Hence, as we have seen, gradually arose, side by side with the capital punishment of hanging on the gallows in its simplicity—which may be almost said to be as old as the world itself—the custom of publicly exposing human bodies upon gibbets as warnings to others.
We gather from the “Vocabulary of Archbishop Alfric,” of the tenth century, and from early illuminated MSS., that the gallows (galga) was the usual mode of capital punishment with the Anglo-Saxons. It can hardly be doubted that in certain cases, as with the Romans, the body of the “fordemed”—in the case of decapitation the “heafedleas bodi”—remained in terrorem upon the gibbet, as Robert of Gloucester, circa 1280, has it, referring to his own times:—
“In gibet hii were an honge,”
though not necessarily as part of the sentence, as appears always to have been the case in England. An obscure poet, Robert Brunne, has:—
“First was he drawen for his felonie,
& as a thefe than on galwes hanged hie.”
In the numerous enactments concerning the administration of the criminal law, from the “Statute of Westminster the First,” in 1277, to the Act of George II. in 1752, no cognizance is taken of the hanging of bodies of criminals in chains. Such a treatment of the carcass was, like the rack, rather an engine of state than of law.
In Chauncy’s “History of Hertfordshire” it is stated:—
“Soon after the King came to Easthampstead, to recreate himself with hunting, where he heard that the bodies which were hanged here were taken down from the gallowes, and removed a great way from the same; this so incensed the King that he sent a writ, tested the 3rd of August, Anno 1381, to the bailiffs of this borrough, commanding them upon sight thereof, to cause chains to be made, and to hang the bodies in them upon the same gallowes, there to remain so long as one piece might stick to another, according to the judgement; but the townsmen, not daring to disobey the King’s command, hanged the dead bodies of their neighbours again, to their great shame and reproach, when they could not get any other for any wages to come near the stinking carcasses, but they themselves were compelled to do so vile an office.”