Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 23.pdf/320

 290

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