thirty houses, with barns and outhouses, were destroyed. The damage caused by this fire was estimated at 5,000l.
Where can I find a detailed account of the last two fires mentioned, and also a list of sufferers, with amount of damage sustained?
Replies
DEATH WARRANTS.
(12 S. i. 49, 111, 157.)
As Mr. Horace Bleackley thinks that more information on this subject would be interesting, I will add something to my former reply. What is commonly understood as a death warrant is a document, signed by the sovereign, and addressed to the Sheriffs and Governor of the Gaol, which orders them to carry out the sentence of death passed by a court of law on a criminal, and without which the sentence could not be carried out. No one has yet been able to give a reference to such a document. I referred to the cases of Lady Jane Grey, and Mary Queen of Scots, and these are, no doubt, over and over again spoken of as cases in which Mary in the one case, and Elizabeth in the other, signed a death warrant.
First, was Harrison Ainsworth right in stating that Queen Mary signed a death warrant for the execution of Lady Jane Grey and her husband? 'The Tower of London' is "a historical romance," and does not pretend to be historically correct. The story the author tells is this. Simon Renard, the Ambassador from the Emperor Charles V., and the Queen were alone together when "he placed before her the warrant for the execution of Jane and her husband." After some conversation the Queen said:—
"'If I sign this warrant I may destroy my own happiness.'…… Renard said, 'Not only your throne may be endangered, if you suffer them to live, but the Catholic religion.' 'True,' replied Mary, 'I will no longer hesitate.' And she attached her signature to the warrant."—P. 351.
Harrison Ainsworth gives no authority for this conversation. Which of the two, the Queen or Renard, related this afterwards? Where is there any record of it to be found? When Jane and her husband were charged with high treason, they were taken to the Guildhall in the City, and on being arraigned before the justices of Oyer and Terminer they pleaded guilty, and were in due form sentenced to death on Nov. 3, 1553. The carrying out of the sentence was suspended; but when the Queen finally determined, after Sir Thomas Wyatt's rebellion, not to exercise the prerogative of mercy in their favour, the sentence was carried out in due course on Feb. 12, 1554, and the judgment of the Court and the precept referred to by Blackstone formed what was, so to speak, a death warrant.
It is said (1 Howell's 'State Trials,' p. 731) that Morgan, one of the judges at the trial, was so affected after the execution that "he died raving." Morgan was Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. Foss, in 'The Judges of England,' gives the following account of this:—
"His removal from the bench before his death gives some weight to the story that he became mad from the bitter remembrance of the dreadful sentence he had pronounced upon Lady Jane, and that in his raving he cried continually to have her taken away from him (Holinshed, iv. 23)."
In my reply, the passage I quoted ante, p. 112, from Blackstone's 'Commentaries,' title 'Of Execution,' shows that there was no necessity for the Queen to sign any death warrant. I invite attention to that chapter, and to the authorities cited therein.
With regard to Mary, Queen of Scots, Mr. Horace Bleackley refers to Froude's 'History of England,' where a circumstantial account is given of the signing of the warrant for her execution by Queen Elizabeth. The trial at Fotheringay of the Queen of Scots was in October, 1585, under a special Commission, and she was sentenced to death. The Lords and Commons "voted unanimously that there was no other course but execution." Elizabeth was at first unwilling that the execution should be carried out, but at last she consented, and ordered Letters Patent under the Great Seal to be prepared for carrying out of the execution. That document has been preserved, and it will be found in 1 Howell's 'State Trials,' p. 1202 et seq., and in 1 Hargrave's 'State Trials,' 162. It is a State document, and ought to be carefully studied. It is dated Feb. 1, 1587 the day when Elizabeth is said by Froude to have signed a death warrant which Davison, her secretary, fetched from his room, and which was afterwards taken to the Lord Chancellor to be sealed, and then to be sent to the persons to whom it was addressed in order that it might be acted upon. The Letters
