Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/493

 10 8. XI. MAY 22, 1909.J NOTES AND QUERIES.

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that the author of the inscription, did not borrow from Chauncy. We know that Henry gave orders to hang monks from steeples (' Cal. Henry VIII.,' xi. 357).

The other case is told by an English chronicler of high standing, Charles Wrio- thesley, Windsor Herald. Robert Aske was one of the leaders of the Northern Rebellion. Holinshed (iii. 944) tells his fate thus :

" Sir Robert Constable was hanged in chains ouer Beuerlie gate at Hull, and Robert Aske was also hanged in chains on a tower at Yorke." Wriothesley says :

"1537. This yeare....Sir Robert Constable was hanged at Hull in Yorkeshire in chaines, Aske was hanged in the cittie of Yorke in Chaines till he died." ' Chron.,' Camden Soc., 1875, i. 65.

The records of the executions of Rochester and Walworth and Robert Aske remove the last possible scruple of doubt as to what was meant by " hanging in chains." They fully confirm not that, in my opinion, con- firmation was needed the statements made by Harrison and Chettle as to the existence of the punishment in their day.

The punishment existed from a very early time. In 1196 William Longbeard was drawn to Tyburn, and there " hanged by a chain on the gallows ('per catenam in

Eatibulo ')," says Matthew Paris; "bound y a chain to the Elms," says Gervase of Canterbury. Sir Francis Palgrave evidently understands this to mean that he was hanged alive : " His lacerated and almost lifeless carcass was hung in chains on the fatal elm " (' Rotuli Curise Regis,' Intro- duction, i. p. xvii). Other cases, some of them not quite clear, are :

1191. For surrendering Tickhill Castle, Roger, the Constable of Chester, hanged in an iron chain Peter de Bovencourt, and three days later hanged Peter's squire for driving away the birds which, with beak and claw, tore the hanging body of his master (' Chron. Benedict of Peterborough,' ii. 233).

1295. Sir Thomas Turberville, drawn, and hanged by a chain of iron.

1322. After the victory of Edward II. over the barons two, at least, were hanged in chains. Six others were probably so executed, as it is recorded that two years later, or, in another account, long after, the king gave permission to bury the bodies (' Chron. de Melsa,' ii. 342-3 ; Knighton, i. 425-6 ; ' Foedera,' Record ed., ii. part i. 478-9 ; Murimuth, p. 43).

1326. Hugh le Despenser, the Elder, being condemned to death, was drawn at the tails

of horses to the thieves' gallows, and there- remained, hanged with an iron chain (" cum catena ferrea suspensus remansit ") (' Chron. Avesbury,' p. 283).

In 1381, after the execution of John Ball r many persons were hanged. The bodies were taken down, and the king ordered that they should be hanged up again in chains. Chains are not mentioned in the original sentence, but the terms of the order seem to convey that the sentence was of hanging in chains.

In 1549, among the executions following the rising in Devonshire, was that of Welsh, the Vicar of St. Thomas's, Exeter. He had stood by the rebels, but had prevented the burning of the city. This did not save him. A gallows was set up on the top of the church ; the vicar was drawn to the top of the tower by a rope about his middle,

" and there in chains hanged in his popish apparel T and had a holie water bucket and sprinkle, a sacring bell, a paire of beads, and such other like popish trash about him, and there he with the same about him remained a long time." Hooker, in Holinshed, iii. 1026.

In the same year, 1549, the two Ketts- were sentenced to be drawn, hanged, and quartered at Tyburn. They were, however, hanged in chains : Robert on the top of Norwich Castle, William on the top of the steeple of Wymondham Church.

In 1554, after Wyatt's rebellion, Wyatt's " head was sett on the gall owes at the park pale beyond St. James, where Pollard and two other were hanged in Chaynes "" (Wriothesley, ii. 115).

Till what date did the punishment remain in use ? It seems to have reached the stage of incipient decay in Harrison's time, for he says, " or else, upon compassion taken, first strangled with a rope." This decay went on till at last, as mentioned in the Act of 1752, hanging in chains was in use only in the case of persons previously hanged. But, as we have seen, the memory, at least, of hanging alive in chains was fresh in 1655. In 1731 was published a pamphlet, ' An Essay Humbly Offer 'd for an Act of Parliament to Prevent Capital Crimes,' &c. r j the author being the Rev. George Ollyffe, who took his M.A. degree at Oxford in 1706,. j and at the date of publication held a living I in Bucks. Ollyffe's panacea was to revive disused punishments. He regretted the decay of hanging in chains, " the ancient method of hanging such [criminals] alive on Gibbets till starved to Death." He says .- " The tender and innocent part of Mankind not being able to bear it, it was thought