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The Green Bag
them, and it was ordered in the words
enemies that they dispatched Domine
of the old record that they be “carried
Selyns, before the ink had dried on the death-warrant, to inform the prisoners of their speedy execution. The prisoners were at supper when the messenger
to the place from whence they came and from thence to the place of execu
tion, that they be severally hanged by the neck and, being alive, their bodies be cut down to the earth, that their bowels be taken out and, they being alive, burnt before their faces, that their
entered and in a diabolically ingenious
manner made the ill news seem worse than it was. “I have come to bring you good
heads shall be severed from their bodies
news, gentlemen!" he announced, as the
and their bodies cut into four parts which shall be disposed of as their Majesties shall assign.” Hanged, beheaded, drawn and quar
two condemned men started to their feet with exclamations of surprise. “Not
tered—that was the sentence passed in the sombre court room of the colonial city hall. It was the punishment for
all of you are to die. But Commander Leisler and Secretary Milbome, you both are to die next Saturday, and you have to prepare yourselves thereto." The gallows were erected on Leisler’s
own property, within sight of his coun try home. The spot was later to be
high treason. There had been no evidence intro duced, no witnesses, no defense in the case of Leisler and Milborne. Even Sloughter, mercenary and heartless as he was, seemed appalled by the severity
Alley," and is crowded between the
of the sentence. He at first refused to sign the death-warrant for the two
great newspaper buildings of Park Row. The 16th of May was a wet, dreary,
come Frankfort street, named for the birthplace of the man who was executed there. It is now known as “Newspaper
leaders; he took under consideration
foreboding day. The driving rain soaked
the pardoning of the other prisoners; and he allowed an appeal to be made to the Crown. Tradition says that the enemies of
the gaunt bare timbers of the scaffold and wet the crowd that gathered in the
Leisler, Bayard, Nicolls, Van Cortlandt,
Philipse and Minvielle, all of whom were members of
the
Govemor’s council,
planned a sumptuous banquet for Slough ter. Here he was dutifully plied with wine until he was in that pliant state of drivelling good nature that allowed them
to cajole him into signing the death warrant.
At any rate, on the evening of Thurs day, May 14, Governor Sloughter aflixed his signature to the death-warrant. He softened the terrible sentence in one respect, crossing out the clause relating
open around. The essential tragedy of it all to
Leisler was the fact that his son-in~law was to die with him. But nothing in the bearing of either of them suggested one thought of weakness or of fear. "What I have done,” said Leisler earnestly, “has been but in the service
of my King and Queen, for the Protestant cause, and for the good of my country —and for this I must die. Some errors I have committed; for these I ask pardon. I forgive my enemies as I hope to be forgiven, and I entreat my chil dren to do the same." Just back of what is the Tribune
to the condemned being drawn and
Building today, the two men, who had
quartered.
been the leaders in one of the most peculiarly uncertain and precarious
So brutal and heartless were Leisler's
