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 INFLICTED I PUNISHMENT OF SACRILEGE. 191 of foreign rclineinciits and luxury. It is, indeed, i)ossible that the skin, in that instance, might have been the vestige of a ])unishnient inflicted long previously ; but its i)reservation in such a place, and at times such as the period "vvhen the northern part of that cathedral was erected, is a fact most startling and incom])rehensible. The question here suggests itself, by what authority, by what judicial enactment, was this barbarous punishment in- flicted, not merely as summary vengeance in a moment of great popular indignation, in remote localities where the ad- ministration of the laws might be imperfectly maintained, but inflicted with the sanction of the Church, and the remem- brance of the sanguinary deed carefully perpetuated. jMany examples of such horrid torments might be found in ancient history, such as the martyrdom of St. Bartholomew by the Ar- menians, the cruel end of the Emperor Valerian, in the third centuiy, flayed alive by Sapor, king of the Persians, or the fate of the Chief Justice Itinerant in the north of Eng- land, Hugo de Cressyngham, in the reign of Edward I., who was flayed by the exasperated Scots at Strivelyn, A.D. 129G. Knyghton thus describes the indignity thus inflicted upon the king's treasurer. " Quern excoriantes Scoti diviserunt inter se pellem ipsius per modicas partes, non quidem ad re- liquias scd in contumelias, erat enim pulcher et grassus nimis, vocaveruntque eum non Thesaurarium sed Traiturarium regis""." Such atrocities have been committed in every age, on occa- sions of despotic tyranny or lawless commotion '^. Punishments of a very dreadful description were doubtless sanctioned by law in the Anglo-Saxon and later ages. In some of the early judicial enactments expressions occur which, at first sight, would induce the supposition that flaying was a punishment of no rare occurrence. " Corium forisfacere, corium perdere, corium carere, cute ])rivare, corio conipo- nere ''," and similar phrases appear, however, to have implied only such excoriation as might be inflicted by severe scourg- ing, and for this it was mostly permitted to make a comi)o- sition, — corium redimere, — called in Anglo-Saxon, hyd-gild, money paid by an offender to save his skin. It is indeed « Knyghton, Decern Scriptores, col. the victims were tanned and uiade into 2519. boots. '^ It is affirmed that amongst the dread- ^ See Ducange, Corium, Dccoriare, Cu- fiil cruelties of the French Revolution at tis, Crines, tkc, the close of the last century, the skins of