for a while, as Todd for some reason was unable to dispatch his customers, and mutton was actually used in the pies. Complaints were made that the quality of the pies had deteriorated, the meat had lost its usual succulence and flavour.
In a manuscript, which has never been printed,[114] written about 1625 by the brother of Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland,[115] George Percy, who was twice Deputy-Governor of Virginia, and entitled A Trewe Relatyon of the Proceedings and Occurrences of Momente which have Happened in Virginia from … 1609 untill 1612, details are given of the terrible conditions under which the early colonists had to live. Starvation sometimes faced them, and not only were corpses then dug out of graves and eaten, but “one of our colony murdered his wife … and salted her for his food, the same not being discovered before he had eaten part thereof, for which cruel and inhuman fact I adjudged him to be executed, the acknowledgment of the deed being enforced from him by torture, having hung by the thumbs, with weights at his feet a quarter of an hour before he would confess the same.”
As is often recorded in history during long and terrible sieges, starvation has driven the wretched citizens of a beleagured town to devour human flesh. An example of this may be found in the Bible, which tells us of the horrors when Jerusalem was encompassed by Benadad of Syria during the reign of King Joram (B.C. 892), Kings IV (A.V. Kings II), vi, 24-30: “Congregauit Benadad rex Syriae, uniuersum exercitum suum, et ascendit, et obsidebat Samariam. Factaque est fames magna in Samaria: et tamdiu obsessa est, donec uenundaretur caput asini octoginta argenteis, et quarta pars cabi stercoris columbarum quinque argenteis. Cumque rex Israel transiret per murum, mulier quaedam exclamauit ad eum; dicens: Salua me domine mi rex. Qui ait: Non te saluat Dominus: unde te possum saluare? de area, uel de torculari? Dixitque ad cam rex: Quid tibi uis? Quae respondit; Mulier ista dixit mihi: Da filium tuum, ut comedamus eum hodie, et filium meum comedemus eras. Coximus ergo filium meum, et comedimus. Dixique ei die altera: Da filium tuum ut comedamus eum. Quae abscondit filium suum. Quod cum audisset rex, scidit uestimenta sua, et transibat per murum. Uiditque omnis populus cilicium, quo uestitus erat ad carnem intrinsecus.”
