ealt more favourably with them, shooting rather at the punishments of
such priests and clerks as were married than the reformation of
adultery and fornication, wherein you shall find no example that any
severity was shewed except upon such lay men as had defiled their
nuns. As in theft therefore, so in adultery and whoredom, I would wish
the parties trespassing to be made bond or slaves unto those that
received the injury, to sell and give where they listed, or to be
condemned to the galleys: for that punishment would prove more bitter
to them than half-an-hour's hanging, or than standing in a sheet,
though the weather be never so cold.

Manslaughter in time past was punished by the purse, wherein the
quantity or quality of the punishment was rated after the state and
calling of the party 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 th