Francis Watt

“ Some years before the murder, the villain of the piece, William Henry Cranstoun, a younger son of the Scots Lord Cranstoun and an officer recruiting at Henley for the army, comes on the scene. Contemporary gossip paints him the blackest colour. “His shape no ways genteel, his legs clumsy, he has nothing in the least elegant in his manner.” He was remarkable for his dulness; he was dissipated and poverty-stricken. More fatal than all he had a wife and child in Scotland, though he brazenly declared the marriage invalid spite the judgment of the Scots courts in its favour. ”

“ The sledge so often supplanted the less ignominious cart, that I ought to explain that a traitor need not be a political offender. Certain coining offences, the murder of a husband by his wife, and of a master by his servant, were all ranked a form of treason, and the criminal was drawn and quartered or burnt accordingly.
Two of Tyburn’s officials, the Ordinary and the Hangman, to wit, now claim our attention. The Ordinary, or prison chaplain of Newgate, said “Amen” to the death sentence, and ministered to the convict thence to the end. ”

“ Our treatment of crime is the exact opposite of our forefathers’. Our criminal toils, is flogged, is hanged in private; the old idea was to make punishment as public as possible, for so penalty and effect (it was thought) were heightened and increased. The Pillory was the completest expression of this idea. A man was exposed for sixty minutes in the market-place at the busiest hour of the day, and the public itself was summoned to approve of and aid the punishment. ”

“ The Border country is a pleasant pastoral land, with soft, rounded hills, and streams innumerable, and secluded valleys, where the ruins of old peels or feudal castles intimate a troubled past. That past, however, has left a precious legacy to letters, for the Border ballads are of the finest of the wheat. They preserve, as only literature can, the joys and sorrows, the aspirations, hopes and fears, and beliefs of other days and vanished lives. ”

“ Then each Warden held up his hand as a sign of faith, and made proclamation of the Day to his own side (the evident purpose of this elaborate ritual was to keep North and South from flying, on sight, at each other’s throats) . The English Warden now came to his Scots brother, whom he saluted and embraced; and the business of the Day of Truce (or Diet, or Day Marche, or Warden Court, as it was variously called) began. That business was commerce, and pleasure, as well as law. Merchants come with their wares; booths were run up; a brisk trade ran in articles tempting to the savage eye. ”

“ The law has ever terrors for the unlettered, and the rustic bachelor fled at [Pg 147] Beattie’s approach, as if he had been the pest. The “priests” sometimes used a mangled form of the Church of England service: which irreverence was probably intended as a delicate compliment to the nationality of most of their clients. The fees were uncertain. When the trembling parties stood hand in hand in inn or toll-bar, whilst the hoofs of pursuing post-horses thundered ever nearer, ever louder, or it might be that irate father or guardian battered at the door, it was no time to bargain. ”

“ The priest suffered no more than the people; but he could better voice his wrongs. All such things were obviously adaptations of the trial by ordeal, or by combat, and the treason duel of chivalry, to the rough life of the Border. Again, the matter was settled, even in late times, by the oath of the accused. The prisoner was sworn:—“By Heaven above you, Hell beneath you, by your part of Paradise, by all that God made in six days and seven nights, and by God Himself,” that he was innocent. In a superstitious age this might have some effect ”

“ In the darkness of a stormy night he and his men stole up to Carlisle, broke the citadel, rescued Kinmont, and carried him off in safety, whilst the English lawyers were raising ingenious technical justifications (you can read them at length in the collection of Border Papers) of the capture. Those same papers show that the ballad gives the main features of the rescue with surprising accuracy. But I cannot linger over its cheerful numbers. The event might once have provoked a war, but the shadow of the Union was already cast. ”

“ It is still a vulgar belief in the North that if the parents of children born out of wedlock are married, the offspring, to be legitimised, must be held under their mother’s girdle through the nuptial rites. Now, by the law of Scotland, such a marriage produces the effect noted; but the presence or absence of the children is void of legal consequence. ”

“ The weaker, poorer, smaller kingdom felt the struggle far more than England, yet the English were worse troubled than the Scots Borders: being the richer, they were the more liable to incursion; their dalesmen were not greatly different from other Englishmen; they were kept in hand by a strong central authority; they had thriving towns and a certain [Pg 154] standard of wealth and comfort. Now, the Scots clansmen developed unchecked; so it is mainly from them that we take our ideas of Border life. ”

“ Even at Tyburn, how hard to renounce all hope! There was ever the chance of a reprieve. There is at least one well-authenticated case of a man making a sudden bolt from the cart, and almost escaping; and, as the modus was simple strangulation, and the Hangman careless or corrupt, it was just possible that heroic remedies might restore to animation. ”

“ Cultured politician and jurist as he was, he dwelt with terrible emphasis on the scene in Morham kirk. [Pg 104] “God Almighty Himself was pleased to bear a share in the testimonies which we produce.” Nor was the children’s testimony forgotten. “I need not fortifie so pregnant a probation.” No! yet he omitted not to protest for “an Assize of Error against the inquest in the case they should assoilzie the pannal”—a plain intimation to jury that if they found Philip Standsfield “not guilty” they were liable to be prosecuted for an unjust verdict. ”

“ The force of this evidence was much shaken by the pertinent [Pg 86] cross-examination of the judge, who asked the jury in his summing up, “Whether you have any evidence to induce you to believe it to be in the power of all the witches in the world, or all the Devils in Hell, to fast beyond the usual time that nature will allow: they cannot invert the order of nature.” The jury, “without going from the bar, brought him in Guilty.” He was sentenced to a fine, a sound flogging, the pillory, and imprisonment with hard labour. ”

“ The whole line from Berwick to Carlisle was patrolled by setters and searchers, watchers and overseers, having sleuth-hounds to track the invader; also, many folk held lands by the tenure of cornage, and by blowing horns must warn the land of coming raids. Where the frontier line was a river the fords were carefully guarded; those held unnecessary were staked up; narrow passes were blocked in divers ways, so that chief element in Border craft was the knowledge of paths and passes through moorland and moss, and of nooks and coigns of security deep in the mountain glens. ”

“ Ecclesiastical discipline was strict enough to prevent regularly instituted Scots ministers from assisting at such affairs. But any man would do (for, after all, he was but a witness) , and the first across the Border as well as or better than another. Now, by a well-known principle of international law, the lex loci contractus governs such contracts: the marriage being valid in Scotland where it took place, was also recognised as valid in England where its celebration would have been a criminal offence! ”

“ A terrible duty, to usher your fellow-man from this world into the next! I have heard that one such task near proved fatal to an honest divine; but the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense, and too often the Newgate Ordinary was a callous wretch, with a keen zeal for the profits of his post, and for the rest a mere praying machine. He needs must be good trencherman. ”

“ The man insulted must give him the lie in his throat, and a deadly combat ensued. The Laws of the Marches attempted to substitute the remedy by bill, that the matter might not “goe to the extremyte of a baughle,” or where that was impossible, to fix rules for the thing itself. Or, the Wardens were advised to attend, with less than a hundred of retinue, to prevent “Brawling, buklinge, quarrelinge, and bloodshed.” Such things were a fruitful source of what a Scots Act termed “the heathenish and barbarous custom of Deadly Feud.” ”

“ Tyburn was not always London’s sole or even principal place of execution. In early times people were hanged as well as burned at Smithfield. The elms at St. Giles’s were far too handy a provision to stay idle. At Tower Green was the chosen spot for beheading your high-class criminal, and it was common to put off a malefactor on the very theatre of his malefaction. There are few spots in Old London which have not carried a gallows at one or other time. Some think that certain elm-trees suggested the choice of Tyburn. ”

“ But Ketch is still in possession: the clothes are Hangman’s perquisites, and must be purchased. How the greedy rascal appreciates the value of each button, dwells on the splendour of each sorry ornament, watching the while and gauging the impatience of the buyers! Never went second-hand duds at such a figure! Sometimes he overreaches himself, or no one comes forward to bid. ”

“ Yet the wretch lived to enjoy a pension after the Revolution! There was another remarkable instance that same year. Thomas Dangerfield, convicted of libelling the King when Duke of York, was sentenced to a fine, to the Pillory, and to be whipped from Aldgate to Newgate, and from Newgate to Tyburn. The dreadful work was over, and he was returning prisonwards in a coach, when there steps forward Robert Francis, a barrister of Gray’s Inn, with the cruel jibe, “How now, friend? Have you had your heat this morning?” ”

“ Of the other places where irregular marriages were celebrated two demand some notice. One was Keith’s Chapel in Mayfair, “a very bishopric of revenue” to that notorious “marriage broker” the Reverend Alexander Keith. His charge was a guinea, and, being strictly inclusive, covered “the [Pg 138] Licence on a Crown Stamp, Minister’s and Clerk’s fees, together with the certificate.” No wonder he did a roaring trade! Keith seemed a nobler quarry than the common Fleet Parson, and the ecclesiastical authorities pursued him in their courts. ”

“ The law struck with as little force against blackmail, or protection money, which it was an offence to pay to any person, Scots or English. From this source, Gilnockie and others, coining the terror of their name, drew great revenue. Another provision was against marriage with a Scotswoman without the Warden’s consent, for in this way traitors, or “half-marrows,” arose within the gate. Complete forms are preserved of the procedure at those Warden courts. There were a grand jury and an ordinary jury, and the Warden acted very much as a judge of to-day. ”

“ Sir James Standsfield, an Englishman by birth, had married a Scots lady and spent most of his life in Scotland. After the Restoration he had established a successful cloth factory at the place called New Mills, and there lived, a prosperous gentleman. But he had much domestic trouble chiefly from the conduct of his eldest son Philip, who, though well brought up, led a wild life. ”

“ One John Austin had the distinction of being the last person executed at Tyburn (November 7, 1783) . Reformers had long denounced the procession as a public scandal. The sheriffs had some doubts as to their powers; but the judges, being consulted, [Pg 42] assured them they could end it an they would. A month after (December 9, 1783) the gallows was at work in front of Newgate, and Old London lost its most exciting spectacle. Dr. Johnson frankly regretted the change:—“Executions are intended to draw spectators, if they do not draw spectators they lose their reason. ”

“ Being unable to pay, “then he shall be put on the Pillory, and remain there an hour in the day at least; a Serjeant of the City standing by the side of the Pillory with good hue-and-cry as to the reason why he is punished.” The wicked butcher suffered after the same fashion; while the baker, who put off bad bread, was drawn—for the first offence upon a hurdle from the Guildhall to his own house, by “the great streets that are most dirty, with the faulty loaf hanging about his neck,” a spectacle to gods and a cockshy for men. For the second offence he processioned as before ”