Mr. Sheriff Vaillant’s chariot, carrying the sheriff and under-sheriff.
A mourning coach and six, with some of his lordship’s friends.
A hearse and six, provided for the conveyance of his lordship’s corpse from Tyburn to Surgeons’ Hall.
The procession was two hours and three quarters on the way, which gave time to the chaplain to worry the earl about his religion—the world would naturally be very inquisitive concerning the religion his lordship professed. His lordship replied that he did not think himself accountable to the world for his sentiments on religion. He greatly blamed my Lord Bolingbroke for permitting his sentiments on religion to be published to the world. But he did not believe in salvation by faith alone.
He gave his watch to Sheriff Vaillant, and intended to give five guineas to the hangman. By mischance it was to the hangman’s assistant that the earl handed the money, whence arose a dispute between these officers of the State. The enjoined dissection was performed perfunctorily; the body was publicly exposed in a room for three days, and then given up to friends. There exists an engraving showing the body as exposed in the coffin.
Walpole gives a long account of the execution. It was remarkable, among other things, for the introduction of a new device. “Under the gallows was a new-invented stage, to be struck from under him.… As the machine was new, they were not ready at it: his toes touched it, and he suffered a little, having had time by their bungling to raise his cap: but the executioner pulled it down again, and they pulled his legs, so that he was soon out of pain, and quite dead in four minutes.” The “drop” was no more used at Tyburn, but it became a feature of the new gallows of Newgate.
Walpole says that “the executioners fought for the rope, and the one that lost it cried.”
There is a story that Ferrers was hanged by a silk rope, or, in another version, that he desired to be hanged by such a rope. Timbs, in his “Curiosities of London,” even asserts that the bill for this rope of silk is still in existence; he does not say where. The legend must have arisen later. It is a detail which would have delighted Walpole; he mentions the rope, as we have seen; his silence as to its particular character seems conclusive. But the curious in the matter may consult an article by M. Feuillet de Conches (“Causeries d’un Curieux,” 1862, ii. 333-40); Abraham Hayward, “Biographical and Critical Essays,” ii. 30; an article in the Quarterly Review, lxxxv. 378, and the account of Earl Ferrers in the “Dictionary of National Biography.”
THE EXECUTION OF EARL FERRERS AT TYBURN ON THE NEW MOVABLE GALLOWS, 1760.