which is merely an improvement on a
complicated machine which was much more ancient than is generally
supposed. As early as the sixteenth century the modern guillotine already
existed in Scotland under the name of the _Maiden_, and English historians
relate that Lord Morton, regent of Scotland during the minority of James
VI., had it constructed after a model of a similar machine, which had long
been in use at Halifax, in Yorkshire. They add, and popular tradition also
has invented an analogous tale in France, that this Lord Morton, who was
the inventor or the first to introduce this kind of punishment, was
himself the first to experience it. The guillotine is, besides, very
accurately described in the "Chronicles of Jean d'Auton," in an account of
an execution which took place at Genoa at the beginning of the sixteenth
century. Two German engravings, executed about 1550 by Pencz and
Aldegrever, also represent an instrument of death almost identical with
the guillotine; and the same instrument is to be found on a bas-relief of
that period, which is still existing in one of the halls of the Tribunal
of Luneburg, in Hanover.

[Illustration: Decapitation of Guillaume de Pommiers.

[Illustration: Fig. 347.--Public Executions.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in
the Latin Work of J. Millaeus, "Praxis Criminis Persequendi:" small folio,
Parisis, Simon de Colines, 1541.]

And his Confessor, at Bordeaux in 1377, by order of the King of England's
Lieutenant. _Froissart's Chronicles._ No. 2644, Bibl. nat'le de Paris.]

Possibly the invention of such a machine was prompted by the desire to
curtail the physical sufferings of the victim, instead of prolonging them,
as under the ancient system. It is, however, difficult to believe that the
mediaeval judges were actuated by any humane feelings, when we find that,
in order to reconcile a respect for _propriety_ with a due compliance with
the ends of justice, the punishment of burying alive was resorted to for
women, who could not with decency be hung up to the gibbets. In 1460, a
woman named Perette, accused of theft and of receiving stolen goods, was
condemned by the Provost of Paris to be "buried alive before the gallows,"
and the sentence was literally carried out.

_Quartering_ may in truth be considered the most horrible penalty invented
by judicial cruelty. This punishment really dates from the remotest ages,
but it was scarcely ever inflicted in more modern times, except on
regicide