in the Middle Ages. 65 at Paris, and the novelty of this mode of execution brought together a vast concourse of people, especially of females. The manner in which the criminal was prepared for the gibbet is particularly described by the chronicler : " La dite femme fut pendue toute deschevelle'e, revestue d'une longue robe ceinte d'une corde sur les deux iambes iointes par ensemble au dessous de genoux."* According to Tacitus, hanging and drowning were the punishments usually awarded to the greatest criminals by the ancient Germans. " Traitors and deserters," he says, " they hang on trees ; the coward and the infamous are plunged under hurdles into bogs and fens." b By the laws of the Burgundians, the adulterous woman was smothered in mud. Grimm informs us that the punish- ment of drowning was awarded especially to women and sorceresses. To hinder swimming, stones were fastened to the neck of the criminal. Criminals were sometimes drowned in tubs or sewn up in sacks, a punishment for murderers of parents or relations. In this case the offender was sewn up in a skin with a dog, a snake, an ape, and a cock. So late as 173 A, in Saxony, a woman was thus drowned with a cat, a dog, and a snake, for the murder of her child.' 1 Our Anglo-Saxon forefathers awarded the punishment of death by drowning to women convicted of theft. The criminal was to be thrown from the cliff or sub- merged, 6 the precise manner of execution being adapted to the district in which the offence was perpetrated, as we shall see hereafter. In the tenfli century a widow was drowned at London Bridge f ; and the learned Spelman cites an instance of this description of punishment in the year 1200, from the records of the Cathedral of Rochester. Two women came to the town of Southfleet, in Kent, bringing with them many cloths which they had stolen from the town of Croydon. They were followed by the owners of the cloths, and, being taken and imprisoned, were adjudged by the court of Southfleet to carry hot iron. One of the offenders was acquitted, and the other Histoire de Charles VII. Roi de France, par Jean Chartier, &c. Paris, fol. 1C01, sub anno 1449. b Proditores et transfugas arboribus snspendunt ; ignavos, ct imbelles, ct corpore infames cocno ac palude, injecta insuper crate, mergunt. De Morib. German, c. xii. c Si qua mulier maritum suum, cui legitime juncta est, dimiserit, necetur in Into. Lex Burgund. Tit. xxxiv. 1. d Deutsche Rechts Alterthumer, p. 696. Gottenb. 1828. This mode of punishment appears to have been derived from the Lex Cornelia. e Si libera mulier sit precipitetur de clivo, vel submergatur. Leg. JEthelbert. Ancient Laws and Institutes, ed. Thorpe. f Da nam man fet wif and adrencte hi set Lundenebrigce, and hire sune Ktberst and werS utlah. Cod. Dipl. JEvi Saxon. No. DXCI. MS. Soc. Ant. Lond. LX. fo. 54 b.
