THE HISTORY OF THE DORCHESTER GALLOWS. 67 



teeth, others had been plucked out ; the skin like tanned 

 leather, the features of the face visible. The other three 

 heads had some of the necks joined to them and had a 

 broader and plainer razure, which showed them priests. 

 These three heads are now dispersed. It is probable they 

 were at last privately procured and conveyed abroad, and 

 now become holy relics. Who these were, there is no record, 

 as I know of ; nor had any of them names inscribed but 

 one." The identity of this I. Cornelius with the Dorchester 

 victim was not discovered till some years later. I have the 

 engraved portrait of I. Cornelius from one of the old Books of 

 Martyrs, with the Latin inscription beneath : " Pio Cornelius 

 Anglus Soc. Jesu (Jesuit) Novitius Dorcesta pro Catholica 

 fide suspensus et sectus, an. 1594." From another Book 

 I have the portrait of John Slade, a Dorset man, who was 

 " drawn, hanged, bowelled, and quartered " for maintaining 

 the Roman power ; but the sentence was carried out at 

 Winchester. 



Lastly, we come to the batch of prisoners, 13 in number, 

 who were condemned by Judge Jeffreys, and suffered on the 

 old Gallows Hill. In the " Western Marty rology " the dying 

 speeches of three of this number are given us Matthew 

 Bragg, Thomas Smith, and Joseph Speed, with special details 

 of their deaths. The 13 were hung in succession, one after 

 the other, Smith being the first by particular order of the 

 Judge. The bodies were treated in the manner usual for 

 traitors, an exception being made of the body of Matthew 

 Bragg, which was given by the Judge to his friends for burial. 

 He was probably an innocent man, and felt to have been so 

 by his persecutor after the sentence was passed, but foolishly 

 he had pleaded " not guilty " and so lost all chance of justice. 

 The speeches were made from the ladder, up which the prisoner 

 climbed to reach the noose let down from the crossbeam by 

 the hangman. The cart no longer figures at this particular 

 point in the proceedings. When the speech was finished the 

 ladder was turned over, and so, in the common language of 

 those days, the prisoner was " turned off " and launched into 



