CAXTON GIBBET.
And so it remains to-day.
Among the criminals gibbeted on the original Caxton Gibbet was George Atkins, who in 1671 had murdered Richard Foster and his wife and child in the adjoining parish of Bourne. He remained at large for seven years, and was then captured and hanged; his body being afterwards exhibited here. But the most pitiful story connected with it is that of the younger of the two sons of Mrs. Gatward, a widow, who for many years kept the "Red Lion" Inn at Royston. She was assisted by her two sons in the coaching and posting business attached to the inn; but the younger took a sudden fancy to become a highwayman; probably from a mere love of excitement, or dared to do it by companions of his own age. Whatever the compelling cause, he went out and waylaid the postboy carrying the mails between Royston and Huntingdon, and robbed the bags. He was arrested, condemned to death, and hanged, and his body was gibbeted here.
The story of this amateur highwayman is to be met with in the manuscript history of Cambridgeshire, written by Cole, a diligent eighteenth-century antiquary: "About 1753-54, the son of Mrs. Gatward, who kept the 'Red Lion' at Royston, being convicted of robbing the mail, was hanged in chains on the Great Road. I saw him hanging in a scarlet coat, and after he had hung about two or three months it is supposed that the screw was filed which supported him and that he fell in the first high wind after. Mr. Lord, of Trinity, passed by as he lay on the ground, and, trying to open his breast to see what state his body was in, not being offensive but quite dry, a button of brass came off, which he preserves to this day.... It was a great grief to his mother, who bore a good character, and kept the inn for many years after."
The story goes that the mother had the body secretly conveyed to the inn, and gave it decent, if unconsecrated, burial in the cellar.
It is easy to find the excuse that society had to be protected at all costs, to condone the savagery of those who permitted gibbeting for what we in our own age would consider a minor crime; but if we pause a moment, and strive to realise the feelings of the surviving relatives by imagining one of our own belongings so shamefully exposed like carrion, for the ravens and the crows to feed upon, we shall not so readily find excuse for that fearful procedure.
The story of Mrs. Gatward's son very nearly fits that which suggested to Tennyson his gloomy and pitiful poem, "Rizpah"; but the original motive for that poem is usually said to have been a gibbet on the downs between Brighton and Worthing. In that case also, the victim was a lad who had robbed the mail for a mere freak. There was no mercy for him.
They killed him, they
Kill'd him for robbing the mail,
They hanged him in chains for a show.