ty killed: so that one was valued sometime at 1200, another at 600, or
200 shillings. And by a statute made under Henry the First, a citizen of
London at 100, whereof elsewhere I have spoken more at large. Such as kill
themselves are buried in the field with a stake driven through their
bodies.

Witches are hanged, or sometimes burned; but thieves are hanged (as I said
before) generally on the gibbet or gallows, saving in Halifax, where they
are beheaded after a strange manner, and whereof I find this report. There
is and has been of ancient time a law, or rather a custom, at Halifax,
that whosoever does commit any felony, and is taken with the same, or
confesses the fact upon examination, if it be valued by four constables to
amount to the sum of thirteenpence-halfpenny, he is forthwith beheaded
upon one of the next market days (which fall usually upon the Tuesdays,
Thursdays, and Saturdays), or else upon the same day that he is so
convicted, if market be then holden. The engine wherewith the execution is
done is a square block of wood of the length of four feet and a half,
which does ride up and down in a slot, rabbet, or regall, between two
pieces of timber, that are framed and set upright, of five yards in
height. In the nether end of the sliding block is an axe, keyed or
fastened with an iron into the wood, which being drawn up to the top of
the frame is there fastened by a wooden pin (with a notch made into the
same, after the manner of a Samson's post), unto the midst of which pin
also there is a long rope fastened that cometh down among the people, so
that, when the offender hath made his confession and hath laid his neck
over the nethermost block, every man there present doth either take hold
of the rope (or putteth forth his arm so near to the same as he can get,
in token that he is willing to see true justice executed), and, pulling
out the pin in this manner, the head-block wherein the axe is fastened
doth fall down with such a violence that, if the neck of the transgressor
were as big as that of a bull, it should be cut in sunder at a stroke and
roll from the body by a huge distance. If it be so that the offender be
apprehended for an ox, oxen, sheep, kine, horse, or any such cattle, the
self beast or other of the same kind shall have the end of the rope tied
somewhere unto them, so that they, being driven, do draw out the pin,
whereby the offender is executed. Thus much of Halifax law, which I set
down only