A Lawyer s Studies in Biblical Law. "during the whole time appeared to be per fectly easy and composed." But it is said by another writer that he observed to the sheriff : " The apparatus of death and the passing through such crowds of people are ten times worse than death itself." He com plained that the King had not granted his prayer to be allowed to die on the spot where his ancestor, the Earl of Essex, died in the time of Elizabeth, and thought it hard that he should have to die on the scaffold for the common felon. However, he eased his mind a little on this score by having the scaffold hung with black cloth and furnished with black cushions on which to kneel. He also provided a black sash for the pinioning of his arms. But any satisfaction he received from these trappings and parade was soon over,
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and the body of the murderer earl dangled on the silken cord as if it were a piece of common rope. Lord Sturton was another peer who de manded and was granted a silken halter. He was hanged at Salisbury for the murder of a man and his son under very aggravated cir cumstances. A third peer to suffer the law's last penalty was Lord Sanquire. His crime was the murder of a fencing master, who in a fencing contest had gouged out the peer's left eye. " Does the man still live?" asked Henry IV. of France, when Lord Sanquire related the incident to him, and the question so impressed his lordship that he straightway went back to London and planned the murder of the fencer. He was executed on a scaffold erected in the palace yard at Westminster.
A LAWYER'S STUDIES IN BIBLICAL LAW. THE POSITION OF WOMEN. By David Werner Amram. ALTHOUGH it is unquestionably true that women in patriarchal society oc cupied a position inferior to that of men, their general inferiority has been very much exag gerated. The legend in Genesis which states that in the beginning woman was made subject to man, reflects the condition of things at the time when this legend was current among the people. It was not only the wife but also the unmarried woman who occupied an inferior position. It is to be remembered, however, that it is her legal status only that was inferior. There is ample evidence throughout the Biblical records to show that in other respects her status compares very favorably with that of women in much later and more modern states of society. As a maiden, the woman was subject to
the authority of her father; as a wife she came into the power of her husband; as a widow she was inherited together with the rest of the family property by the successor of the patriarch; and as a divorced woman, she was sent back to the family from which she had been taken. This statement repre sents her condition in the most ancient patri archal society, although in that state of so ciety which is described in the Bible, her position had been materially changed. Among nomadic herdsmen, the dangers to which the unprotected woman was subject rendered this condition of dependence desir able. With the beginning of the civilizing influence of agricultural pursuits, and the beginning of industrial life in the cities, the character of the patriarchal family and the
