Treason has always, in every country, been punished by death; no crime, indeed, has ever affected men’s minds with so much horror and indignation. The English method is well known. The criminal was first hanged by the neck, but not until he was dead; in many cases he was only allowed to swing to and fro once or twice, and was then taken down, before he was insensible, to undergo the more terrible part of his punishment. He was stripped naked, and lines were marked, or pricked, over his body as a guide to the hangman’s knife. The first cut of the knife deprived him of his manhood; the next slashed open his body; his bowels were then taken out and burned before his eyes—if the poor wretch had any longer eyes to see; his heart was torn out; he was then dismembered and his head taken off; head, limbs, and trunk were set up in different places. In one case on record, a pardon arrived just in time when the men had already been hanged, cut down, stripped naked, and pricked all over for the hangman’s knife, and were lying in a row waiting for the last agonies. The hangman refused to give them back their clothes, and they walked home as they were.
The debtors’ prison for citizens and freemen of the City was Ludgate. Thither were sent those debtors sentenced to prison by the Mayor, Aldermen, Sheriffs, or Chamberlain. It appears that they were to stay in prison until they paid their debts. Ludgate was assigned by charity to the poor freemen of the City; it was thought that they would be more happy by themselves than with “strangers” in Newgate. At one time, however, the debtors made a bad use of this clemency by conspiring together to invent charges against innocent men—they accused Aldermen, for instance, of treason and other things. Instead of taking measures to prevent these practices by the punishment of the malefactors, King Henry V. was advised to abolish the prison altogether, and to remove the prisoners to Newgate. There so many of them died that in the same year the survivors were all taken back again to their old quarters. The fact that they were prisoners for life appears in the ordinance for abolishing the prison. It says that the prisoners ought to dwell in quiet, pray for their benefactors, live upon the alms of the people, and, in increase of their merits, by benign sufferance, in such imprisonment pass all their lives, if God should provide no other remedy for them.
Of punishments Holinshed gives what we may assume to be a complete account. There was no torture; the country neither broke on the wheel nor with the bar. For high treason the offender, if a commoner, was hanged, drawn, and quartered, as we have seen; if a nobleman, he was beheaded; for felony, manslaughter, piracy, murder, and rape, hanging was the penalty. In heinous cases the body was hanged in chains. A very large number of crimes came under the head of felony, which was a capital offence. Thus it was felony to carry horses or mares into Scotland; it was felony to steal hawks’ eggs; it was felony to practise sorcery, witchcraft, or the digging up of crosses. For poisoning—a crime held in the deepest abhorrence,—a woman was to be burned alive; a man was to be boiled alive—either in water, oil, or lead. There was one case recorded of boiling alive in water, but none that I know of boiling in lead. Boiling in oil was conducted by tying the wretched criminal to a pole and slowly lowering him, feet first, into the awful caldron. Perjury was punished by pillory, and by branding on the forehead with the letter P. Those who uttered seditious words had their ears cut off; sheep-stealers had their hands struck off; heretics were burned alive; disorderly women were put in pillory or stocks, and stood in streets; they were also carted and ducked. The Knight Marshal had the power of dragging a malefactor, man or woman, behind his boat across the river between Lambeth and Westminster. Rogues and vagabonds were stocked and whipped; scolds were ducked; pirates and robbers were hanged at low water on the bank, and suffered to hang there till three tides had flowed over them. Holinshed mentions as well a very strange custom—one wonders if it was ever really practised. If any man living beside a river wall or sea wall should suffer the wall to decay, he was apprehended, condemned, and staked in the breach, to form part of the foundation of the new wall to be erected thereon. Harrison corroborates the statement.
Here are some of the crimes for which pillory was ordered as a punishment. Adulteration of wine, pretending to be one of the King’s purveyors, short measure, pretending to be a summoner of the Archbishop, selling putrid fish, forging letters and seals, pretending to be a collector for the Hospital of Bethlehem, stealing a Baselard,[12] stealing a leg of mutton, forging title-deeds, slandering the Sheriff, selling bad pigeons, insulting the Recorder, raising price of wheat, spreading false reports, putting iron in a loaf to make it weigh heavy, bringing false accusations, procuring, using false dice, selling counterfeit goods or bad goods of any kind, short weight, magic, fortune-telling.
The City of London, except when the Mayor sat on a Justiciary at the Gaol Delivery of Newgate, had not to deal with capital offences. It was in excess of his powers when a certain Mayor caused two rioters, who had insulted and assaulted him, to be beheaded. The King was out of England, and the Mayor reported the case to him for his approval, which was very cordially granted.
The offences punished by the City authorities were chiefly of the petty cheateries enumerated above.
Aldersgate was let as a place of residence to the Common Serjeant; Cripplegate, on the other hand, was let to John Watlyng, the serjeant and common crier, on the condition of keeping there all the prisoners who might be sent by the Mayor and Aldermen.
The case of Thomas de Albertis is curious and unsatisfactory. He was a man of repute, and apparently of some wealth, living in the parish of St. Swithin. The accusation against him was as follows: In the year 1415 Thomas sent one, Michael Petyn, an alien and broker, to the shop of William Bury, mercer in Soper Lane (now Queen Street), on the pretence that the French King, then a prisoner, wanted a certain cloth of gold. William Bury showed the cloth of gold, of which Michael agreed to buy four pieces at £150, “and,” he said, “if you will send the goods to Thomas de Albertis, he will pay for them on delivery.” William Bury sent the goods by a servant, who was accompanied by Michael. When they arrived at Thomas de Albertis’ house they were received by the butler, who said that his master was out—this being part of the conspiracy,—so the servant left the cloth of gold, and Michael, as had been arranged, went to take sanctuary at the House of the Minoresses outside Aldgate, while Thomas returned and took possession of the cloth without paying for it. Thomas was tried by a jury, half Englishmen, half aliens—which shows that he was an alien,—and found guilty. They sentenced him to three appearances in the pillory. But on the intercession of certain reputable merchants, the punishment was commuted into a fine of £20.
The story on the face of it is quite inconsistent with truth. First, what was Michael Petyn to get out of it? And next, how should a man of position lend himself to a conspiracy certain to be exposed? But the story shows that there were ingenious rogues in the London of the fifteenth century.
The minute laws which regulated everything betray the absence of police for the enforcement of those laws; a town which possessed a police would never venture to pass rules which the most efficient police could never enforce. Thus, to take some of the regulations almost at random, it will be seen that there could not possibly be any method of enforcing them. Serjeants and other officers were not allowed to take Christmas gifts. So, in the same way, in the early days of the railway, guards and porters were forbidden to take tips; yet, see what has come of that rule. It was forbidden to go about the streets mumming, or disguised, or acting at Christmas; the people were to make merry at home. But one could not make merry at home; there must be a company gathered together. Besides, what was Christmas without its mummers? Also at Christmas time every house was to hang out a lantern—and who was to go about the streets to enforce this rule? Then, as we have seen, the prices of things were regulated over and over again without the least regard to the ordinary rules of supply and demand. It was also ordered, with blind confidence in the power of law, that no man or woman of vicious life should live in the city; women of loose life were to be known by their hoods, which were to be of ray, or striped cloth—it was so perfectly certain that every woman who had lost her virtue would hasten to proclaim the fact publicly. Taverns were to be shut at curfew; nobody was to walk in the streets after dark; nobody was to carry arms at night; boys were not to ask for money for hocking, football or cock-throwing. All such laws are little more than an expression of opinion. They were repeated over and over again; offenders, no doubt, retired for a time—a week or two. Then they came out again. For not even an effective police can make a city virtuous, honest, and sober. Nothing will do this except public opinion—the opinion of the whole people; and the City of London was as far from that public opinion formerly as it is now.