United States or Moldova ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He was a native of the neighboring town of Shirley. He was a man of large size, handsome figure, resolute in his purposes, and vindictive in his enmities. His chief business was that of stage proprietor, and mail contractor. He was always in debt, and tardy, of course, in his payments. He was involved in lawsuits, and many of his debts were paid upon executions.
See Bastian's deep remarks upon this subject in Der Mensch in der Geschichte, iii. Die Blutrache, pp. 1-36. A remainder of this tribal habit, I am told by Professor E. Nys, has survived in military executions till our own times.
The last executions for witchcraft in England were probably those at Exeter in 1682. For a whole generation the courts had been frowning on witch prosecution. Now there arose in England judges who definitely nullified the law on the statute-book.
The leading thought of the Government being that persecution, judiciously managed, might fructify into a golden harvest, it was still desirable to persevere in the cause in which already such bloody progress had been made. And under this new decree, the executions certainly did not slacken. Men in the highest and the humblest positions were daily and hourly dragged to the stake.
In this respect too the conservative party had to borrow from its opponents; the protector of the oligarchic constitution had himself to come forward as a tyrant, in order to avert the ever-impending -tyrannis-. There was not a little of defeat in this last victory of the oligarchy. Executions
I have heard of a Sworn Tormentor and his assistants, whose fiendish task it was to torture poor creatures' souls out of their miserable bodies, and of a Chirurgeon who had to watch lest the agonies used upon 'em should be too much for human endurance, and so, putting 'em out of their misery, rob the headsman of his due, the scaffold of its prey, and the vile mobile that congregate at public executions of their raree show.
Lefebre was not known in Rouen, and his attitude during the trial had aroused no sympathy; the others were but vulgar actors in the drama, and only interested the populace hungry for a spectacle on the scaffold. The executions would take place immediately, the judgments pronounced by the special court being without appeal, like those of the former revolutionary tribunals.
The security of the walls made it convenient as a State prison, the first known prisoner being Ralf Flambard, Bishop of Durham, who had been active under William Rufus in pushing on the buildings. From that time the Tower was seldom without some captive, English or foreign, of rank and importance. In the Tudor period the "Green" within the Tower was used on very rare occasions for executions.
If every other man in the county, who is of your opinion, was to express himself, now that your cause is hopeless, as you have done, the prisons would be crowded, the executions would be dayly, and the cause would be, in proportion, weakened by the loss of the most daring. 'Bide your time' is a good motto, and I recommend it to you.
He found it difficult to satisfy them, for indeed each day he became more and more doubtful as to his ability to get the order of release from Robespierre. Towards the man himself his feelings were of a mixed kind. He shuddered at the calmness with which, in his letters to the provincial committees, he advocated wholesale executions of prisoners.
Word Of The Day