with his usual dexterity and address, takes occasion from the freedom of speech allowed his servant, to inculcate this general doctrine, " that all men are slaves, who are under the dominion of their vices; and that he only is free, who can command his appetites, and subdue his fears." The best comment on the satire to which allusion is here made (Sat. 7. 1.2.) occurs in Macrobius: «." How comes it you behave with so great and so cruel disdain towards your slaves, as if they did not consist, and were not supported by the same elements as yourself, and as if they did not derive life from the same original cause? Will you recollect, that those whom you call your property are born of the same principles as yourself, enjoy alike the same sky, live and die alike? B. They are slaves. a. Nay; and men too. e. They are slaves. a. Nay; rather fellow slaves with yourself-a man is a slave, but it is through necessity, but it is with a mind free. B. He is a slave. a. This circumstance shall be allowed as a sufficient reason for injuring him, if you can shew me the man that is not a slave. One man is a slave to his lusts, another to avarice, a third to ambition, all to hope, and all to fear; and surely no slavery is baser than voluntary slavery. We trample too on the man, who lies under the yoke imposed by fortune, as on a being wretched and contemptible: yet the yoke which we bring on our own necks we cannot bear to hear censured. For my part, I shall value men, not according to their fortunate or unfortunate situation, but according to their morals. Every person is himself the author of his own morals; but, as for condition in life, that is the allotment of chance." Macrobii Saturn. b. 1. c. 11.

This month of December gives to us also days of festivity: it will be well if we apply the time, which allows leisure from ordinary employment, rather to the cultivation of useful knowledge and moral improvement, than to intemperate indulgence in vicious pleasures. After all that has been done to reclaim us from the practice and guilt of sin, we shall be surely inexcusable if we are not at least equally wise, humane, and moderate, as the best of the heathens. 1788, Dec.

O. S. T.

CXII. Origin of the Gibbet.

MR. URBAN, Whittington, Feb. 28. HAVING heard it asserted in conversation, that our laws knew nothing of the gibbet, but that it was left to the discretion of the judges to set the ignominious mark of hanging in irons upon the more egregious criminals, with the intention of making a terrific example unto others; I, who am no lawman, had nothing to allege to the contrary. The assertion, however, of which I was not till then aware, awakened in my mind a desire of inquiring, as a matter of some curiosity, what our old authors, the monkish historians, had delivered on the subject.

What I mean by gibbeting is, the hanging a notorious criminal in irons, as a public and lasting spectacle, after he has suffered death on the gallows, for the purpose of example, and of deterring others from the commission of the like heinous offences. A design truly benevolent and laudable.

The word gibbet is at present of very doubtful derivation. Stewechius* deduces it from the antiquated word gabalus, and Skinnert and Junius concur with him. But this etymology appears to me so forced and unnatural, that, though I have nothing better to offer, I cannot approve it, but shall Icave this matter in suspense. Gibbet is a French word, as well as an English one; and Mons. Menages declares himself uncertain whether the French borrowed it from the English, or the English from the French. For my part, I have no doubt but we had it from the French, the people of that nation seldom taking any thing from the English at so early a period as the 13th century, when, as we shall see hereafter, the gibbet was used here, and known currently by that name.

Martinius, the learned etymologist, observes, that this mark of the grossest infamy was not unknown to the ancients, and was called by the Greeks, ̓Αναςαύρωσις and ̓Ανασκολόπισις. His words are, "Aliquando vasave dicitur non de vivi hominis supplicio, sed de cadavere, aut capite, hominis, veľ

Stewechius, ad Arnob. lib. VI. p. 205.

+ Skinner indeed offers an alternative from Cop, Apex, and the diminutive et, which is equally inadmissible.

Junii Etymolog. v. Gallows.

♦ Menage, Orig. Franc, in v.

decollati, vel alio supplicio extincti. Id fiebat ignominiæ causa.". So again, of 'Avacoma, he says, "Id intelligendum est, non de supplicio, quo vita adimebatur percussori, sed de pœna, quæ ei, qui jam gladio necatus erat, ignominiæ amplioris causa irrogabatur, ut ad paucas horas (nempe ad partem diei post supplicium) insuper suspenderetur, et soli atque hominum oculis exponeretur*" Of this exposition here spoken of, as intended for infamy and disgrace, we have a very remarkable and apposite instance in the case of the king of Ai, Josh. viii. 29: "And the King of Ai he hanged on a tree until even-tide; and as soon as the sun was down, Joshua commanded that they should take his carcase down from the tree," &c.; where see Bp. Patrick, as also his Comment on Numb. xxv. 4, and Deut. xxi. 22. It was for the same purpose, I presume, of reflecting shame and ignominy on delinquents, that their quarters were formerly sent, in England, unto distant cities, and their heads put up on high, at the Tower, Temple Bar, and London Bridge.

But these ancient modes of treating and disgracing great criminals, for the terror of their survivors, not being the subject of the present investigation, I shall pursue them no farther, but turn to the practice of more modern times, and particularly of our own nation.

Annal. Dunstap. A. D. 1223. p. 130. The King orders gibbetum grandem præparari: where the gibbet only means a gallows.

Matthew Paris, A. D. 1239. p. 490. A person, ignominiose super machinam illam pænalem, quæ gibet appellatur, extra Londinum traditur suspendio. This also appears to be no more than a plain gallows.

Matthew Paris, Ă. D. 1242, p. 584. William de Marisco, a knight, was judicially condemned, and ignominiously put to death. He was brought from the Tower" to that penal machine vulgarly called a gibbet;" and after he had breathed his last, was hung on one of the hooks [uncorum], and being taken down after he was grown stiff, was bowelled: his bowels were burnt, and his body being divided into four parts, the quarters were sent in terrorem, to four cities. This evidently answers to our hanging, drawing, and quartering, and has the intention of exhibiting a terrible spectacle to the people, just as our hanging a dead body in irons is meant to do. But it varies much, you observe, from

VOL. I.

* Martinii Etymolog, v. Suspendo.

E e

gibbeting; the gibbet in this case, as in the two former, serving only as a common gallows, to deprive the party of life.

Matthew Paris, A. D. 1236, p. 432, speaking of the execution of two men, says, paratum ex horribile [read paratum est horribile] patibulum Londoniis qued vulgus gibetum appellat." One of them, after he was dead, was hung upon a gibbet, and the other was gibbeted alive, to perish, as we may suppose, both by pain and hunger. These cases seem to come up fully to the point in hand, as the body of the first was put upon the gibbet when dead, in order to be a permanent spectacle of terror; and the other was not to die, as probably being the most guilty, by the mere and simple act of suspension; but by a more lingering, cruel, and terrible kind of death. It is remarkable that the historian uses the word horrible on the occasion, which he forbore to do in his two former instances, as if he intended to express something here of a nature uncommonly shocking. and terrifying.

The word gibbet, Sir, I have observed above, is French as well as English; and therefore it may be proper to inquire how matters were carried, in respect to the gibbet in France. Now in Matthew Paris, A. D. 1248, p. 747, the King of France ordered all clippers of the coin, patibulis laqueatos, vento præsentari, that is, to be hanged, and then exposed to the wind; which, though irons be not mentioned, appears to be the very thing we English do now, and to have the same intention.

Du Fresne cites these words from the Chronicon Flandriæ, . 86: "Et le feit le Roy Phillipe decoler a Paris sur un eschaffaut, et feit le corps pendre au gibet de Montfaucon." There were six kings of France of the name of Philip, and the last of them reigned from A. D. 1328 to A. D. 1350; but the passage may relate to one of the former, and probably does.

It appears, upon the whole, that gibbeting was used in this country as early as A. D. 1236, in the reign of King Henry III. and that in all probability we derived the custom from our neighbours, the French.

1789, March.

SAM. PEGGE.

CXIII. Bull and Gate, Bull and Mouth, Bear and Ragged Staff.

4

MR. URBAN, ON the 26th of August, 1783, on a tour into Kent, I visited the ancient family mansion of Hardres, near Canterbury, and among a variety of relics which were shewn to me as an attestation of its departed splendor, I was particularly delighted with the sight of a warlike trophy, which the first founder of that family, Sir William Hardres, received from Henry VIII. as an honorary gratuity for his valour at the siege of Boulogne. It was one of the gates of that town, composed of wood, with transverse braces, well studded with iron nails, and a small wicket door connected to it. When I saw it, it stood in the coach-house, by the side of the tattered remains of the body of a very old family coach.

This Sir William Hardres, it should seem from the archives of that family, had received from King Henry the domains on which the mansion was erected, in testimony of his services, perhaps at the above siege, which had continued in succession to the heirs of that family until the time when I visited it; which happened to be at the critical time, when all the old and original furniture, consisting of pictures, chairs, bedsteads, books, &c. were parcelled out for an auction--the Gate of Boulogne was also to be included in the sale; but by whom it was purchased, or where it is deposited, I am now left to find out.

As one of your correspondents appears to be at a loss to account for the origin of the sign of the Bull and Gate, it is probable that he will now perceive that the modern sign is a vulgar etymon of the Boulogne Gate, above described; which, having served to commemorate an action which King Henry VIII. seemed by history to have taken some pains to accomplish, and therefore rendered popular, was made the subject of a sign. Thus the Bull and Mouth is a vulgar corruption of the Boulogne Mouth, or the entrance into the harbour of Boulogne. In like manner, the celebrated corruption of a sign at Chelsea, near the water side, which should represent a groupe of Bacchanals dancing, and now ridiculously metamorphosed into the Bag of Nails.

If these kind of curious inquiries engage the attention of your correspondents, it may not be unacceptable perhaps to suggest a hint for the origin of the sign of the Bear and Ragged Staff.