy, who has told the story of the martyrdom of the Carthusians, says :
" They were hanged in chains till all their bones fell (' suspensi erant in catenis, donee omnia ossa eorum ab invicem deciderent ')."
In 1583-4 Niccolo Circignano painted in the English College at Rome frescoes represent- ing the English martyrdoms. Engravings from these frescoes by Giovanni Battista Cavallieri were published in 1584, in ' Ecclesiae Anglicanae Trophsea.' Plate 28 represents (not literally) the executions of Carthusians : one portion of the plate is devoted to the execution of Rochester and Walworth. Underneath the plate is the explanatory text :
" Two other Carthusians, at York, hang alive, in iron chains from a lofty beam, till their bones, being wasted away, they fall down ('catenis ferreis e sublimi trabe vivi pendent, donee ossibus dissolutis, dilabuntur ' )."
Here, then, we have what we sought : the word " vivi " was probably added for the information of visitors to whom the statement that the victims were hanged in chains would not convey the full meaning of the words. The statement that these two monks were hanged from a high beam shows
