was ordered to be put to death by
drowning "by the Queen's special grace." At Edinburgh, in 1611, a man
was drowned for stealing a lamb; and in 1623 eleven gipsey women were
condemned to be drowned at Edinburgh in the Nor' Loch. On the 11th May,
1685, Margaret M'Lachlan, aged sixty-three years, and Margaret Wilson, a
girl of eighteen years, were drowned in the waters of Blednoch, for
denying that James VII. of Scotland was entitled to rule the Church
according to his pleasure. Six years prior to this, namely, on the 25th
August, 1679, a woman called Janet Grant was tried for theft, in the
baronial court of Sir Robert Gordon, of Gordonston, held at Drainie, and
pleaded guilty. She was sentenced to be drowned next day in the Loch of
Spynie.

In France, drowning was a capital punishment as late as 1793, but in
Scotland we do not trace it later than 1685, and in England it was
discontinued about the commencement of the seventeenth century.

FOOTNOTES:

[21] Pike's "History of Crime in England," 1873.

[22] Boys's "History of Sandwich."

Burning to Death.

Burning to death was a frequent method of punishment in the barbarous
days of many nations. In our own country it was used by the Anglo-Saxons
as the penalty of certain crimes, and, as the ordinary punishment of
witchcraft, it was maintained throughout the Middle Ages.

Burning alive was from early times the recognised method of uprooting
heretical notions of religious belief of every class. The first to
suffer from this cause in England was Alban, who died at the stake in
the year A.D. 304. Since his day, thousands have suffered death on
account of their religious belief, through intolerance; but that is not
a subject we intend dealing with at the present time.

We desire to direct attention to some of the cases of the burning alive
of women for civil offences. This practice was considered by the framers
of the law as a commutation of the sentence of hanging, and a concession
made to the sex of the offenders. "For as the decency due to the sex,"
says Blackstone, "forbids the exposing and publicly mangling their
bodies, their sentence (which is to the full as terrible to sensation as
the other) is, to be drawn to the gallows, and there to be burnt alive;"
and he adds: "the humanity of the English nation has authorised, by a
tacit consent, an almost general mitigation of such part of these
judgments as savours of torture and cruelty, a sledge or hurdle be