d petit treason:

"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives, in General
Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, That from and after
the passing of this act, in all cases wherein heretofore any person or
persons would have been deemed or taken to have committed the crime of
petit treason, such person or persons shall be deemed and taken to
have committed the crime of murder only, and indicted and prosecuted
to final judgment accordingly; and the same punishment only shall be
inflicted as in the case of murder.--[This act passed _March 16,
1785_.]"]

So that it was possible that our good city of Boston might have been
disgraced by one of these horrible executions as late as 1785, and
that a delicate woman could, with all the solemnity of legal forms,
have been publicly burned to death at Tyburn as late as 1790!

In point of fact such executions occurred in England long after the
burning of Phillis. A memorable case is that of Anne Beddingfield, who
was burned for petit treason at Rushmore, near Ipswich, in 1763.

In 1813 the last of the minor infamous punishments, such as whipping,
branding, the stocks, the pillory, cutting off ears, slitting noses,
boring tongues, &c., were abolished in this Commonwealth.

As for hanging in chains, I cannot find when the custom was
discontinued in Massachusetts. I do not remember to have read of an
instance of this kind since the adoption of the Constitution, though I
have made no special search for such an instance. Some of my hearers
may be able to refer me definitely to the time and reason of the
change.

In England, by the stat. 25 Geo. II., ch. 35 (1752), which was three
years before the execution at Cambridge, provision was made that
hanging in chains should be included in the sentence to be pronounced
by the court against all persons convicted of murder, and that the
sentence should be executed on the next day but one after it was
pronounced. This was changed by the stat. 9 Geo. IV., ch. 31, so as to
give the court a discretion to order hanging in chains or dissection;
and the next year this act was extended to Ireland. By the stat. 2 & 3
Wm. IV., ch. 75, the court was authorized to order the body to be hung
in chains or buried; and, finally, by the stat. 4 & 5 of Wm. IV., ch.
26 (July 25, 1834), all laws requiring bodies to be hung in chains
were repealed.

No such sudden punishment as that prescribed by the act of parliament
of the 25 Geo. II.