on Thursday 2nd at
Middlewich, Friday the 3rd at Newcastle-under-Lyne, and from the 4th to
the 8th at Milburn.]

* * * * *

Replies.

HAS EXECUTION BY HANGING BEEN SURVIVED?

(Vol. ix., pp. 174. 280.)

The copious Notes of your correspondents on this subject have only left the
opportunity for a few stray gleanings in the field of their researches,
which may, however, not prove uninteresting.

The compiler of a curious 12mo. (_A Memorial for the Learned_, by J. D.,
Gent., London, 1686) records, among "Notable Events in the Reign of Henry
VI.," that,--

"Soon after the good Duke of Gloucester was secretly murthered, five of
his menial servants, viz. Sir Roger Chamberlain, Knt., Middleton,
Herber, {454} Artzis, Esq., and John Needham, Gent., were condemned to
be hanged, drawn, and quartered; and hanged they were at Tyburn, let
down quick, stript naked, marked with a knife to be quartered; and then
the Marquess of Suffolk brought their pardon, and delivered it at the
place of execution, and so their lives were saved."--P. 77.

The following document from the Patent Rolls of the forty-eighth year of
the reign of King Henry III. (skin 5.) affords conclusive evidence of the
affirmative:

"Rex omnibus, etc. salutem. Quia Inetta de Balsham pro receptamento
latronum et imposito nuper per considerationem curie nostre suspendio
adjudicata, et ab hora nona diei Iune usque post ortum solis diei
martis sequen. suspensa, viva evasit, sicut ex testimonio fide dignorum
accipimus. Nos, divinae charitatis intuitu, pardonavimus eidem Inetta
sectam pacis nostre que ad nos pertinet pro receptamento predicto, et
firmam pacem nostrum ei inde concedimus. In cujus, etc. Teste Rege apud
Cantuar. XVI^o. die Augusti.

"Convenit cum recordo LAUR. HALSTED, Deput. Algern. May. mil."

Plot, in his _Natural History of Staffordshire_, p. 292., quotes this
pardon, and suggests that possibly

"She could not be hanged, upon account that the larynx, or upper part
of her windpipe, was turned to bone, as Fallopius (_Oper._, tom. i.,
_Obs. Anat._, tract. 6.) tells us he has sometimes found it, which
possibly might be so strong, that the weight of her body could not
compress it, as it happened in the case of a Swiss, who, as I am told
by the Rev. Mr. Obadiah Walker, Master of University College, was
attempted to be h