by toll-bar, and his mother, Mary Yeadon. The brutal
crime was committed with a heavy hedge-stake. The culprit was soon
caught, and tried at Nottingham. It transpired that the prisoner was
pressed for money, and that the murders were committed to obtain it. He
was found guilty, and condemned to be executed at Nottingham, and then
his body was to be hung in chains near Scrooby toll-bar. In his hand was
placed the hedge-stake with which he had committed the murders. After
the body had been suspended a few weeks the body was shot through by the
sergeant of a band of soldiers passing that way with a deserter. For the
offence he was followed and reported, tried by court-martial, and
reduced to the ranks. This disturbance of the body caused its rapid
decomposition, and the odour blown over the neighbouring village was
most offensive.[12]

Several instances of persons being gibbeted for robbing the mails have
come under our notice. In the columns of the _Salisbury Journal_ for
August 18th, 1783, it is stated:--"The sentence of William Peare for
robbing the mail near Chippenham stands unreversed.... He will be
executed at Fisherton gallows, on Tuesday morning, about 11 o'clock, and
his body will then be inclosed in a suit of chains, ingeniously made by
Mr. Wansborough and conveyed to Chippenham, and affixed to a gibbet
erected near the spot where the robbery was committed." The allusion to
"unreversed" has reference to the common practice of condemning people
to death, and shortly afterwards granting a pardon. The issue of the
paper for the following week records that: "On Tuesday morning Peare was
executed at Fisherton gallows.... The remaining part of the sentence was
completed on Wednesday, by hanging the body in Green Lane, near
Chippenham, where it now is; a dreadful memento to youth, how they
swerve from the paths of rectitude, and transgress the laws of their
country." The body of Peare was not permitted to remain long on the
gibbet. We see it is stated in a paragraph in the same newspaper under
date of November 10th, 1783, that on the 30th of October at night, the
corpse was taken away, and it was supposed that this was done by some of
his Cricklade friends.

Near the Devil's Punch Bowl, at Hind Head, an upright stone records the
murder of a sailor, and the inscription it bears is as under:--

ERECTED
IN DETESTATION OF A BARBAROUS MURDER
committed here on