Hanging was the common punishment for felony, but traitors and many other offenders were drawn, hanged, boweled, and quartered; nobles who were traitors usually escaped with having their heads chopped off only.  Torture was not practiced; for, says Harrison, our people despise death, yet abhor to be tormented, being of frank and open minds.  And “this is one cause why our condemned persons do go so cheerfully to their deaths, for our nation is free, stout, hearty, and prodigal of life and blood, and cannot in any wise digest to be used as villains and slaves.”  Felony covered a wide range of petty crimes—­breach of prison, hunting by night with painted or masked faces, stealing above forty shillings, stealing hawks’ eggs, conjuring, prophesying upon arms and badges, stealing deer by night, cutting purses, counterfeiting coin, etc.  Death was the penalty for all these offenses.  For poisoning her husband a woman was burned alive; a man poisoning another was boiled to death in water or oil; heretics were burned alive; some murderers were hanged in chains; perjurers were branded on the forehead with the letter P; rogues were burned through the ears; suicides were buried in a field with a stake driven through their bodies; witches were burned or hanged; in Halifax thieves were beheaded by a machine almost exactly like the modern guillotine; scolds were ducked; pirates were hanged on the seashore at low-water mark, and left till three tides overwashed them; those who let the sea-walls decay were staked out in the breach of the banks, and left there as parcel of the foundation of the new wall.  Of rogues-that is, tramps and petty thieves-the gallows devoured three to four hundred annually, in one place or another; and Henry VIII. in his time did hang up as many as seventy-two thousand rogues.  Any parish which let a thief escape was fined.  Still the supply held out.

The legislation against vagabonds, tramps, and sturdy beggars, and their punishment by whipping, branding, etc., are too well known to need comment.  But considerable provision was made for the unfortunate and deserving poor—­poorhouses were built for them, and collections taken up.  Only sixty years before Harrison wrote there were few beggars, but in his day he numbers them at ten thousand; and most of them were rogues, who counterfeited sores and wounds, and were mere thieves and caterpillars on the commonwealth.  He names twenty-three different sorts of vagabonds known by cant names, such as “ruffers,” “uprightmen,” “priggers,” “fraters,” “palliards,” “Abrams,” “dummerers “; and of women, “demanders for glimmer or fire,” “mortes,” “walking mortes,” “doxes,” “kinching coves.”