318 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 104. 



sheriff, specifying the several sentences or acquittals 

 of all the prisoners in gaol, yet it is not necessary. 

 Lord Hale says : 



" Rolle would never subscribe any such calendar, but 

 would command the sheriff openly in court to take 

 notice of the judgments and orders of what kind soever, 

 aud command the sheriff to execute them at his peril." 



And, until a few years ago (when the law re- 

 quiring murderers to be executed the day next 

 but one after sentence was repealed), murderers 

 were executed on verbal authority only, as no 

 calendar was made out until the close of the as- 

 sizes, some time after the execution. The special 

 case above referred to is, when a person was tried 

 by the Court of Peers before the Lord High 

 Steward, in which case that officer issued a precept 

 for execution. But if the trial be in parliament, 

 a writ for execution issues under the Great Seal, 

 as in the case of Lord William Russell. 



Having demolished one story, I feel bound to 

 give you another. 



The Crown never directs execution, but respites 

 it either to a day fixed, or during her Majesty's 

 pleasure, which last is what is commonly called a 

 reprieve. A late learned Baron is said to have 

 respited an unlucky criminal on whose fate he 

 hesitated, once, twice, thrice, till, having lost his 

 reckoning, he wrote to this effect : 



" I do not know wliether John Smith's respite has 

 expired ; if it has, it is no matter ; if not, let the exe- 

 cution be further respited until the day of 



next." 



A.B. 



I have seen in an Exeter paper an article taken 

 from " Notes akd Queries," entitled " Execu- 

 tion under singular Circumstances," the writer of 

 which is in manifest error. There is no such 

 thing as a warrant for execution ; I will venture 

 to say it could not have happened as is therein 

 stated. I have been repeatedly undersheriff of 

 Devon, and therefore beg to state the mode in 

 which executions take place. 



At the end of the assizes the crown-bar judge 

 and the clerk of assize sit down quietly together, 

 and go over the sentences of the prisoners, after 

 which they are classed, and a fair copy signed by 

 the clerk of the assize — not the judge — is de- 

 livered to the undersheriff, which is his only au- 

 thority for carrying the different sentences into 

 execution. If a man is to be hung, opposie his 

 name is written, " Let him be hanged by the 

 neck," and an asterisk is added to draw the 

 undersherifF's attention. Should the man after- 

 wards be respited, the judge, or the clerk of assize, 

 writes to the undersheriff, and also (ex ahiindcmti 

 cautela) to the gaoler, to say so. Should the 

 undersheriff hear nothing further, he hangs the 

 man at the end of the respite, as a matter of 

 course. A reprieve comes from the secretary of 



state's office. At the end of the shrievalty this 

 list of sentences is sent to the Court of Exchequer, 

 as forming part of what is called the Bill of 

 Cravings, and in which the sheriff is allowed a 

 certain sum towards the expenses of the execution. 

 What may be the practice in London I do not 

 know, but the above would be the practice at 

 AVinchester. P. J. 



Exeter, Sept. 15. 1851. 



COCKNEY. 



(Vol. iv., p. 237.) 



Halliwell illustrates this word by a quotation 

 from Nash's Pierce PeniJesse, 1592 : 



" A young heyre or cocknei/, that is his mother's 

 darling, if hee playde the waste-good at the innes of 

 the court, or about London, falles in a quarrelHng 

 humor with his fortune, because she made him not king 

 of the Indies." 



Richardson gives the following quotation from 

 Fuller's Worthies : 



" I meet with a double sense of this word cocheney. 

 . . . . 1st, One coaks'd or cockered, made a wanton 

 or nestle-cock of . . . . 2nd, One utterly ignorant of 

 husbandry and housewifery, sucli as is practised in the 

 country ,...'' 



Webster gives the following derivation, &c. : 

 " Cockney, n. [Most probably from L. coquina, a 

 kitchin, or coquino, to coolv ; Fr. coqnin, idle ; Fr. co- 

 cngne. It. cuccagna, an imaginary country of idleness 

 and luxury .... Hence, a citizen wlio leads an idle 

 life, or never leaves tlie city.] 



"I. A native of London, by way of contempt. 

 WatU. Shalt. 



' And yet I say by my soul I have no salt bacon 

 Ne no cokeney by Christe coloppes to make.' 

 ' At that feast were they served in rich array ; 

 Every five and five had a cokeney.^ " 



Chaucer, in the above lines quoted by Webster, 

 probably refers to any substantial dish of fresh 

 meat, which might be cut in collops ; possibly, 

 however, to young roasted pigs, which, as every 

 one knows, are continually running about, all over 

 the land of cockaigne, with knives and forks stuck 

 into them, crying, " Come eat me, come eat me." 



Whether the word cockney be derived from the 

 the land of cockaigne, or the legend of cockaigne 

 arise from cockney, it appears probable that both 

 words have their origin in the same root with the 

 verb to conk., and that the epithet originally con- 

 veyed the imputation to citizens, of a superfluous 

 consumption of cooked meat; inasmuch as the in- 

 habitants oflarge cities generally consider the daily 

 use of fresh meat almost as a necessary of life, 

 while the provincial population is content to exist 

 on less nutritious food. 



Whatever may be the original import of the 

 epithet, the modern application of it is, I believe, 

 confined to the natives of the metropolis, and it 



