rsons which shall hereafter be indicted and condemned by order
of the law of such treason, shall not be admitted to the benefit of his or
their clergy, but shall be immediately after such attainder or
condemnation, committed to execution of death by boiling for the same."

The sentence was carried into effect[301] in Smithfield, "on the tenebra
Wednesday following, to the terrible example of all others." The spectacle
of a living human being boiled to death, was really witnessed three hundred
years ago by the London citizens, within the walls of that old
cattle-market; an example terrible indeed, the significance of which is not
easily to be exhausted. For the poisoners of the soul there was the
stake,[302] for the poisoners of the body, the boiling cauldron,--the two
most fearful punishments for the most fearful of crimes. The stake at which
the heretic suffered was an inherited institution descending through the
usage of centuries; the poisoner's cauldron was the fresh expression of the
judgment of the English nation on a novel enormity; and I have called
attention to it because the temper which this act exhibits is the key to
all which has seemed most dark and cruel in the rough years which followed;
a temper which would keep no terms with evil, or with anything which,
rightly or wrongly, was believed to be evil, but dreadfully and inexorably
hurried out the penalties of it.

Following the statute against poisoning, there stands "an act for the
banishment out of the country of divers outlandish and vagabond people
called Egyptians;"[303] and attached to it another of analogous import,
"for the repression of beggars and vagabonds," the number of whom, it was
alleged, was increasing greatly throughout the country, and much crime and
other inconveniences were said to have been occasioned by them. We may
regard these two measures, if we please, as a result of the energetic and
reforming spirit in the parliament, which was dragging into prominence all
forms of existing disorders, and devising remedies for those disorders. But
they indicate something more than this: they point to the growth of a
disturbed and restless disposition, the interruption of industry, and other
symptoms of approaching social confusion; and at the same time they show us
the government conscious of the momentous nature of the struggle into which
it was launched; and with timely energy bracing up the sinews of the nation
for its approaching trial. The