Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 06.pdf/612

 Contrasts in English Criminal Law.

57*

Westminster Hall, and that on the next day he should stand again in the pillory for the space of an hour, with the same inscription above him; that on the third day he should be whipped from Aldgatc to Newgate; that on the following day he should be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn by the hands of the common hangman; and that on the 24th of April of every year, as long as he lived, he was to stand upon the pillory at Tyburn, just opposite to the gallows, for

years later, on the 11th of June, 1689; but it was not until the House of Lords ad dressed the king to grant him a pardon that the unhappy man found relief. (4 State Trials, p. 66.) An Act had been passed in the reign of Charles II., by which any person adjudged guilty of putting out an eye, or slitting the nose, or cutting off the nose or lip of any person, should be guilty of felony, without benefit of clergy. This Act had been occa-

the space of an hour, and then be brought to the pillory at Westminster Hall on the 9th of every August, in every year as long as he lived; and on the 10th of August, during his entire life, to stand in the pillory at Charing Cross, and again at Temple Gate upon the succeeding day; and on the 2d of September he was to stand upon the pillory at the Royal Exchange, and to do this in every year during his life, and to be com mitted a close prisoner as long as he lived. This sentence, which, was afterwards exe cuted with great severity, was subsequently reversed by the House of Commons four

sioned by an assault in the street upon Sir John Coventry, a member of the House of Commons, in which his nose had been slit, and hence became known as the " Coventry Act." Under this statute, as late as 1721, in the eighth year of George I., Coke and Woodburne were both condemned and exe cuted at the Suffolk Assizes for slitting the nose of a Mr. Crispe. Coke had contended that no nose could be slit, within the mean ing of the statute, unless the edge of it had been cut through; but the Lord Chief Jus tice, Sir Peter King, replied : " It is true the edge of the nose was not slit, but the cut