Singular Punishments.
547
up three score and twelve thousand of them feet. Of course, the poor woman's journey in* his time, yet since his death the number was long delayed; but, eventually, she did go of them greatly increased, notwithastanding to Edinburgh, and, when James heard the that they are trussed up apace." story of her wrongs, he sent for the chief Harrison, in his Description of England tain and his accomplices, caused iron soles to (1577)> relates how "such felons as stand be nailed to their feet, exposed them for mute and speak not at their arraignment, are some time to public derision, and then de pressed to death by heavy weights laid upon capitated them. a board, that lieth over their breast, and a In 1530, ah attempt to poison the Bishop sharp stone under their backs." of Rochester and his family, by a cook, named Rose, who had thrown some dele And he forgets to mention that those two terious drug in their porridge, created quite frightful engines of torture—the rack and the "Scavenger's daughter "—were occasion a panic in the land. Poisoning had hitherto ally put in use. The rack, as is well known, been a rare crime in England, and was stretched its victim until his fingers might looked upon as a peculiarly horrible Italian be torn from his hands, and his toes from his crime. A new statute was accordingly passed feet. The less familiar "Scavenger's daugh to meet the new terror, and the penalty for ter" was contrived with diabolical ingenuity, the offence was boiling to death, without to act in the reverse way, compressing the benefit of clergy. Rose was boiled to death wretched culprit so that his legs were forced in Smithfield. into his thighs, these into his body, and his The story of the fires of Smithfield is too head into his shoulders, until his shape was familiar to need more than a passing refer almost that of a ball. ence. Henry the Fourth appears to have Harrison relates a strange manner of exe been the first to burn heretics. In the reign i cution in use at Halifax, where offenders of Edward the First, incendiaries suffered a were beheaded on market days by an engine kind of lex talionis in being burnt to somewhat like the modern guillotine. The death. Burning for witchcraft was legal knife fell on the pulling of a rope; and, i'T the until the passing of 9 Geo. II. с 5. Women could be burned alive for treason at the time culprit was convicted of cattle stealing, "the self beast or other of the same kind shall Blackstone wrote his Commentaries, and the have the end of the rope somewhere unto ancient law of the Druids, which made the them, so that they, 'being driven, do draw murder of a husband a sort of petit treason, out the pin, whereby the offender is exe was still in force in 1784, when a woman, who cuted." had murdered her husband, was condemned For certain offences, the same authority '4o be drawn on a hurdle to the place of relates that both men and women are execution, and burned with fire until she be dragged over the Thames between Lambeth dead." During the "spacious times of great and Westminster at the tail of a boat; and, Elizabeth," any poor wretch adjudged to be "as I have heard reported," he says, "such a vagabond, if above the age of fourteen years, was grievously whipped, and "burned as have walls and banks near unto the sea, and do suffer the same to decay—after con through the gristle of the right ear with a venient admonition—whereby the water enhot iron of the compass of an inch." Ac tefeth and drowneth up the country, are, by cording to Holinshed's Chronicle, rogues a certain ancient custom, apprehended, con were great annoyers to the commonwealth demned, and staked in the breach, where in the time of the virgin Queen; and although King Henry the Eighth "did hang j they remain forever as a parcel of the founds
