. Historic fields and mansions of Middlesex. ce of burning andNIXS MATE. gibbeting in Massachusetts. Earlier it was not uncommon to condemnmalefactors of the worst sort to be hung in chains. As longago as 1726 the bodies of the pirates, William Fly, SamuelCole, and Henry Greenville, were taken after execution to ^ixsMate, in Boston harbor, where the remains of Fly were sus-pended in chains; the others were buried on the island, whichthen contained several acres. Hence the superstitious awewith which the place is even now regarded by mariners, andwhich the disappearance of the island has served
. Historic fields and mansions of Middlesex. ce of burning andNIXS MATE. gibbeting in Massachusetts. Earlier it was not uncommon to condemnmalefactors of the worst sort to be hung in chains. As longago as 1726 the bodies of the pirates, William Fly, SamuelCole, and Henry Greenville, were taken after execution to ^ixsMate, in Boston harbor, where the remains of Fly were sus-pended in chains; the others were buried on the island, whichthen contained several acres. Hence the superstitious awewith which the place is even now regarded by mariners, andwhich the disappearance of the island has served so firmly toestablish. We must confess that while our humanity revolts at thesebarbarous usages of our ancestors, we cannot but admit thatpunishment followed crime in their day with a certainty by nomeans paralleled in our own. The severity of the code, theinfliction of death for petty crimes, we must abhor and con-demn ; but we may still contrast that state of things, in wliichthe criminals life was held so cheaply, with the present time,. OLD CHAELESTOWN ROAD. 171 in which condemned malefactors repose on luxuriant couches,while the law jealously guards them from the penalty of crime,and justice, uncertain of itself, repeals its sentence and sets theguilty free. To something we must attribute the startlingincrease of crime. Can it be the laxity of the law ? Thomas Morton, the Merry Andrew of Mount Wollaston,relates, in his New English Canaan, an occurrence which, hesays, happened to Westons colony, in what is now Weymouth ;and upon this slight foundation Hudibras built his humorousaccount of the hanging of a weaver crime of which acobbler had been adjudged guilty: — Our bretliren of New England use. Choice mal-factors to excuse, And hang the guiltless in their stead, Of whom the churches have less need ; As lately happened. Mortons story goes that, one of Westons men having stolencorn from an Indian, a parliament of all the people was calledto decide what punishment
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, bookidhistoricfiel, bookyear1874
