present all whom they knew to be the chiefs of the
tumult, the second gave their opinion on the
presentation of the first, and the third pronounced
the verdict of guilty or not guilty. It does not
appear that witnesses were examined. The juries
spoke from their personal knowledge. Thus each
convict was condemned on the oaths of thirty-six
men. At first, on account of the multitude of
executions, the condemned were beheaded: afterward
they were hanged and left on the gibbet as objects
of terror; but as their bodies were removed by their
friends, the King ordered them to be hanged in
chains, the first instance in which express mention
of the practice is made. According to Holinshed the
executions amounted to fifteen hundred.

[70] The readers, as might be expected, often
surreptitiously copied portions of special interest.
One is reminded of the story in ancient Irish
history of a curious decision arising out of an
incident of this kind nearly a thousand years
before, which seems to have influenced the history
of Christianity in Britain. St. Columb, on a visit
to the aged St. Finian in Ulster, had permission to
read in the Psalter belonging to his host. But every
night while the good old saint was sleeping, the
young one was busy in the chapel writing by a
miraculous light till he had completed a copy of the
whole Psalter. The owner of the Psalter, discovering
this, demanded that it should be given up, as it had
been copied unlawfully from his book; while the
copyist insisted that, the materials of labor being
his, he was entitled to what he had written. The
dispute was referred to Diarmad, the King at Tara,
and his decision (genuinely Irish) was given in St.
Finian's favor. "To every book," said he, "belongs
its son-book [copy], as to every cow belongs her
calf." Columb complained of the decision as unjust,
and the dispute is said to have been one of the
causes of his leaving Ireland for Iona.

[71] Oliver Wendell Holmes: _Autocrat of the
Breakfast-table._

[72] A town in Schwyz. The name means a "hermitage." St.