Among the features of the country to which the old map-makers especially devoted their attention, the gibbets and the beacons along the roads are most prominent. Ogilby, in his Britannia of 1675, shows a startlingly large "gallows," like a football goal, a mile and a half on the London side of Croydon, and on the Tarporley-Chester Road shows a "Gibbit," two miles and a half from Chester.
THE ROAD NEAR CHESTER, 1675.
There was never any lack of subjects for gibbeting purposes, but it was generally desired to preserve the criminal's body as long as possible, to avoid the trouble and expense of replacing him with a fresh subject; and to that end the practice was either to place the body in a copperful of boiling pitch, or to pour pitch over it. So treated, it would last an almost incredibly long time: always supposing the relatives of that public exhibit did not come by stealth and make away with it.
There are still a few gibbets to be found in England: but rarely, or never, the original posts. A sentiment which we are not quite prepared to declare a perverted one, but which is certainly a sufficiently gruesome manifestation of antiquarian enthusiasm, has led to the old gibbet-posts being renewed from time to time in several places; and there they stand, on hill-tops or by roadsides, reminders of those fearful old times when such things as these could be.
In these pages we are concerned only with those that bear upon the subject of the highwaymen. Among these Caxton Gibbet is prominent, standing as it does on the North Road, between Royston and Alconbury Hill. The particular spot where the gibbet stands is an exceedingly lonely, and, to some minds dismal, stretch of road that winds in the flat, featureless lands, with never a house in sight but the neighbouring wayside alehouse, the "Gibbet" Inn. Only one mile distant is the village of Caxton, but to all appearances the spot might be many miles remote from even a hamlet.
Caxton, according to Cobbett, resembles a Picardy village; "certainly nothing English," he savagely continued, "except some of the rascally rotten boroughs in Cornwall and Devonshire, on which a just Providence seems to have entailed its curse. The land just about here does seem to be really bad. The face of the country is naked. The few scrubbed trees that now and then meet the eye, and even the quick-sets, are covered with a yellow moss. All is bleak and comfortless; and just on the most dreary part of this most dreary scene, stands almost opportunely, 'Caxton Gibbet,' tendering its friendly one arm to the passers-by. It has recently been fresh painted, and written on in conspicuous characters."
