Chapter XV

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Character of Hertford.

The young King discovered an extreme attachment to his uncle, who was, in the main, a man of moderation and probity.--Hume’s History of England, vol. iii, p324.

But if he (the Protector) gave offence by assuming too much state, he deserves great praise on account of the laws passed this session, by which the rigour of former statutes was much mitigated, and some security given to the freedom of the constitution.  All laws were repealed which extended the crime of treason beyond the statute of the twenty-fifth of Edward III.; all laws enacted during the late reign extending the crime of felony; all the former laws against Lollardy or heresy, together with the statute of the Six Articles.  None were to be accused for words, but within a month after they were spoken.  By these repeals several of the most rigorous laws that ever had passed in England were annulled; and some dawn, both of civil and religious liberty, began to appear to the people.  A repeal also passed of that law, the destruction of all laws, by which the King’s proclamation was made of equal force with a statute.--Ibid. vol. iii. p. 339.

Boiling to Death.

In the reign of Henry VIII. poisoners were, by Act of Parliament, condemned to be _boiled to death_.  This Act was repealed in the following reign.

In Germany, even in the seventeenth century, this horrible punishment was inflicted on coiners and counterfeiters.  Taylor, the Water Poet, describes an execution he witnessed in Hamburg in 1616.  The judgment pronounced against a coiner of false money was that he should ‘_be boiled to death in oil_; not thrown into the vessel at once, but with a pulley or rope to be hanged under the armpits, and then let down into the oil _by degrees_; first the feet, and next the legs, and so to boil his flesh from his bones alive.’--Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull’s Blue Laws, True and False, p. 13.

The Famous Stocking Case.

A woman and her daughter, _nine years old_, were hanged in Huntingdon for selling their souls to the devil, and raising a storm by pulling off their stockings!--Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull’s Blue Laws, True and False, p. 20.

NOTE 10,