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PREFACE.

AMIDST the various duties which the happy owe to the unhappy there is scarcely any obligation of more importance than a consideration of the punishment of death.

When we look back upon past ages, and, in the present times, upon distant countries, (*) we see man, with unrelenting ingenuity, devising torture for his fellow-creatures by famishing: by burning by wrapping criminals in the warm skins of beasts and exposing them to wild dogs: by tearing their limbs asunder: by racking: by breaking upon the wheel: by flaying: by impaling: by crucifying. (a)

a

In this very land of liberty, what enormities have not been committed under the sacred names of justice and religion! The wise and pious Sir Thomas More caused the rack to be used in

* The following is extracted from the Morning Chronicle of September 2, 1811, upon the day when this volume is published." In May last some robbers broke open the tomb of the mother of the Sultan Selim, at Constantinople, and robbed it of gold cloths and precious stones to the value of one hundred and fifty thousand piastres. Suspicion alighting on some Sclavonian slaves, they were taken up and put to the torture; two of them refusing to make confession, were impaled in the streets of Constantinople, and remained alive, but in dreadful agony, twenty-two hours.

(*) See Eden's Principles of Penal Law, page 22. See also Characters of the late Charles James Fox, by Philopatris Varvicensis, page 516, who says, "they

his presence. (b) Cranmer led Arians and Anabaptists to the stake. Under the auspices of Bishop Gardiner, two hundred and seventy-seven Protestants were burnt alive; and in all these instances the future damnation of the heretic was believed to be the inevitable consequence of his death. (c) Such were the horrors of religious infatuation. The cloud which then overspread us did not stop here. Superstition, unchanging in its nature, varied only in its object. In 1593, (*) three

"who wish to see the varied rigours of punishment suggested by imperfect po❝licy, barbarous manners, blind superstition, or feudal tyranny, would do well "to consult Disney's Collection of Ancient Laws against Immorality and "Profaneness.' It is a treasure-house of facts, which must amply gratify the "curiosity of readers, severely exercise their compassion, and awaken many "useful, but painful reflections upon the miseries which man has been doomed "to suffer from the ignorance, caprice, rashness, and cruelty of legislators."

(b) The clergy now resolved to make an example of one James Bainham, a gentleman of the Temple: he was carried to the Lord Chancellor's house, where much pains were taken to persuade him to discover such as he knew in the Temple who favoured the new opinions; but, fair means not prevailing, More made him be whipt in his presence, and after that he sent him to the Tower, where he looked on, and saw him put to the rack. Bainham was afterwards burnt. Burnet's Hist. of the Reform. vol. i. p. 165.

See Characters of the late Charles James Fox, by Philopatris Varvicensis, page 368. The author says, the philosophy, the sagacity, the piety, the benevolence of More did not preserve him from the reigning prejudices of his day against the crime of heresy; and they who will consult Mr. Lyson's excellent work on the Environs of London, will be led to many serious reflections upon human infirmity, when they read the wanton cruelties which in More's presence, or even by his own hand, were exercised against heretics at a tree which he employed for this very purpose in his garden at Hammersmith.

(c) Eden's Principles of Penal Law, page 94.

(d) I subjoin the statement of this trial:- April 4, 1593. Samuel and his wife and a young maid, their daughter, were tried at Huntingdon, before Mr. Justice Fenner. They were accused of bewitching the Lady Cromwell, five of Mr. Throgmorton's children, seven servants, and the gaoler's man. The evidence in support of the accusation was of the following nature; " One of the

daughters

persons were executed at Huntingdon for witchcraft: an aged man and woman, and a young maiden their daughter. In 1664 two women were executed in

daughters of Mr. Throgmorton had fits and was ill; she took a fancy that Samuel's wife had bewitched her. After that the other children had the same fears and fancies, and fits like hers. The Lady Cromwell sent for the woman, called her witch, and abused her; pulled off her kerchief, and cutting off some of her hair gave it to Mrs. Throgmorton to burn for a charm. At night this lady dreamt of Mother Samuel, fell into fits, and about a year and a quarter after died. The standers bye neither saw any shape or heard any voice, but only understood what the spirits said by the children's answers and by what the children told them afterwards.

The father and daughter maintained their innocence to the last; but the aged mother, insulted and tormented, separated from her family, and ha rassed night and day by her cruel persecutors, at last lost her reason; and, moved by the tears and entreaties of the children whom she was supposed to bewitch, she consented to repeat certain words which were put into her mouth, and besought the evil spirits to depart from them. The old man made no confession, but declared his innocence; whereupon the judge (Mr. Justice Fenner) told him, "that if he would not speak the words of the "charm, the court would hold him guilty of the crime of which he was ac"cused;' and so at length, with much ado, the said Samuel, with a loud voice said, in the hearing of all present, "as I am a witch, and did consent to the "death of the Lady Cromwell, so I charge thee, Devil, to suffer Mrs. Jane to 66 come out of her fits at this present.'-Upon this she came out of her fit; when the judge said, "you all see she is now well, but not by the music of "David's harp." Upon the confession of this crazed woman, whose reason had been so unfairly disturbed, an English jury were incited to put to death three innocent persons, though she pleaded, being eighty years of age, that she was with child, at which some in court laughed, and the poor creature laughed too. It was suggested to the daughter, by those who could not chuse but pity her hard case, that a similar plea might save her life; but she held fast to her integrity, where many would have failed, and in her simplicity, and in the homely phrase of that day answered, 'nay, they have said that I am witch, it shall never be said that I am a whore.'"

Sir Samuel Cromwell having the goods of these people to the value of 401. escheated to him, as Lord of the Manor, gave the said 40l. to the mayor and aldermen of Huntingdon, for an annual lecture upon the subject of witchcraft, to be preached every Lady-Day, by a doctor or bachelor of divinity of Queen's College, Cambridge. The lecture is continued to this day, and is now preached annually at Huntingdon.

Suffolk.(*) In 1712, a woman was condemned at Hertford:() and in 1716, a woman and her daughter, a child of eleven years of age, were executed at Huntingdon :()-and to murders like these was the great and good Sir Matthew Hale doomed to lend himself, under the quaint advice of Sir Thomas Brown,() one of the first physicians and philosophers of his time, who was devoting his life to the confutation of what he deemed vulgar errors.-And these

(*) Amy Duny and Rose Callender were tried and condemned at Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk, by the Lord Chief Baron Hale; an account of the trial was printed in his lordship's lifetime. They were tried upon thirteen several indictments: Amy Duny was charged with bewitching Mr. Pacey's children, and causing them to have fits, and when Sir Thomas Brown, the famous physician of his time, who was in court, was desired by my Lord Chief Baron to give his judgment in the case, he declared, "that he was clearly of opinion "that the fits were natural, but heightened by the devil, co-operating with the "malice of the witches at whose instance he did the villanies ;" and he added, "that in Denmark there had been lately a great discovery of witches who used "the very same way of afflicting persons, by conveying pins into them." This made that great and good man doubtful, but he was in such fears that he would not so much as sum up the evidence, but left it to the jury with prayers, "that the great God of Heaven would direct their hearts in that weighty mat"ter." The jury having Sir Thomas Brown's declaration about Denmark, for their encouragement, in half an hour brought them in guilty upon all the thirteen indictments. After this my Lord Chief Baron gave the law its course, and they were condemned, and died declaring their innocence.

(f) In the year 1712, Jane Wenham of Walhern, in Hertfordshire, was tried for witchcraft, and she confessed: the witnesses swore to vomiting pins, &c. The jury found her guilty, the judge condemned her, and some clergymen wrote an account of the trial, which was in a few months' time extended to a fourth edition. The jury, found her guilty, but the judge saved her life; and that she might not afterwards be torn to pieces by an ignorant town, Colonel Plummer of Gillston, who will ever be had in honour for what he did, took her into his protection, placed her in a small house near his own, where she lived soberly and inoffensively, and kept her church, and the whole country was fully convinced of her innocence.-See next note.

(8) The following is extracted from "Characters of Charles James Fox, by Philopatris Varvicensis, page 370. I know not that Judge Powel was