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HAS EXECUTION BY HANGING BEEN SURVIVED?
(Vol. ix., pp. 174. 280.)
The copious Notes of your correspondents on this subject have only left the opportunity for a few stray gleanings in the field of their researches, which may, however, not prove uninteresting.
The compiler of a curious 12mo. (A Memorial for the Learned, by J. D., Gent., London, 1686) records, among "Notable Events in the Reign of Henry VI.," that,—
"Soon after the good Duke of Gloucester was secretly murthered, five of his menial servants, viz. Sir Roger Chamberlain, Knt., Middleton, Herber, Artzis, Esq., and John Needham, Gent., were condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered; and hanged they were at Tyburn, let down quick, stript naked, marked with a knife to be quartered; and then the Marquess of Suffolk brought their pardon, and delivered it at the place of execution, and so their lives were saved."—P. 77.
The following document from the Patent Rolls of the forty-eighth year of the reign of King Henry III. (skin 5.) affords conclusive evidence of the affirmative:
"Rex omnibus, etc. salutem. Quia Inetta de Balsham pro receptamento latronum et imposito nuper per considerationem curie nostre suspendio adjudicata, et ab horâ nonâ diei Iune usque post ortum solis diei martis sequen. suspensa, viva evasit, sicut ex testimonio fide dignorum accipimus. Nos, divinæ charitatis intuitu, pardonavimus eidem Inetta sectam pacis nostre que ad nos pertinet pro receptamento predicto, et firmam pacem nostrum ei inde concedimus. In cujus, etc. Teste Rege apud Cantuar. XVIo. die Augusti.
"Convenit cum recordo Laur. Halsted, Deput. Algern. May. mil."
Plot, in his Natural History of Staffordshire, p. 292., quotes this pardon, and suggests that possibly
"She could not be hanged, upon account that the larynx, or upper part of her windpipe, was turned to bone, as Fallopius (Oper., tom. i., Obs. Anat., tract. 6.) tells us he has sometimes found it, which possibly might be so strong, that the weight of her body could not compress it, as it happened in the case of a Swiss, who, as I am told by the Rev. Mr. Obadiah Walker, Master of University College, was attempted to be hanged no less than thirteen times, yet lived notwithstanding, by the benefit of his windpipe, that after his death was found to have turned into a bone; which yet is still wonderful, since the circulation of the blood must be stopt, however, unless his veins and arteries were likewise turned to bone, or the rope not slipt close."