Tyburn: London's Fatal Tree by Alan Brooke, David Brandon Page A
Authors: Alan Brooke, David Brandon
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functions in the late 1530s was thought to have caused the emergence of that bogeyman of the Tudor and Stuart era, the able-bodied vagabond, the ‘sturdy beggar’. In official circles, poverty and criminality became virtually synonymous.
Vagrancy was regarded as a major concern in Elizabethan times as minatory bands of sturdy beggars ranged across the countryside terrorising and robbing. In order to address the problem, in 1530 Henry VIII introduced the notorious Whipping Act which allowed the authorities to seize vagrants and take them to the nearest market town, where they would be whipped around the streets at the cart’s tail. The savagery of this act was reduced slightly around fifty years later when the perambulation ceased and instead the victim was tied to a whipping post while punishment was inflicted. Vagrants were often branded with a letter ‘V’ after the first offence and from 1572 had a hole bored in the gristle of the ear. Houses of correction were built to punish vagrants and put idle people to work. Whipping posts soon appeared in towns and villages throughout England and in large numbers in London. This gave rise to the comments made by John Taylor (1578?–1653) the ‘Water-Poet’. On a visit to the capital he was struck by the number of whipping posts and was led to pen the following lines:
In London, and within a mile, I ween,
There are jails and prisons full eighteen,
And sixty whipping-posts and stocks and cages.
Whipping became one of England’s most common forms of punishment, not only used against vagrants but employed as the standard punishment for petty larceny, the theft of goods worth less than a shilling. In 1589 appropriateness was the criterion for decreeing the loss of ears for uttering seditious words and of the right hand for producing seditious writings. Such punishment left the offender with visible evidence of his guilt and dishonour.
Elizabeth I (r. 1558–1603) made England Protestant once more. In 1559, the Act of Supremacy abolished the power of the Pope in England while the Act of Uniformity made it illegal to hold any services other than those contained in the prayer book. The state argued that heresy was treasonable: heretics should be punished for treason because their religious activities and practices inevitably meant that they denied the monarch’s supremacy. Torture was now being routinely used to obtain confessions, especially in cases where treason and religious heterodoxy were suspected. At the same time, increasingly severe punishments were thought necessary to tackle the perceived threat to law and order from rising crime. In a somewhat hysterical climate of opinion, nobody seemed surprised when a senior legal figure advocated pulling out the tongues of convicted criminals.
The concept of punishment embraced both physical pain and public humiliation. Petty offenders might be placed in the stocks or the pillory or fined or whipped. The pillory was extremely painful because the offender was held by the neck and the wrists, causing agonising cramps. Sometimes, to compound the punishment, the offender had his ears nailed to the hinged wooden board in which his neck was placed. This prevented him ducking when a hostile crowd pelted him with all manner of filth or, if they really disliked him, with stones. Sometimes offenders were fatally injured by such missiles. If their feet did not reach the platform on which they were placed, they could easily die as a result of slow throttling. Occasionally, if the authorities felt particularly vindictive, they would aggravate the punishment of standing in the pillory. In 1630 a Dr Leighton who had written a book lampooning royalty, the peerage and the upper echelons of the Church of England, was sentenced to be whipped severely and then to have an ear cut off before being placed in the pillory. His ordeal also included having the septum of his nose split and branding with the letters ‘SS’ which signified that he had
Vagrancy was regarded as a major concern in Elizabethan times as minatory bands of sturdy beggars ranged across the countryside terrorising and robbing. In order to address the problem, in 1530 Henry VIII introduced the notorious Whipping Act which allowed the authorities to seize vagrants and take them to the nearest market town, where they would be whipped around the streets at the cart’s tail. The savagery of this act was reduced slightly around fifty years later when the perambulation ceased and instead the victim was tied to a whipping post while punishment was inflicted. Vagrants were often branded with a letter ‘V’ after the first offence and from 1572 had a hole bored in the gristle of the ear. Houses of correction were built to punish vagrants and put idle people to work. Whipping posts soon appeared in towns and villages throughout England and in large numbers in London. This gave rise to the comments made by John Taylor (1578?–1653) the ‘Water-Poet’. On a visit to the capital he was struck by the number of whipping posts and was led to pen the following lines:
In London, and within a mile, I ween,
There are jails and prisons full eighteen,
And sixty whipping-posts and stocks and cages.
Whipping became one of England’s most common forms of punishment, not only used against vagrants but employed as the standard punishment for petty larceny, the theft of goods worth less than a shilling. In 1589 appropriateness was the criterion for decreeing the loss of ears for uttering seditious words and of the right hand for producing seditious writings. Such punishment left the offender with visible evidence of his guilt and dishonour.
Elizabeth I (r. 1558–1603) made England Protestant once more. In 1559, the Act of Supremacy abolished the power of the Pope in England while the Act of Uniformity made it illegal to hold any services other than those contained in the prayer book. The state argued that heresy was treasonable: heretics should be punished for treason because their religious activities and practices inevitably meant that they denied the monarch’s supremacy. Torture was now being routinely used to obtain confessions, especially in cases where treason and religious heterodoxy were suspected. At the same time, increasingly severe punishments were thought necessary to tackle the perceived threat to law and order from rising crime. In a somewhat hysterical climate of opinion, nobody seemed surprised when a senior legal figure advocated pulling out the tongues of convicted criminals.
The concept of punishment embraced both physical pain and public humiliation. Petty offenders might be placed in the stocks or the pillory or fined or whipped. The pillory was extremely painful because the offender was held by the neck and the wrists, causing agonising cramps. Sometimes, to compound the punishment, the offender had his ears nailed to the hinged wooden board in which his neck was placed. This prevented him ducking when a hostile crowd pelted him with all manner of filth or, if they really disliked him, with stones. Sometimes offenders were fatally injured by such missiles. If their feet did not reach the platform on which they were placed, they could easily die as a result of slow throttling. Occasionally, if the authorities felt particularly vindictive, they would aggravate the punishment of standing in the pillory. In 1630 a Dr Leighton who had written a book lampooning royalty, the peerage and the upper echelons of the Church of England, was sentenced to be whipped severely and then to have an ear cut off before being placed in the pillory. His ordeal also included having the septum of his nose split and branding with the letters ‘SS’ which signified that he had
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