inflicted principally in cases of heresy or blasphemy, and consisted in stripping the prisoner, smearing him with sulphur, bind ing him to the stake, and after surrounding him with fagots, lighting the pile on all sides. Sometimes strangling preceded the burning, and often the guilty dead were disinterred and forwarded to the stake. Early in the fourteenth century many ac cused of heresy and witchcraft suffered the penalty of fire, including famous historic names. Under the category of fire comes the brazier, the bassint ardent, and the ordeal of branding. Decapitation, at first a general method, later became restricted to the no bility, and the skill of the executioner usually rendered such a punishment comparatively painless. The guillotine, now the instru ment of death in France, is but a develop ment of sword decapitation, and is the perfection of a machine which was used in Scotland, and at Halifax in Yorkshire, during the sixteenth century. The most cruel punishment was undoubtedly that of quartering. This torture sprang into exist ence when men's manners and minds were rude enough, and long before the moral law fell a prey to philosophy. In later years it was imposed on regicides only, and as a general thing they were obliged to undergo several lesser fiendish tortures as a kind of introduction to the final barbarism. The wheel is interesting evidence of man's in genuity in devising death-dealing instru ments, and as an instance of the sad irony of fate, the wheel always assumed the spec tacle of a cross publicly exposing the crim inal, " whose limbs had been previously broken alive." Strangling by means of a sudden twist of a rope was termed garotting, and this is the method employed in Spain to day, although only the nobility are thus favored. Until the French Revolution the usual mode of capital punishment was that of hang ing, and every town possessed its gibbet, at tached to which corpses and skeletons dan gled. The poet Villon, who narrowly escaped
the gibbet, wrote a weird poem on the soliloquy of a skeleton. So we can thank these struc tures for something. The gibbets —fonrch.cs palibulaires — were placed invariably near the side of public ways, or on some conspicuous height. Probably the most renowned is that of Montfaucon of Paris, prominent in the criminal annals of France, and erected on the highway leading to Germany. It en closed a space some forty feet by thirty, and was built of large, rough stones. Sometimes the criminal, while ascending the fatal ladder, was allowed to listen to his favorite instru ment as played upon by his friend. Then again the condemned, owing to the phrase ology of the sentence, were taken to Mont faucon, living or dead, on a ladder fastened behind a cart. This was known as trainer sur la claie. Punishment by the lash ad mitted of two degrees; first, that adminis tered in private by the jailer as a corrective, and, secondly, that inflicted publicly, which was both ignominious and painful. When it was desired to set the mark of infamy on some unfortunate, he was conducted to the pillory, — a mode of punishment which sur vived the Middle Ages many years. In ad dition to the foregoing penalties may be mentioned the Arqitebitscade, designed to parcel out divine justice to the military; the Pal, the Chatonillement, the Pain of the Cross, flaying alive, and lastly drowning. And now a few words as to prison adapta tions and penal sequestration. The same reasons which induced the law-makers of these times to invent tortures and increase the torments, operated to effect severe meas ures of confinement. There were few, if any, large prisons solely appropriated to the use of a definite jurisdiction; but each adminis trator of the law possessed a private jail, and his will and pleasure concerning it were absolute. Sometimes a prison was under the direction and control of a quasi-partnership concern, as witness that one in the Rue de la Tannerie, which was owned by the provost, mer chants, and aldermen of Paris, in 1383. It is
