XXV.
In the year 1658, Elizabeth, the servant of one Mrs. Cope, of Magdalen parish, Oxford, was convicted of killing her bastard child, and was according hanged at Green-ditch, where she hung so long, that one of the by-standers said, if she was not dead, he would be hanged for her. When cut down, the gallows being very high, she fell with such violence to the ground, that seemed sufficient of itself to have killed her. After this, she was put in a coffin, and carried to the George Inn, in Magdalen parish; where signs of life being observed in her, she was blooded, and put to bed to a young woman; by which means she came to herself, and, to all appearance, might have lived many years: but the next night, she was, by the order of one Mallony, a bailiff of the city, barbarously dragged to Gloucester Green, and there was hanged upon a tree, till she was dead.