Page:Archaeologia volume 38 part 1.djvu/74

 58 Certain modes of Capital Punishment venient admonition, wherebye the water entereth and drowneth up the country, are, by a certaine custome, apprehended, condemned, and staked in the breache, where they remaine for ever as parcel! of the new wal."* This savours of the truculent spirit of the ancient Frisian Law, which con- demned the criminal who had been found guilty of sacrilege to mutilation and death on the sea-shore, where he was immolated to the gods whose temple he had violated.* We read in the Chronicle of Hector Boethius, that the right of pit and gallows was given by Malcolm Canmore to the Barons of Scotland : " Constitutum quoque est eodem consilio a rege, uti Barones omnes puteos faciendi ad con- dcmnatas plectendas fceminas, ac patibulum ad viros suspendendos noxios, potestatcm haberent." r This passage is thus rendered in Bellendcn's translation : " It was ordanit als be the said consul that free baronis sal mak jebattis and draw wellis for punition of criminabyl pcrsonis." d But although drowning was the punishment usually awarded to women in Scot- land, the sentence was sometimes extended to the other sex. Thus, in the year l").j(i, Adam Sinclair, convicted of stealing money, chalices, and church orna- ments from the parish church of Forresc, was sentenced to be drowned ex spcciali yruiiti Jiff/iinr. Pitcairn remarks, that this was perhaps owing to his youth, or at his own request. lu 351)'.) firisscll Mathou is condemned by the High Court of Justiciary at Edinburgh " to be tane to the North Loch, and thair drownit quhill scho be deid.'" As late as 1011 James A r atsoun was drowned in the Scotish capital for steal- ing a lamb/ Sir Edward Coke observes, that the punishment of drowning had, at the time he wrote, become obsolete in England ; but he affords us no clue to the period when it was abolished. I am indebted to Mr. W. Durrant Cooper for the suggestion that the charter of Edward the Fourth to the Cinque Port towns, granting, among other privileges, that of Furca, abolished the ancient mode of punishment Book 2, ch. ii. b Qui fanum effregerit, ct ibi aliquid de sacris tulerit, ducitur ad marc, ct in sabulo, quod acccssus maris operire solct, finduntur aurcs ejus, ct castratur, et immolatur Diis quorum templa violavit. Lex Frisionum Addit. Sap. Tit. xii. De honorc tcmplorum. Corp. Juris Germ. Antiq. ed. Walter, torn. i. p. 874. c Scot. Hist. Lib. xii. p. 256, ed. Paris. * Fol. 78. I'itcairn'g Criminal Trials, Tol. ii. p. 94. t ibid. vol. iii. p. 208.