s coffin, on which was inscribed:--

SIMON, DOMINUS FRASER DE LOVAT,
Decollat April 9, 1747,
Aetat suae 80.

After repeating some lines from Horace, and next from Ovid, he prayed,
then bade adieu to his solicitor and agent in Scotland; finally the
executioner completed his work, the head falling from the body. Lord
Lovat was the last person beheaded in this country.

FOOTNOTES:

[24] Wilson's "The Tower and the Scaffold," 1879.

[25] D. C. Bell's "Chapel of the Tower," 1877.

The Halifax Gibbet.

The mention of the Halifax gibbet suggests a popular Yorkshire saying:
"From Hell, Hull and Halifax, good Lord, deliver us." Fuller says the
foregoing is part of the "Beggars' and Vagrants' Litany," and goes on to
state: "Of these three frightful things unto them, it is to be feared
that they least fear the first, conceiving it the farthest from them.
Hull is terrible to them as a town of good government, where beggars
meet with punitive charity; and, it is to be feared, are oftener
corrected than amended. Halifax is formidable for the law thereof,
whereby thieves, taken in the very act of stealing cloth, are instantly
beheaded with an engine, without any further legal proceedings.
Doubtless, the coincidence of the initial letters of these three words
helped much the setting on foot of the proverb." The Halifax gibbet law
has been traced back to a remote period. It has been suggested that it
was imported into the country by some of the Norman barons. Holinshed's
"Chronicle" (edition published in 1587) contains an interesting note
bearing on this subject. "There is, and has been, of ancient time," says
Holinshed, "a law or rather custom, at Halifax, that whosoever doth
commit any felony, and is taken with the same, or confesses the fact
upon examination, if it be valued by four constables to amount to the
sum of thirteenpence-halfpenny, he is forthwith beheaded upon one of the
next market-days (which fall usually upon the Tuesdays, Thursdays, and
Saturdays), or else upon the same day that he is convicted, if market be
holden. The engine wherewith the execution is done is a square block of
wood, of the length of four feet and a half, which doth ride up and down
in a slot, rabet, or regall, between two pieces of timber that are
framed and set up right, of five yards in height. In the nether end of a
sliding block is an axe, keyed or fastened with an iron into the wood,
which, being drawn up to th