the law, and was made to
illustrate the horrible custom of those times by hanging in chains on
the public highway! For this we must take the liberty of going a few
years back before George III. came to the throne. For some years
before and after that time, the noted old Posting House of the Red
Lion, in the High Street, Royston, was kept by a Mrs. Gatward. This
good lady, who managed the inn with credit to herself and satisfaction
to her patrons, unfortunately had a son, who, while attending
apparently to the posting branch of the business, could not resist the
fascination of the life of the highwaymen, who no doubt visited his
mother's inn under the guise of well-spoken gentlemen. Probably it was
in dealing with them for horses that young Gatward caught the infection
of their roving life, but what were the precise circumstances of his
fall we can hardly know; suffice it to say that his crime was one of
robbing His Majesty's mails, that he was evidently tried at the
Cambridgeshire Assizes, sentenced to death and afterwards to hang in
chains on a gibbet, and according to the custom of the times, somewhere
near the scene of his crime. The rest of his story is so well told by
Cole, the Cambridgeshire antiquary, in his MSS. in the British Museum,
that the reader will prefer to have it in his own words:--

"About 1753-4, the son of Mrs. Gatward, who kept the Red Lion, at
Royston, being convicted of robbing the mail, was hanged in chains on
the Great Road. I saw him hanging in a scarlet coat; after he had hung
about two or three months, it is supposed that the screw was filed
which supported him, and that he fell in the first high wind after.
Mr. Lord, of Trinity, passed by as he laid on the ground, and trying to
open his breast to see what state his body was in, not being offensive,
but quite dry, a button of brass came off, which he preserves to this
day, as he told me at the Vice-Chancellor's, Thursday, June 30, 1779.
I sold this Mr. Gatward, just as I left college in 1752, a pair of
coach horses, which was the only time I saw him. It was a great grief
to his mother, who bore a good character, and kept the inn for many
years after."

{13}

There is a tradition, at least, that Mrs. Gatward afterwards obtained
her son's body and had it buried in the cellar of her house in the High
Street. The story is in the highest degree creditable to human nature,
but there is no proof beyond the tradition. As to the spot whe