“He that commits that crying sinne of murther, is vsually hanged vp in chaines, so to continue vntill his bodie be consumed, at or near the place where the fact was perpetrated.
“Such as are found guilty of other criminall causes, as Burglarie, Felonie, or the like, after a little hanging are cut downe and indeed buried, but seldom in Christian mould (as we say) nor in the sepulchres of their fathers, except their fathers have their graves made neare, or vnder the gallowes.
“And we vse to bury such as lay violent hands vpon themselues, in or neare to the high wayes, with a stake thrust through their bodies, to terrifie all passengers, by that so infamous and reproachfull a buriall; not to make such their finall passage out of this present world.”[31]
It is important to notice, as regards hanging in chains, that Weever says “vsually,” not “always;” and although in the preceding paragraph, when speaking of treason, he says the punishment for it “is adjudged by our Lawes,” he makes no such remark now, but is significantly silent as to the legal nature of chains; but, from the way Weever puts it, it must have been a common practice at that time in England.
In Scotland, Lord Dreghorn, writing in 1774, says, “The first instance of hanging in chains is in March, 1637, in the case of Macgregor, for theft, robbery, and slaughter; he was sentenced to be hanged in a chenzie on the gallowlee till his corpse rot.”[32]
In 1688 one Standsfield, found guilty of treason for cursing his father, and accession to his father’s murder, was sentenced to be hung at the Mercat Cross till he was dead, his tongue to be cut out and burnt upon a scaffold, his right hand to be cut off and affixed on the East Port of Haddington, and his body to be carried—not drawn—to the gallowlee between Leith and Edinburgh, “and there to be hanged in chains, and his name, fame, memory, and honours to be extinct, and his arms to be riven forth and delet out of the books of arms.”[33] Thus the hanging in chains formed part of the sentence in Scotland which it never did in England for any crime, if we except the solitary instance at Easthampstead in 1381.[34]
We may now pass for a short time to France. In that country the gallows was a feudal right which, held in the first place in capite, could be sub-infeudated to lesser vassals, but they could at any time be suppressed by the Crown.[35] Voltaire, at Ferney, had several gallows or potences, and his reassuring speech about them to his friends was, “I have as many gallows as would suffice to hang half the monarchs in Europe, and half the monarchs in Europe deserve no loftier position.”