The Sheriff is, by being so styled in the King's Patent under the Great Seal, an Esquire, which raises him to that Rank, unless he has previously had the Title adventitiously. None were anciently chosen to this Office, but such Gentlemen whose fortunes and stations would warrant it; so, on the other hand, Merchants, and other liberal branches of the lower order, were admitted first into the rank of Gentlemen, by a grant of Arms, on proper qualifications; from the Earl Marshal, and the Kings of Arms, respectively, according to their Provinces. After a Negotiant has become a Gentleman, courtesy will very soon advance that rank, and give the party the title of Esquire; and so it has happened with the worthy Gentleman before us, for such I shall prove him once with ceremony to have been created. This remarkable case happened in the year 1616, and was as follows. Ralph Brooke, whose real name was Brokesmouth, at that time York Herald, not content with being mischievous, was the most turbulent and malicious man that ever wore the King's Coat. After various malversations in Office, not to the present purpose, he put a trick upon Sir William Segar, Garter King of Arms, which had very nearly cost both of them their places. The story is touched upon in Mr. Anstis's Register of the Order of the Garter[382]; but is more fully and satisfactorily related in the Life of Mr. Camden, prefixed to his "Britannia," to this effect. Ralph Brooke employed a person to carry a Coat of Arms ready drawn to Garter, and to pretend it belonged to one Gregory Brandon, a Gentleman who had formerly lived in London, but then residing in Spain, and to desire Garter to set his hand to it. To prevent deliberation, the messenger was instructed to pretend that the vessel, which was to carry this confirmation into Spain, when it had received the Seal of the Office and Garter's Hand, was just ready to sail[383]. This being done, and the Fees paid, Brooke carries it to Thomas Earl of Arundel, then one of the Commissioners for executing the Office of Earl Marshal; and, in order to vilify Garter, and to represent him as a rapacious negligent Officer, assures his Lordship that those were the Arms of Arragon, with a Canton for Brabant, and that Gregory Brandon was a mean and inconsiderable person. This was true enough; for he was the common Hangman for London and Middlesex. Ralph Brooke afterwards confessed all these circumstances to the Commissioners who represented the Earl Marshal; the consequence of which was, that Garter was, by order of the King, when he heard the case, committed to Prison for negligence, and the Herald for treachery. Be this as we find it, yet was Gregory Brandon the Hangman become a Gentleman, and, as the Bastard says in King John, "could make any Joan a Gentlewoman."
Thus was this Gregory Brandon advanced, perhaps from the state of a Convict, to the rank of a Gentleman; and though it was a personal honour to himself, notwithstanding it was surreptitiously obtained by the Herald, of which Gregory Brandon, Gentleman, was perhaps ignorant, yet did it operate so much on his successors in office, that afterwards it became transferred from the Family to the Officer for the time being; and from Mr. Brandon's popularity, though not of the most desirable kind, the mobility soon improved his rank, and, with a jocular complaisance, gave him the title of Esquire, which remains to this day. I have said that Mr. Brandon was perhaps a Convict; for I know that at York the Hangman has usually been a pardoned Criminal, whose case was deemed venial, and for which the performance of this painful duty to fellow-prisoners was thought a sufficient infliction. It seems too as if this Office had once, like many other important Offices of State, been hereditary; but whether Mr. Brandon had it by descent I cannot say, yet Shakspeare has this passage in Coriolanus[384]:
"Menenius.—Marcius, in a cheap estimation, is worth all your Predecessors, since Deucalion; though, peradventure, some of the best of them were Hereditary Hangmen."
This looks as if the Office of Executioner had run in some Family for a generation or two, at the time when Shakspeare wrote; and that it was a circumstance well understood, and would be well relished, at least by the Galleries. This might indeed, with regard to time, point at the ancestors of Mr. Brandon himself; for it was in the Reign of King James I. that this person was, as we have seen, brought within the pale of Gentility. Nay, more, we are told by Dr. Grey, in his Notes on Shakspeare[385], that from this Gentleman, the Hangmen, his Successors, bore for a considerable time his Christian name of Gregory, though not his Arms, they being a personal honour, till a greater man arose, viz. Jack Ketch, who entailed the present official name on all who have hitherto followed him[386].
Whether the name of Ketch be not the provincial pronunciation of Catch among the Cockneys, I have my doubts, though I have printed authority to confront me; for that learned and laborious Compiler, B. E. Gent. the Editor of the Canting Dictionary, says that Jack Kitch, for so he spells it, was the real name of a Hangman, which has become that of all his successors. When this great man lived, for such we must suppose him to have been, and renowned for his popularity or dexterity, Biographical History is silent.
So much for this important Office itself; and we must now look to the Emoluments which appertain to it, and assign a reason why Thirteen Pence Halfpenny should be esteemed the standard Fee for this definitive stroke of the law.
Hogarth has given a fine Picture of the sang-froid of an Executioner in his Print of the London Apprentice; where the Mr. Ketch for the time being is lolling upon the Gallows, and smoaking his Pipe; waiting, with the utmost indifference, for the arrival of the Cart and the Mob that close the melancholy Procession. But Use becomes Nature in things at which even Nature herself revolts.
Before we proceed to matters of a pecuniary nature, having said so much upon the Executioner, permit me to step out of the way for a moment, and add a word or two on the Executioné, which will explain a Yorkshire saying. It was for the most unsuspected crime imaginable, that the truly unfortunate man who gave rise to the adage suffered the Sentence of the Law at York. He was a Saddler at Bawtry, and occasioned this saying, often applied among the lower people to a man who quits his friends too early, and will not stay to finish his bottle; "That he will be hanged for leaving his liquor, like the Saddler of Bawtry." The case was this: There was formerly, and indeed it has not long been suppressed, an Ale-house, to this day called "The Gallows House," situate between the City of York and their Tyburne; at which House the Cart used always to stop; and there the Convict and the other parties were refreshed with liquors; but the rash and precipitate Saddler, under Sentence, and on his road to the fatal Tree, refused this little regale, and hastened on to the Place of Execution—when, very soon after he was turned-off, a Reprieve arrived; insomuch that, had he stopped, as was usual, at the Gallows House, the time consumed there would have been the means of saving his life; so that he was hanged, as truly as unhappily, for leaving his liquor.
The same compliment was anciently paid to Convicts, on their passage to Tyburne, at St. Giles's Hospital; for we are told by Stowe[387], that they were there presented with a Bowl of Ale, called "St. Giles's Bowl;" "thereof to drink at their pleasure, as their last refreshing in this life." This place (Tyburne) was the established scene of Executions in common cases so long ago as the first year of King Henry IV; Smithfield and St. Giles's Field being reserved for persons of higher rank, and for crimes of uncommon magnitude; such as treason and heresy: in the last of these, Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, was burnt, or rather roasted, alive; having been hanged up over the fire by a chain which went round his waist[388].
The Execution of the Duke of Monmouth (in July 1685) was peculiarly unsuccessful in the operation.