PUNISHMENT OF DEATH 157 



and many suffered the extreme penalty of the law. 

 The sentence of ' death recorded ' was generally 

 commuted to transportation for life, or for seven, 

 fourteen, or twenty-one years. Highway robberies 

 were fertile causes of the death punishment. Towards 

 the close of the sixteenth century, I find that in 

 1596, forty persons were executed for robberies in 

 Somersetshire alone. Thirty-five were burnt in the 

 hand and thirty-seven whipped, and many other 

 counties had the same record. This year no less 

 than thirty human heads might be seen on London 

 Bridge exposed to public view ; they belonged to 

 various malefactors who had been decapitated for 

 certain crimes, mostly for those called high treason. 

 I read also that in 1652, on May 10, a woman was 

 publicly burnt alive in Smithfield for the murder of 

 her husband ; and on September 12, 1686, William 

 Hawlings, and his brother Benjamin, a few days 

 afterwards, were executed at Lyme, as being con- 

 cerned in the ' Monmouth ' conspiracy. They were 

 greatly pitied, and were the grandchildren of William 

 Kyffin, a leading preacher among the Baptists. On 

 June 4, 1 73 1, a man was executed for forgery, being 

 the first occasion of a death punishment for that 

 crime. 



On March 3, 1752, Elizabeth Jefferies and a 

 man named Swan were executed. The latter was 

 dragged twenty-seven miles on a hurdle drawn by 

 six horses, whilst Jefferies rode in a cart. They 

 started from Chelmsford gaol at 5 o'clock a.m., and 

 arrived at Epping Forest, the seat of their crime. 



