Jan. 13. 1855.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



21 



LONDON, SATURDAY, JANUARY IZ. 1855, 



CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS IN HENRY Vin.'s REIGN. 



Reading Macaulay's Critical Essays, I perceive 

 that in lb30, when reviewing Southey's Colloquies 

 on Society, he has said : 



" Let them add to all this the /ac<, that 72,000 persons 

 suffered death by the hands of the executioner during the 

 reign of Henry VIII., and judge between the nineteenth 

 and the sixteenth century." 



Whether Mr. Macaulay's subsequent more ex- 

 tensive historical researches would let him still 

 call that a/acf, I cannot presume to say. But it 

 is notoriously referred to as a fact, by popular 

 speakers or writers, from time to time ; and your 

 useful publication is favourable to having the 

 question so ventilated as either to put an end to 

 the assumption of this imaginary proof of the 

 ferocity of English tribunals temp. Hen. VIII., or 

 to elicit some trustworthy evidence of its being 

 a fact. 



To unreflecting readers of English history it 

 may be enough that Hume has said at the close 

 of his account of Henry VIII., ch. 33. : 



" The prisoners in the kingdom for debts and crimes are 

 asserted in an act of parliament to be 60,000 persons and 

 above ; which is scarcely credible. Harrison asserts that 

 72,000 criminals were executed during this reign for theft 

 and robber}', which would amount nearly to 2,000 a 

 year." 



The credit due to such an assertion as the first, 

 from its having been introduced into an act of 

 parliament, can differ very little from the credit 

 due to its independent probability. For so gross 

 was the ignorance of national statistics prevalent 

 in that age, that an observant and conscientious 

 member of the inns of court, Mr. Simon Fish, 

 could gravely tell the public, in his noted address to 

 Henry VIII., styled The Supplication of Beggars, 

 that there were 52,000 parish churches within the 

 realms of England, and could found upon this 

 statement a methodical calculation of considerable 

 importance, whilst modern returns reduce the 

 number of parishes below 11,000. 



As to Harrison's assertion in the Historical 

 Treatise appended to Holinshed's Chronicles, I 

 have not seen it for some years, and have not access 

 to it at present ; but unless my memory deceives 

 me, he made the assertion on no better authority 

 than that of the Bishop of Tarbes, whom Francis I. 

 sent to England ; that prelate's dislike to Henry's 

 proceedings, and to the anti-papal spirit of our 

 nation, made him but too willing to believe any 

 slander against either. Whilst the tale suits Har- 

 rison's object, which was to set forth the advan- 

 tages enjoyed by Elizabeth's subjects, the progress 



of wealth and civilisation, as compared with their 

 state under her father's reign. 



When we come to the earliest authority for any 

 historical statement, it is always prudent to con- 

 sider whether the author could have known what 

 he states to be true. There is no probability that 

 Henry's parliament had required such returns 

 from all the gaols in the kingdom as would entitle 

 its assertion respecting the number of prisoners 

 to the weight belonging to any modern official 

 document; neither is there any probability that 

 a French bishop could have made any nearer ap- 

 proximation to the number of executions than a 

 conjecture, even if he had desired to keep within 

 the truth. 



The estimate of the population of England at 

 that date must also be acknowledged to rest upon 

 grounds which are far from being indisputable. 

 But it has been made without any motive for 

 arriving at a false conclusion ; and it justifies the 

 belief that the population was rather under than 

 above 3,000,000, and consequently the number 

 of males not more than 1,500,000; who must be 

 again reduced to about a half, or 750,000, to 

 obtain the number of males between 21 years and 

 70. Imprisonment for debt is nearly limited to 

 this last portion of the people ; and imprisonment 

 for crimes fell almost as exclusively on the 

 same, when the offences visited by the law were 

 chiefly crimes of violence, or sheep and deer steal- 

 ing : so that if 60,000 persons were in prison for 

 debt and crimes, at least 55,000 of them would be 

 adult males, that is, about one adult male out of 

 every fifteen ; and if 2000 were executed yearly, 

 when so many felonies were but punished with 

 whipping, provided the felon could repeat his neck- 

 verse, one out of every 375 men must be believed 

 to have fallen annually by the executioner's hands . 

 Are we to believe this ? 



The letters from a justice of the peace to Lord 

 Burleigh, given in the Appendix to vol. iv. of 

 Strype's Annals, Nos. 212. and 213., contain some 

 remarkable gaol statistics for the county of So- 

 merset. According to him, forty persons were 

 executed for offences in that county in 1596; 

 and he complains grievously of the hardship 

 inflicted on the county by its being obliged to 

 expend 73Z. on the relief of the prisoners, to whom 

 they yet allowed but at the rate of 6c?. a week. 

 The imprisonments must have been therefore 

 generally brief. Henry Walter. 



THE ENGLISH TURCOPOLIER OF THE OKDER OT 

 ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM. 



(^Continued from Vol. x., p. 380.) 



At a general council held by the grand master 

 William de Villaret, a. n. 1302, the several dig- 

 nities which then existed were particularly men- 



