"Gibbet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... number, but they were gallant and brave, and yielded only to superior strength. M'Alister More was always attended by four and twenty bowmen, who acted as his body guard, his jury, his judges, and his executioners. They erected on the instant a gibbet before the door of the wretched mother, and there ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... them according to their deserts; but fearing the captain of the pirates should make his escape (as he had formerly done, being their prisoner once before) they judged it safer to leave him guarded on ship-board for the present, while they erected a gibbet to hang him on the next day, without any other process than to lead him from the ship to his punishment; the rumour of which was presently brought to Bartholomew Portugues, whereby he sought all possible means to escape that ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin
... the vigilance of the farmer's officers, render the yielding to the temptation almost certainly ruinous. The smuggling of salt and tobacco sends every year several hundred people to the galleys, besides a very considerable number whom it sends to the gibbet. Those taxes, levied in this manner, yield a very considerable revenue to government. In 1767, the farm of tobacco was let for twenty-two millions five hundred and forty-one thousand two hundred and seventy-eight ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... absence Osio was condemned to death on the gibbet. His goods were confiscated to the State. His house in Monza was destroyed, and a pillar of infamy recording his crimes, was erected on its site. A proclamation of outlawry was issued on April 5, 1608, under the seal of Don Pietro de Acevedo, Count of Fuentes, and governor of the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Mesurado, which bore S.E. 2 leagues distant. This cape may be easily known, as it rises into a hummock like the head of a porpoise. Also towards the S.E. there are three trees, the eastmost being the highest, the middle one resembling a hay-stack, and that to the southward like a gibbet. Likewise on the main there are four or five high hills, one after the other, like round hummocks. The south-east of the three trees is brandiernaure? and all the coast is a white sand. The said cape stands within a little of six degrees [lat. 6 deg. 20' N. long. 10 deg. 30' W.] The ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... Anne did not perceive the meaning of the missive, the ghastly idea never having occurred to her that if Charles had suffered, the gibbet would have been at Portchester. Then, with an electric flash of joy, she saw that it meant relenting on Peregrine's part, deliverance for them both. She put on her clothes with hasty, trembling hands, thankful to Guennik for helping her, pressed a coin into the strong ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... historians. Fitzjames was able, however, to produce quaint survivals of the old state of things, under which a man's neighbours were assumed to be capable of deciding his guilt or innocence from their own knowledge. There was the Gibbet Law of Halifax, which lasted till the seventeenth century. The jurors might catch a man 'handhabend, backbarend, or confessand,' with stolen goods worth 13-1/2d. in his possession and cut off his head on a ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the Hog's Back and the breeze blowing there because on the highest rise we came on a gibbet and rode around it to windward on the broad turfy margin of the road; and also because the sight put my father in mind of a story which he narrated on the way ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... gibbet, I presume, is in good working order?" asked the king of the family executioner, a tall gaunt man in black and scarlet, who was only employed in the case of members of ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... "to be round with you, the grace of God is better than gold pieces. When Goblin, as you call yonder Monsieur Lutin,—and you might as well call him Gibbet, since that is what he is like to end in,—shall recommend a page to you, ye will hear little such doctrine as ye have heard from me.—And if they were my last words," he said, raising his voice, "I would say you are misled, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... have breath, I will continue to combat it, by all my efforts as a writer, by all my words and all my votes as a legislator! I declare it before the crucifix; before that Victim of the penalty of death, who sees and hears us; before that gibbet, in which, two thousand years ago, for the eternal instruction of the generations, the human ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... the 19th century. In England, under the common law, women condemned for high treason or petty treason (murder of husband, murder of master or mistress, certain offences against the coin, &c.) were burned, this being considered more "decent" than hanging and exposure on a gibbet. In practice the convict was strangled before being burnt. The last woman burnt in England suffered in 1789, the punishment being ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... erections on which men are crucified. Stayros the vile engine is called, and it derives its vile name from him. Now, with all these crimes upon him, does he not deserve death, nay, many deaths? For my part I know none bad enough but that supplied by his own shape —that shape which he gave to the gibbet named Stayros after him ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... to save one's skin at the cost of treason to Jesus. The temptation does not come in that sharpest form to us. Perhaps some cowards would be made brave if it did. It is perhaps easier to face the gibbet and the fire, and screw oneself up for once to a brief endurance, than to resist the more specious blandishments of the world, especially when it has been christened, and calls itself religious. The light laugh of scorn, the silent pressure of the low average ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the freedom of the roads. On all occasions the drovers were armed with various weapons to defend their charge from the cattle-stealers who were too often apt to hang upon their skirts, ready to carry off any stray beast they could find, though the gibbet was the penalty if they were captured. Trains of pack-horses also would bear them company as they approached Cambridge, carrying all kinds of stores and goods for ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... information of the arrival of the armament, and prepared to defend his post, as he rightly guessed that it was destined to act against us. He sent off all his invalids to an Indian village at some distance, and exhorting his soldiers to stand by him, he erected a gibbet, and placed a guard on the road to Chempoalla. On the arrival of the deputation from Narvaez at Villa Rica, they were astonished to meet none but Indians, as Sandoval had ordered all the soldiers to remain in their quarters, and remained ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... None, I believe, ever thought that before. But the same wood, I suppose, that makes the gibbet could make the mast of a man-of-war. I tell you, however, why you have taken this fancy to me,—the strong sympathize with the strong. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... up uneasy and imploring, as Charles continued: 'Would that more of you would come in this way! They have scored you deep, but know you what is gashed deeper still? Your King's heart! Ah! you will not come, as Coligny does, from his gibbet, with his two bleeding hands. My father was haunted to his dying day by the face of one Huguenot tailor. Why, I see a score, night by night! You are solid; ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... terms. At last Isabella, disgusted with her husband and his favourite, ran away to France, and there, with the help of the Count of Hainault and other friends in England, she raised an army and attacked and defeated her husband and his favourite. The young Despenser was hanged on a gibbet fifty feet high, and a Parliament was called to decide what should be done with ...
— Royal Children of English History • E. Nesbit
... excuse or grounds for a predisposition to anti-social and barbaric moods. This hopefulness, in some shape or other, is an indispensable mark of the most valuable thought. To stop at the soldier and the gibbet, and such order as they can furnish, is to close the eyes to the entire problem of the future, and we may be sure that what omits the future is no adequate nor stable ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... to Lady Roseville's door; the first person I saw in the drawing-room, was Ellen. She lifted up her eyes with that familiar sweetness with which they had long since began to welcome me. "Her brother may perish on the gibbet!" was the thought that curdled my blood, and I ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... escaped from the smallest privateer. In his present situation, he resolved rather to blow up the vessel than to surrender; he concerted measures to achieve this end with a brave Dutchman named Bedaulx, whose sole alternative, if taken, would have been the gibbet. The captain insisted upon stopping at the islands; but government and orders would have been found there, and he followed a direct course, less from choice than from compulsion.[15] At forty leagues from shore, ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... tiptoe rais'd, like one prepared to fly. Yon wight behold, whose sole aspiring hope Eccentrick soars to catch the hangman's rope. In order rang'd, with date of place and time, Each owner's name, his parentage and crime, High on his walls, inscribed to glorious shame, Unnumber'd halters gibbet him to Fame. ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... valuable security for this trifling debt than you would dare to ask; the bureau is full of pearls —metrical, but beyond price. I beg your tenderest care of them, especially my tragedy in seven acts. Do not play jinks with the contents of that bureau, or Posterity will gibbet you and the name of 'Gouge' will one day be execrated throughout ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... vessels entered the river, Bobadilla beheld on either bank a gibbet with the body of a Spaniard hanging on it, apparently but lately executed. He considered these as conclusive proofs of the alleged cruelty of Columbus. Many boats came off to the ship, every one being anxious to pay early court to this public censor. Bobadilla remained on board all ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... make haste away, as you are in danger of the gibbet. The duel was fought in the ban, and I am a high court officer, and a Knight of the White Eagle. So lose no time, and if you have not enough money ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... shape of a prison,—this delectable institution being the work and discovery of civilization. Our Irishman might indeed, without a bull, with his back to The Desert, and his face to the civilized communities of the Coast, exclaim, on sight of the first prison and gibbet, "Thank God, I am out of the land of Barbarians, and have reached the land of Civilization!" Of fines, I heard of no other case than that of the Sultan fining two strangers a couple of dollars, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... which formerly occupied the site of William's building which we are now examining, that Becket was hastily buried after his assassination, when his murderers were still threatening to come and drag his body out, "hang it on a gibbet, tear it with horses, cut it into pieces, or throw it in some pond to be devoured by swine or birds of prey." And from that time until the translation of the relics in 1220, this was the most sacred spot in the cathedral, and it was known, down to Reformation times, as "Becket's tomb." ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... in the manner of the English officer vanished, and taking the offered hand of the other, he replied with warmth, "Your generous confidence, Peyton, will not be abused, even though the gibbet on which your Washington hung Andre be ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... the Mexican agents. Bound hand and foot, under an escort of thirty men, the next morning we set off to cross the deserts and prairies of Sonora, to gain the Mexican capital, where we well knew that a gibbet was ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... thousand florins reward to the man who should bring you the head of Dietisalvi, Nerone Nigi, Angelo Antinori, Niccalo Soderini, and twice the money if they were handed over alive; God will forgive you for dooming to the scaffold or the gibbet the son of Papi Orlandi, Francesco di Brisighella, Bernardo Nardi, Jacopo Frescobaldi, Amoretto Baldovinetti, Pietro Balducci, Bernardo di Banding, Francesco Frescobaldi, and more than three hundred others whose names were none the less dear to Florence because ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... chains. This was no part of the sentence, but was performed in accordance with a special order or direction of the court, given, probably, in most cases, verbally to the sheriff. After execution, the body of the felon was taken from the gallows and hung upon a gibbet conveniently near the place where the fact was committed, there to remain, until, from the action of the elements, or the ravages of birds of prey, it disappeared. Of the object of this ghastly feature of capital punishment ...
— The Trial and Execution, for Petit Treason, of Mark and Phillis, Slaves of Capt. John Codman • Abner Cheney Goodell, Jr.
... your father meant to carry the civilization of Massachusetts to the Rio Grande until we had a Democracy in America. I smiled. While Massachusetts was enforcing laws about the dress of the rich and the poor, founding a church with a whipping-post, jail, and gibbet, and limiting the right to vote to a church membership fixed by pew rents, Carolina was the home of freedom where first the equal rights of men were proclaimed. New England people worth less than one thousand dollars were prohibited by law from wearing the garb of a gentleman, ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... observation, loud enough, from the top of the table, 'Hah, Walrave, I see you are making yourself acquainted with the RAVENS in time, that they may not be strange to you at last,'"—when they come to eat you on the gibbet! (not a soft tongue, the Old Dessauer's). "Another day, seeing Walrave seated between two Jesuit Guests, the Prince said: 'Ah, there you are right, Walrave; there you sit safe; the Devil can't get you there!' As the Prince kept continually bantering ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... generals were obliged to give an account of their conduct; and they all were made responsible for the events of the war. Ill success was punished there as a crime against the state; and whenever a general lost a battle, he was almost sure, at his return, of ending his life upon a gibbet. Such was the furious, cruel, and barbarous disposition of the Carthaginians, who were always ready to shed the blood of their citizens as well as of foreigners. The unheard-of tortures which they made Regulus suffer, are a manifest proof of this assertion; and their history will furnish us with ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... innocent, indeed? his wicked, wicked courses—(an old man, too—gray-headed, with no young blood in him to excuse, no inexperience to extenuate), these deserved—did he say hanging? it was a harsher syllable—hell: and the contrite sinner gladly would have welcomed all the terrors of the gibbet, in hope to take full vengeance on himself for his wicked thirst for gold and ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... figure that might have fallen from a gibbet. He listening and hiding here. Barnaby first upon the spot last night. Can she, who has always borne so fair a name, be guilty of such crimes in secret?" said the locksmith, musing. "Heaven forgive me if I am wrong, and send me ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... bore witness. We should have preferred accommodations in any of the ivy-grown, steep-roofed cots about us, or in the old stone inn, with its peaked porch, where honest yokels quaffed nutty ale and a sign-board creaked and groaned from its gibbet across the road. But we had come too late in the painting-season for any other than Hobson's choice: the tidbits of grime and squalor were all taken, and we must e'en content ourselves to be mocked and reviled ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... know the awful gibbet's anguish, Not they who, while sad years go by them, in The sunless cells of lonely prisons languish, Do suffer fullest ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... personal interest. The more perplexed the, state of public and private affairs, the better for them. Therefore, in revolutions, as a body, they remain neuter, unless it is made for their benefit to act. Individually, they are a set of necessary evils; and, for the sake of the bar, the bench, and the gibbet, require to be humoured. But any legislator who attempts to render laws clear, concise, and explanatory, and to divest them of the quibbles whereby these expounders—or confounders—of codes fatten on the credulity of States and the miseries of unfortunate millions, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... this gallant young man! Should you succeed, you must meet him there. Could you, in the presence of Almighty God—He who knows the inmost thoughts—justify your work of to-day? His mandate is not to the gibbet. Eternal Justice dictates there, whose decrees are eternal. Do you think of this? Do you defy it? If not—if you invoke it, do it through your acts toward your fellow-man. Have you to-day done unto this man as you would he should do unto you? I pause for a reply—none. Then shudder and repent, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... incarnation of the people, and of modern democracy itself. The great work of emancipation had to be sealed, therefore, with the blood of the just, even as it was inaugurated with the blood of the just. The tragic history of the abolition of slavery, which opened with the gibbet of John Brown, will close with ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... of Londonderry. This expedient, far from answering the purpose of Rosene, produced quite a contrary effect. The besieged were so exasperated at this act of inhumanity, that they resolved to perish rather than submit to such a barbarian. They erected a gibbet in sight of the enemy, and sent a message to the French general, importing that they would hang all the prisoners they had taken during the siege, unless the protestants whom they had driven under the walls should be immediately ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... savage, must be familiar with arms. He must be accustomed to danger, be cool-blooded, alive to the sentiment of honor, and above all, sensitive to that stern military code which, to the imagination of the soldier, ever holds out to him the provost's gibbet to which he is sure to rise, should he strike one blow too many. Should all these restraints, inward as well as outward, be wanting, the man plunges into insurrection. He is a novice in the acts of violence, which he ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... financial distress of their countrymen, by aiding the repeal of the alien and sedition laws. For a score of years, America had invited to its shores every fugitive from British persecution. But the heroes of 'Ninety-eight, who had escaped the gibbet, and successfully made their way to this country through the cordon of English frigates, were welcomed with laws even more offensive than the coercion acts which they had left behind. The last rebellious uprising to occur in Ireland under the Georges, had sent Thomas Addis ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... virtue, being moved against a soldier of his, for that returning alone from forage he could give him no account where he had left a companion of his, took it for granted that he had killed him, and presently condemned him to death. He was no sooner mounted upon the gibbet, but, behold, his wandering companion arrives, at which all the army were exceedingly glad, and after many embraces of the two comrades, the hangman carried both the one and the other into Piso's presence, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... England is undermining Al-Islam," cried a voice in India. "A base one in the service of some European coalition, who, under the pretext of preaching the spiritualities, is undoing the work of the Revolution. The gibbet is for ordinary traitors; for him ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... men is created. It rises gradually, like one of those mysterious mounds in barbarous countries, to which a stone is added by every passerby; each one brings something at random, and adds it as he passes, without being able himself to see whether he is raising a pedestal or a gibbet. Who will dare look behind him, to see his rash judgments held up ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... God! that ghastly gibbet! How dismal 'tis to see The great tall spectral skeleton, The ladder and the tree! Hark! hark! it is the clash of arms,— The bells begin to toll,— "He is coming! he is coming! God's mercy on his soul!" One last ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... mules and a voiturier named Joseph. Joseph, though he turned out to be an ex-criminal, proved himself the one Frenchman upon whose fidelity and good service Smollett could look back with unfeigned satisfaction. The sight of a skeleton dangling from a gibbet near Valence surprised from this droll knave an ejaculation and a story, from which it appeared only too evident that he had been first the comrade and then the executioner of one of the most notorious brigands of the century. The story as told by Smollett does not wholly ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... least visited. Walls of sharp rock rise up over eight hundred feet high round some of its sunken lakes—one is called the Powder Lake—and the level above this abyss stretches out in moors and desolate downs, peopled with herds of lean sheep, and marked here and there by sepulchral, gibbet-looking signposts, shaped like a rough [Symbol: T] and set in a heap of loose stones. It is a great contrast to turn aside from this landscape and look on the smiling villages and pretty wooded scenery of the valley of the Mosel proper; the long lines of handsome, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... uniform. For the first offence, by the Salic law, there was a fine of fifteen sols; and should a man be taken more than once in fault, or circumstances aggravate the colour of his guilt, he might be whipped, branded, or hanged. There was a hangman over at Melun, and, I doubt not, a fine tall gibbet hard by the town gate, where Jacques might see his fellows dangle against the sky as he ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... butcher—named London swore by God that if he should be arrested and cast into the jail, he would hang or burn all the Negroes in New York, guilty or not guilty. On this same day five Negroes were hanged. One of them was "hung in chains" upon the same gibbet with Hughson. And the Christian historian says "the town was amused" on account of a report that Hughson had turned black and the Negro white! The vulgar and sickening description of the condition of the bodies, in which Mr. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... France, eluding Roberval a year late, and carrying but a few worthless quartz diamonds and a little sham gold. Then Roberval, the Lord of Norembega, reigns alone in his vast and many-titled domain, for another season of snows and famine, freely using the lash and gibbet to keep his penal colonists in subjection; and then, according to some authorities, supported by the absence of Carder's name from the local records of St. Malo for a few months, Cartier was sent out to bring the Lord of ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... that form in order to feed upon the loathsome emanations of peculiarly horrible places, such as would be the site of a gallows. An instance of this kind is furnished by the celebrated "Gyb Ghosts," or ghosts of the gibbet, described in More Glimpses of the World Unseen, p. 109, as being repeatedly seen in the form of herds of mis-shapen swine-like creatures, rushing, rooting and fighting night after night on the site of that foul monument of ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... as he promised, but though his money was taken there was no good result. At length the day arrived when the executions were to take place. A stage was erected with a gibbet on it and huge casks of water. Below, on the solid ground, stakes with chains were driven into the ground; while near the gibbet was a post with a chain in which those who were to be mercifully strangled before being ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... to deter the builders; for it seems as if it must come to an open fight at last to preserve a corner of green country unbedevilled. And here, appropriately enough, there stood in old days a crow-haunted gibbet, with two bodies hanged in chains. I used to be shown, when a child, a flat stone in the roadway to which the gibbet had been fixed. People of a willing fancy were persuaded, and sought to persuade others, that this stone ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... after the Austrians came into the city and a man was hanged the first morning, in spite of the fact that the Austrians had promised safety to the non-combatants. Dr. Edward Ryan, the head of the American Red Cross in Belgrade, protested, and the gibbet was taken down. But my sister says that eighteen more people were hanged in the fortress down by the Save—she hears—where ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... unfortunately discovered by John's brother William, who bore him no good will. William told his father, the earl, who immediately ordered Roy to be executed. The poor wretch was accordingly brought out and hanged on the common gibbet of the castle without a moment being allowed him to ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... murder by way of duel, shall suffer death by hanging; and if he were the challenger, his body, after death, shall be gibbeted.* He who removeth it from the gibbet, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor; and the officer shall see that ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... went heavily up the grandiose stairway as if a gibbet waited at the top. They went into Sir Joseph's room, which adjoined that of his wife. Mr. Verrinder paused on the sill ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... said Jackson of Georgia, "and see the progress we are making toward venality and corruption. We already hear the sounding title of Highness and Most Honorable trumpeted in our ears, which, ten years since, would have exalted a man to a station as high as Haman's gibbet." Page of Virginia was ablaze with indignation. "Good God!" he exclaimed. "What, authorize in a free republic, by law, too, by your first act, the exertion of a dangerous royal prerogative in your Chief Magistrate!" Gerry, in remarks whose oblique criticism upon ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... famous enemy of State and Church and of innumerable notorious and obscure criminals, including the infamous Marquise de Brinvilliers, who was burned alive, and Cartouche, broken on the wheel. A permanent gibbet stood there and a market cross, and there during the English wars the infuriated Parisians tied the hands and feet of hundreds of English prisoners taken at Pontoise and flung them into the Seine. Every St. John's eve—the church and cloister of St. Jean ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... before a cultured audience, but the crowds who came to an Elizabethan play were of a temper to enjoy a Mohawk scalp dance. They were accustomed to violent scenes and sensations; they had witnessed the rack and gibbet in constant operation; they were familiar with the sight of human heads decorating the posts of London Bridge or carried about on the pikes of soldiers. After witnessing such horrors free of cost, they would follow their queen and pay their money to see a ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... town, De Soto passed a high gibbet upon which three malefactors were hung in chains, swaying in the breeze. That revolting spectacle revealed the sad truth that in Peru, as well as elsewhere, man's fallen nature developed itself in crime and woe. The Emperor had also a large standing army, and the ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... Final True Thing I am purposed to say about Christmas. Don't ask me yet what that Thing is. Truth dwells in no man, but is a shy beast you must hunt as you may in the forests that are round about the Walls of Heaven. And I do hereby curse, gibbet, and denounce in execrationem perpetuam atque aeternam the man who hunts in a crafty or calculating way—as, lying low, nosing for scents, squinting for trails, crawling noiselessly till he shall come near to his quarry and ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... few of his friends, did so," replied the young stranger with a smile, "and we admire them very much for so doing, but I am afraid we should hang them, nevertheless, if they were in a position to try the thing over again. The illustration of the gibbet and the statue might have more applications than one, for I sincerely believe, if we could revive historical characters, we should almost in all cases erect a gallows for those to whom ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... understand. Some thought him a negro just from Guinea, who had either fallen overboard, or escaped from a slave-ship. Nothing, however, could ever draw from him any account of his origin. When questioned on the subject, he merely pointed to Gibbet-Island, a small rocky islet, which lies in the open bay, just opposite to Communipaw, as if that were his native place, though every body knew it had never ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... resemblance. Madame Sand's taste and higher art-instincts would have revolted against the practice—now unfortunately no longer confined to inferior writers—of forcing attention to a novel by making it the gibbet of well-known personalities, with little or no disguise; and Chopin himself, morbidly sensitive and fanciful though he was, read her work without perceiving in it any intention there to portray their relations to each other, which, ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... of the truth of the East. There he will feel the whole splendid barbaric story for himself: the flocks of Abraham and Laban: the trek of Jacob's sons to Egypt for corn: the figures of Rebekah at the well, Ruth at the gleaning, and Rispah beneath the gibbet: Sisera bowing in weariness: Saul—great Saul—by the tent-prop with the jewels ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... old Zibet, Toboggans he tried to prohibit. If any one tried To take a sly slide, He ordered him hanged on a gibbet. ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... over the coals, rake over the coals, call to order; take to task, reprove, lecture, bring to book; read a lesson, read a lecture to; rebuke, correct. reprimand, chastise, castigate, lash, blow up, trounce, trim, laver la tete[Fr], overhaul; give it one, give it one finely; gibbet. accuse &c. 938; impeach, denounce; hold up to reprobation, hold up to execration; expose, brand, gibbet, stigmatize; show up, pull up, take up; cry "shame" upon; be outspoken; raise a hue and cry against. execrate &c. 908; exprobate[obs3], speak daggers, vituperate; abuse, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... cover is a full-length figure of Hope, with dark hair, dressed in a red dress with large falling collar, having a blue flower at the point. In her left hand she holds an anchor. In the distant background is a cottage and a gibbet on a hill, the sun with rays just appearing under a cloud. On the hilly foreground is a red lily, and further afield a caterpillar and a strawberry plant. On the lower cover is a full-length figure ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... taken!" And so running disorderly and fast we made for the Port, while English men-at-arms might be plainly seen and heard, gazing, waving their hands, and shouting from the battlements of the two gate-towers. Down the road we ran, past certain small houses of peasants, and past a gibbet with a marauder hanging from it, just over ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... however improbable it might be, to substantiate the offence, I should hardly have regarded the Judge with less reverence because he pronounced sentence of death upon the unhappy victims of superstition, and sent them to the stake, or the gibbet. But they resolutely persisted in asserting their innocence, and there was not only no evidence against them which ought to have weighed in the mind of any reasonable man who believed in witchcraft, but during the ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... he will suffer the penalty for his imposture." At the siege of the castle of Lavaur, in 1211, Amaury, Lord of Montr6al, and eighty knights, had been made prisoners: and "the noble Count Simon," says Peter of Vaulx- Cernay, decided to hang them all on one gibbet; but when Amaury, the most distinguished amongst them, had been hanged, the gallows-poles, which, from too great haste, had not been firmly fixed in the ground, having come down, the count, perceiving ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Fire, and the rest to be pierced with Lances, and run through with the point of the Sword, by a multitude of Men: And Anacaona her self who (as we said before,) sway'd the Imperial Scepter, to her greater honor was hanged on a Gibbet. And if it fell out that any person instigated by Compassion or Covetousness, did entertain any Indian Boys and mount them on Horses, to prevent their Murder, another was appointed to follow them, who ran them through the back or in the hinder parts, and if they chanced to escape Death, and fall ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... alcayd[^e] of theft. As the property was found in his possession, the alcayd[^e] ordered him to be hung. His parents went on their way to Compostella, and returned after eight days, but what was their amazement to find their son alive on the gibbet, and uninjured. They went instantly to tell the alcayd[^e]; but the magistrate replied, "Woman, you are mad! I would just as soon believe these pullets, which I am about to eat, are alive, as that a man who has been gibbeted ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... is hard, as give, except in giant, gigantick, gibbet, gibe, giblets, Giles, gill, gilliflower, gin, ginger, gingle, to which may be added Egypt ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... blazing temper," remarked Hamilton. "Lee and Ramsay and Stewart were like to have died of fright. I wish to God he'd strung the first to a gibbet!" ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... pleasure know Extorted from his fellow creature's woe. Here, while the courtier glitters in brocade, 315 There the pale artist plies the sickly trade; Here, while the proud their long-drawn pomps display, There the black gibbet glooms beside the way. The dome where Pleasure holds her midnight reign Here, richly deck'd, admits the gorgeous train; 320 Tumultuous grandeur crowds the blazing square, The rattling chariots clash, the torches glare. Sure scenes like these no troubles e'er annoy! Sure ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... this and that it was agreeable to the girl also, she said in herself, 'Why do I weary myself in vain? These two love and know each other and both are friends of my husband. Their desire is an honourable one and meseemeth it is pleasing to God, since the one of them hath scaped the gibbet and the other the lance-thrust and both the wild beasts of the wood; wherefore be it as they will.' Then, turning to the lovers, she said to them, 'If you have it still at heart to be man and wife, it is my pleasure also; be ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... comparative harmlessness, and from its being not so much a madness as a folly of the people. Unlike other notions that sprang from the belief in witchcraft, and which we have already dwelt upon at sufficient length, it has sent no wretches to the stake or the gibbet, and but a ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... the loud cannon plane Death's lightning-riven lane, Levelling that unskill'd valour, rude, unled: —Yet happier in their fate Than whom the war-fiends wait To rend them limb from limb, the gibbet-withering dead! ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... white handkerchief. Immediately the old Captain was seized by Cossacks and dragged to the gibbet. Astride the cross-beam of the gallows, sat the mutilated Bashkirs who we had questioned; he held a rope in his hand, and I saw, an instant after, poor Ivan Mironoff suspended in the air. Then Ignatius was brought up ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... evening, I had the honour of receiving, at Haworth Parsonage, a distinguished guest, none other than W. M. Thackeray, Esq. Mindful of the rites of hospitality, I hung him up in state this morning. He looks superb in his beautiful, tasteful gilded gibbet. For companion he has the Duke of Wellington, (do you remember giving me that picture?) and for contrast and foil Richmond's portrait of an unworthy individual, who, in such society, must be name-less. Thackeray looks away from the latter character with a grand scorn, edifying ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... was knotted, which made it the easier to descend; but so furious was Dick's hurry, and so small his experience of such gymnastics, that he span round and round in mid-air like a criminal upon a gibbet, and now beat his head, and now bruised his hands, against the rugged stonework of the wall. The air roared in his ears; he saw the stars overhead, and the reflected stars below him in the moat, whirling like dead leaves before the tempest. And then he lost hold and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is drawn up and discovers a gibbet and Pulcinello standing on a ladder affixed to it with a rope round his neck. The showman with the utmost gravity and assumed melancholy informs the audience that a most serious calamity is about to happen to Naples: that Signor Pulcinello is condemned to be ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... distance above the fort or castle. The ground on which it stood was raised by several steps above the road. Within the walls were to be seen (and seen with horror) six crosses for breaking criminals, a large gibbet, a spiked pole for impalements, wheels, etc., etc. together with a slight wooden building, erected for the reception of the ministers of justice upon execution-days. Over the entrance was a figure of justice, with the usual emblems of ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... miserably lost it, and involved our souls into an eternal death. Life is precious in itself, but much more precious to one condemned to die,—to be caught out of the paws of the lion,—to be brought back from the gibbet. O how will that commend the favour of a little more time in the world! But then if we knew what an eternal misery we are involved into, and stand under a sentence binding us over to such an inconceivable and insupportable ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... the pilot "There is reason in his doubts, and they shall be appeased. I like the proud and fearless eye of the young man, and while he dreads a gibbet from my hands, I will show him how to repose a noble confidence. Read this, sir, and tell me ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... its naked nature is an effort to organize insurrection against the laws of the United States; to interpose the arm of state sovereignty between rebellion and the halter, and to rescue the traitor from the gibbet. Although conducted under the auspices of state sovereignty, it would not the less be levying war against the Union; but, as a state cannot be punished for treason, nullification cases herself in the complete ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... lie in new-made graves, bloody corpses of young men, The rope of the gibbet hangs heavily, the bullets of princes are flying, the creatures of power laugh aloud, And all these things bear fruits, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... of the worth and right of the individual man. Lesser examples of this are seen in his grim jest at Westminster Hall—"What use of so many lawyers? I have but two lawyers in Russia, and one of those I mean to hang as soon as I return;" or when at Berlin, having been shown a new gibbet, he ordered one of his servants to be hanged in order to test it; or in his review of parade fights, when he ordered his men to use ball, and to take the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... gibbet, How dismal 't is to see, The great spectral skeleton— The ladder and the tree. Hark! hark! the clash of arms The bells begin to toll,— He is coming! He is coming! God have mercy on his soul! One last long peal of thunder,— The clouds are cleared away And the glorious sun ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... chimes of the bell drew one towards them. . . . I was already beginning to lose patience and grow anxious, but behold at last, staring into the dark distance, I saw the outline of something very much like a gibbet. It was the long-expected ferry. It moved towards us with such deliberation that if it had not been that its lines grew gradually more definite, one might have supposed that it was standing still or ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... merely to resign and quit. This shall not be a case that goes by default because no one appears against it. God will arraign it, handcuff it, try it, bring against it the verdict of all the good, and then gibbet it so high up that if one half of the gibbet stood on Mount Washington and the other on the Himalaya, it would not be ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... by a chain fastened to his leg, leaps on the breech of one of the Bellerophon's guns, spy-glass in hand. "By gar, mon Empereur," says Count Bertrand, "dey have erect von prospect for you." The "prospect" is far from encouraging—a fort with the English flag flying from the central tower, and a gibbet erected in front of it. No wonder that the emperor expresses himself dissatisfied with a "prospect" of so lugubrious a character. An English sailor seated on a neighbouring gun, delivers the sentiments of the day after the ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... from our best plays. We are resolved to convert the great hall into a theatre, and get up the Beaux Stratagem without delay — I think I shall make no contemptible figure in the character of Scrub; and Lismahago will be very great in Captain Gibbet. Wilson undertakes to entertain the country people with Harlequin Skeleton, for which he has got a jacket ready ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... in single combat; and after he was overcome, the king gave orders to put out his eyes, and afterwards to emasculate him; and his steward, William by name, who was the son of his stepmother, the king commanded to be hanged on a gibbet. Then was also Eoda, Earl of Champagne, the king's son-in-law, and many others, deprived of their lands; whilst some were led to London, and there killed. This year also, at Easter, there was a very great stir through all this nation and many others, on account of Urban, who was declared Pope, ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... murmur, and at nightfall left the cottage in Danny's company. Two hours afterwards Hardress himself arrived in a fit of compunction. On learning that they had departed, he swore to himself that if this his servant exceeded his views, he would tear his flesh from his bones, and gibbet him as a miscreant and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... necessary to remind him that we were not in the England of fifty years ago, and that duelling was abolished, and that his traducer would not only refuse to fight, but denounce his challenger to the police and gibbet him in his paper. I pointed out, on the other hand, that the article was clearly libellous, and recommended Mr. Fortescue either to obtain a criminal information against the proprietor of the paper, or sue him ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... Junta, when he attempted to maintain order amongst the insurgents he was killed in the street. Valladolid obliged the Captain- General, Don Gregorio de la Cuesta, to take a part in the rising of the populace. At the first sign of resistance shown by the old soldier, they erected a gibbet under his windows. Burgos, occupied by Marshal Bessieres, remained quiet, but Barcelona attempted an insurrection. The Catalans were armed to the teeth, and, on General Duhesme threatening to set fire to the town, the more violent of them escaped to places which were less threatened. ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... gibbet's self perhaps is laid, Some heart once pregnant with infernal fire, Hands that the sword of Nero might have swayed, And midst the carnage tuned the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... of the river I could faintly make out the only two black things in all the prospect that seemed to be standing upright; one of these was the beacon by which the sailors steered,—like an unhooped cask upon a pole,—an ugly thing when you were near it; the other, a gibbet, with some chains hanging to it which had once held a pirate. The man was limping on towards this latter, as if he were the pirate come to life, and come down, and going back to hook himself up again. It gave me a terrible turn when I thought so; and as I saw the cattle lifting ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... when the Liberator left the city. That night the bleaching skeleton of the venerable patriot Hermano was taken down from the gibbet where it had hung so long, by hands that left the revolutionary banner waving proudly in its place. This was an event to startle the viceroy. It was followed by other events. In a few days more and the sounds of insurrection were heard throughout ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... shocks and disgusts. He seems to say, "I am a villain. I know that I am so, and I am proud of being so. To obtain the rank I possess I have respected no human laws, and I bid defiance to all Divine vengeance. I might be murdered or hanged, but it is impossible to degrade me. On a gibbet or in the palace of a Prince, seized by the executioner or dining with Sovereigns, I am, I will, and I must, always remain the same. Infamy cannot debase me, nor is it in the power of grandeur to exalt me." General, Ambassador, Field-marshal, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... me see, what is the best road to show you? Aye, which? Ah! there's the road of the gibbet and the rope. ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... into the hands of his enemies. This venerable noble, who had nearly reached his ninetieth year, was instantly, without trial, or witness, or accusation, or answer, condemned to death by the rebellious barons; he was hanged on a gibbet; his body was cut to pieces and thrown to the dogs; and his head was sent to Winchester, the place whence he derived his title, and was there set on a pole, and exposed to the insults ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various
... where the case proveth capital. And yet the late severity in France was more, where by a kind of martial law, established by ordinance of the King and Parliament, the party that had slain another was presently had to the gibbet, insomuch as gentlemen of great quality were hanged, their wounds bleeding, lest a natural death should prevent the example of justice. But, my lords, the course which we shall take is of far greater lenity, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... all we do, Will haunt us fools, and other vices too, Why should not reason use her own just sense, And square her punishments to each offence? Suppose a slave, as he removes the dish, Licks the warm gravy or remains of fish, Should his vexed master gibbet the poor lad, He'd be a second Labeo, STARING mad. Now take another instance, and remark A case of madness, grosser and more stark. A friend has crossed you:—'tis a slight affair; Not to forgive it writes you down ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... oh, shame to say! They were seized from behind, their arms bound behind their backs, and, in spite of their protests, led out on the watch tower, where was a permanent gibbet, and, in sight of all their comrades, ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... more of the truth of the East. There he will feel the whole splendid barbaric story for himself: the flocks of Abraham and Laban; the trek of Jacob's sons to Egypt for corn; the figures of Rebekah at the well, Ruth at the gleaning, and Rizpah beneath the gibbet; Sisera bowing in weariness; Saul—great Saul—by the tent-prop with the jewels in ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... thinkest thou I'll endanger my soul gratis? At a word, hang no more about 15 me, I am no gibbet for you. Go. A short knife and a throng!—To your manor of Pickt-hatch! Go. You'll not bear a letter for me, you rogue! you stand upon your honour! Why, thou unconfinable baseness, it is as much as I can do to keep the terms of my honour precise: I, I, I 20 myself sometimes, leaving the ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... oblivion the martyrs of independence, to throw around the mighty names that flash upon us from the squalor of the Chronicles of Newgate the radiance of a storied imagination, to clothe the gibbet and the hulks 'in golden exhalations of the dawn,' and secure for the boozing-ken and the gin-palace that hold upon the general sympathies which has too long been monopolised by the cottage and the drawing-room, has been the aim and the achievement of many recent authors of distinction. ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... of St. Mary le Bow, where he defended himself by force of arms. He was at last forced from his retreat, condemned, and executed, amidst the regrets of the populace, who were so devoted to his memory, that they stole his gibbet, paid the same veneration to it as to the cross, and were equally zealous in propagating and attesting reports of the miracles wrought by it [p]. But though the sectaries of this superstition were punished by the justiciary [q], it received ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... ready lash to the backs of the hardened criminals aloft; and thus, the hour's exhibition ended, and the "king's justice" satisfied, away would the criminals be led, some on a hurdle to Montfaucon, and there hung on its ample gibbet, amid the rattling bones of other wretches; some would be hurried back to the Chastelet, or other prisons; and others would be sent off to work, chained to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... the investigation of this cause, has ever once been seriously attempted. Laws of the most sanguinary and unconstitutional nature have been enacted; the country has been disgraced and exasperated by frequent and bloody executions; and the gibbet, that perpetual resource of weak and cruel legislators, has groaned under the multitude of starving criminals; yet, while the cause is suffered to exist, the effects will ever follow. The amputation of limbs will never eradicate ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... and violent will surely be allowed the most justifiable, as the most effectual. Imprisonments, fines, confiscations, whippings, serve only to irritate the sects, without disabling them from resistance: but the stake, the wheel, and the gibbet, must soon terminate in the extirpation or banishment of all the heretics inclined to give disturbance, and in the entire silence ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... unmanned him. And he saw besides, as he drew near, that their efforts to put out the fire had been unsuccessful; on the contrary, it had broken into a blaze, and a changeful light played in the chinks of door and window, and revived his terror for the authorities and Paris gibbet. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... authority to declare herself paramount not only in political but also in religious matters? And, because she was called queen, can it be considered treason for an Irishman to believe in the spiritual supremacy of the Pope? Yet, unless we look upon as martyrs those who died on the rack and the gibbet in Ireland during her reign, because they refused to admit in a woman the title of Vicar of Christ, to such decision ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... is the remedy? To take that tailor by the throat, and gibbet him in The New York Tribune? Not at all; it does the women no good, and he does not deserve it. I will tell you what is to be done. Behind the door at which those women stand asking for work, on one side stands an orthodox ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... could express, and she believed also that the joy which she took in it was but the prelude to a much greater glory, for her god so held her heart that no other desire could enter in. Thus the witches often went to the gibbet and the stake, glorifying their god and committing their souls into his keeping, with a firm belief that death was but the entrance to an eternal life in which they would never be parted from him. Fanatics and visionaries as many of them were, they ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... Andrew, as I writ, was the Mortimer hanged, without defence by him made (he had allowed none to Sir Hugh Le Despenser and my Lord of Kent): and four days hung his body in irons on the gibbet, as Sir Hugh's the father had done. Verily, as he had done, so did God apay him, which is just Judge over ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... Florence where in happier days he had held the multitude spell-bound by his burning eloquence. There sentence was passed upon him. Stripped of his black Dominican robe and long white tunic, he was bound to a gibbet, strangled by a halter, and his dead body consumed by fire, his ashes being thrown into the river Arno. Such was the miserable end of the great Florentine preacher, whose strange and complex character has been so often discussed, ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... Bohemians. For Ferdinand, not content to scotch the snake, never rested till it had ceased to be. The Carolinum, with all its endowments, privileges, and libraries, was handed over to its rival. Protestantism was declared to be extinct; and the gibbet, and the stake, and confiscations, and banishments, rendered the decree, in due time, more than an idle boast. There is, probably, no instance on record of an extirpation of a religious creed more absolute than that which the Jesuits effected of Protestantism in Bohemia. ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... what of the night? - Cannon and scaffold and sword, Horror of gibbet and cord, Mowed us as sheaves for the grave, Mowed us down for the right. We do not grudge or repent. Freely to freedom we gave Pledges, till life ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... health of his Most Sacred Majesty, and the damnation of Red-nosed Noll. That tenderness to the fallen which has, through many generation% been a marked feature of the national character, was for a time hardly discernible. All London crowded to shout and laugh round the gibbet where hung the rotten remains of a prince who had made England the dread of the world, who had been the chief founder of her maritime greatness, and of her colonial empire, who had conquered Scotland and Ireland, who had humbled Holland and Spain, the terror of whose name ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... road to Fenworth branches off, and the handpost stands. A gibbet once stood there not onconnected with our ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... true-hearted person will accuse me of a desire to cast reproach upon marriage as an ordinance. Recognizing the beauty and the sanctity of marriage, I have tried to show that true marriage is a higher thing than a ceremony, and that people who use the gibbet and stake for offenders against its forms are too often those who see no offense in the ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... personages, there are not a few humbler individuals whose history is faithfully told (if you choose to credit it) by the painted inscriptions below. There is even a convict, who, at the moment of being hanged, implored succour of the all-powerful Madonna, whereupon the beam of the gibbet instantly broke, and the worthy individual was restored to society—a very doubtful benefit after all. On Colonel Bariola and the Duke of Sant' Arpino arriving at this place, which is only five miles distant from Mantua, their carriage was naturally stopped by the commissaire of the Austrian ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... had hanged was born at the same time as Sixtus V., who from a pig-herd became Pope, the astrologers would say one had made a mistake of a few seconds, and that it is impossible, according to the rules, for the same star to give the triple crown and the gibbet. It is then only because a host of experiences belied the predictions, that men perceived at last that the art was illusory; but before being undeceived, they ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... 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 ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... earth hear one cry sent Even from the hideous gibbet height, 'Praise to the Lord Omnipotent, The vultures have a ...
— The Wild Knight and Other Poems • Gilbert Chesterton
... smiling; "but I hate the judgment that, like the flesh-fly, skims over whatever is sound, to detect and settle upon some spot which is tainted. But to the purpose. If I conduct thee or send thee a prisoner to St. Mary's, thou art to-night a tenant of the dungeon, to-morrow a burden to the gibbet-tree. If I were to let thee go hence at large, I were thereby wronging the Holy Church, and breaking mine own solemn vow. Other resolutions may be adopted in the capital, or better times may speedily ensue. Wilt thou remain a true prisoner upon thy parole, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... mutinied against him, and he was delivered into the hands of his enemies. This venerable noble, who had nearly reached his ninetieth year, was instantly without trial, or witness, or accusation, or answer, condemned to death by the rebellious barons: he was hanged on a gibbet; his body was cut in pieces, and thrown to the dogs;[****] and his head was sent to Winchester, the place whose title he bore, and was there set on a pole and exposed to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... saved by the Greeks, and restored, after the decease of his brother Mahomet, to liberty and empire. A degenerate mind seemed to argue his spurious birth; and if, on the throne of Adrianople, he was adored as the Ottoman sultan, his flight, his fetters, and an ignominious gibbet, delivered the impostor to popular contempt. A similar character and claim was asserted by several rival pretenders: thirty persons are said to have suffered under the name of Mustapha; and these frequent executions may perhaps insinuate, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... Mr. James; he is a sweet gentleman.' Again, on the following morning, she fell at his feet, beseeching his royal clemency, when he spurned her from him, saying, 'John James, that rogue, he shall be hanged; yea, he shall be hanged.' And, in the presence of his weeping friends, he ascended from the gibbet to the mansions of the blessed. His real crime was, that he continued to preach after having been warned not to do so by John Robinson, lieutenant of the Tower, properly called, by Mr. Crosby,[233] a devouring wolf, upon whose head the blood ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of cloth; thou shalt cut me a coat to cover the bare back, thou whose trade it is. 'Impossible?' Hapless Fraction, dost thou discern Fate there, half unveiling herself in the gloom of the future, with her gibbet-cords, her steel-whips, and very authentic Tailor's Hell; waiting to see whether it is 'possible'? Out with thy scissors, and cut that cloth or thy ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... magistrates at the old Public Office in Dale End; committed; and in due course tried and sentenced at Warwick to be hanged and gibbeted on Washwood Heath, near the scene of the murder. The sentence was carried out April 2, 1781, the bodies hanging on the gibbet in chains a short time, until they were surreptitiously removed by some humanitarian friends who did not approve of the exhibition. What became of the bodies was not known until the morning of Thursday, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... enough to fear them," replied Gore vindictively; "not one politician living has the brains or the art to defend his own cause. The ocean of history is foul with the carcases of such statesmen, dead and forgotten except when some historian fishes one of them up to gibbet it." ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... the end," said Sir Richard feebly. "God has been good to me beyond my deserts, and this is a crowning mercy. Consider, Justin, it might have been the gibbet and a crowd—instead of this snug bed, and you and Bentley here—just two ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... continues, "but with small success, till in a lucky moment I bethought myself of Ambrose Gwinett, . . . the man who, after having been hanged and gibbeted for murdering a traveller with whom he had shared a double-bedded room at a seaside inn, revived in the night, escaped from the gibbet-irons, went to sea as a common sailor, and afterwards met on a British man-of-war the very man he had been hanged for murdering. The truth was that Gwinett's supposed victim, having been attacked on the night in question by a violent bleeding of the nose, had risen ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... ob dese yere flibberty-gibbet niggers. I don' believe in hants an' ghostes, but they's some things which I does think is signs of death. Ef somebody brings a axe in de house hits a sho sign. Yer better watch when a cow lows arter dark, or a dog barks at de moon in front uv ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... Galen Galeren Galyene Game at Chesse Ganazath, John of Gaunt Gauchay, H. de Gauchy, H. de Gazee, Angelin Genoa Geometry Gereon, St. Gesta Romanorum Ghent, White-friars Gibbet Gifts Gildo Gilles de Rome. See Colonna. Gluttony Godaches Godebert Golden Legend Goldsmiths Good old times Goribert Goribald Government of wise men Graesse, J.G.T. Grammarians Gregory Nazianzen Grenville ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... be hanged with his face toward the people, but a female with her face toward the gibbet. So says Rabbi Eliezer; but the sages say the man only is hanged, not the woman. Rabbi Eliezer retorted, "Did not Simeon the son of Shetach hang women in Askelon?" To this they replied, "He indeed caused eighty women to be hanged, though two criminals ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... round, like open presses, That shaw'd the Dead in their last dresses; And (by some devilish cantraip sleight) Each in its cauld hand held a light. By which heroic Tam was able To note upon the haly table, A murderer's banes, in gibbet-airns; Twa span-lang, wee, unchristened bairns; A thief, new-cutted frae a rape, Wi' his last gasp his gabudid gape; Five tomahawks, wi' blude red-rusted: Five scimitars, wi' murder crusted; A garter which a ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... beheld his first view end In a favourite prospects church that was ruin'd- But alas! what a sight did the next cut exhibit! At the end of the walk hung a rogue on a gibbet! He beheld it and wept, for it caused him to muse on Full many a Campbell that died with his shoes on. All amazed and aghast at the ominous scene, He order'd it quick to be closed up again With a clump of Scotch firs that served for ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... place I ever saw. Is that a swing in front of that cottage? No, it's a gibbet. Why, they've all got 'em! I suppose they're for the summer tenants at the close of the season. What a rush there would be for them if the boat should happen to go off and leave ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... attended by the triumphant lords, who despised his milder virtues, his preferences and tastes, not one of whom could manage either pencil or lute, who cared for none of these things—while his strained eyes could still see nothing but the vision against the daylight, the impromptu gibbet of the high-arched bridge over the Border stream, where his familiar friends had been strung up with every sign of infamy. He had to contain within himself the rage, the shame, the grief and loneliness of his ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... round, like open presses; That shaw'd the dead in their last dresses; And by some devilish cantrip slight Each in its cauld hand held a light— By which heroic Tam was able To note upon the haly table, A murderer's banes in gibbet airns; Twa span-lang, wee, unchristen'd bairns; A thief, new-cutted frae a rape, Wi' his last gasp his gab did gape; Five tomahawks, wi' bluid red-rusted; Five scimitars, wi' murder crusted; A garter, which a babe had strangled; A knife, a father's throat had mangled, Whom ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... from my comrade; and, through fear Dismounting, down the rough and stony moor I led my horse, and, stumbling on, at length Came to a bottom, where in former times 235 A murderer had been hung in iron chains. The gibbet-mast had mouldered down, the bones And iron case were gone; but on the turf, Hard by, soon after that fell deed was wrought, Some unknown hand had carved the murderer's name. 240 The monumental letters were inscribed In times long past; but still, from year to year, By superstition of the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... like open presses, That shaw'd the dead in their last dresses; And, by some devilish cantrip slight, Each in its cauld hand held a light— By which heroic Tam was able To note upon the haly table, A murderer's banes in gibbet-airns; Twa span-lang, wee, unchristen'd bairns; A thief, new cutted frae a rape, Wi' his last gasp his gab did gape; Five tomahawks, wi' bluid red rusted; Five scimitars, wi' murder crusted; A garter, which a babe had strangled; A knife, a father's throat had mangled, ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... speech together with even more of his contempt for the bulk of his fellow-men. "No, Mrs. Cranston," said he, "don't wait a day for her. Start just as soon as you are ready, and don't give a thought to this little flibberty gibbet." And so the Cranstons, with Miss Loomis, bade farewell to Scott, and one radiant winter morning drove buoyantly away, almost all of the officers and ladies being out to wave them adieu. Hastings, with a brace of troopers, trotted alongside as they crossed the Platte and reported the ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... Abbey stands, on the Common hard by, His gibbet is now to be seen; His irons you still from the road may espy; The traveller beholds them, and thinks with a sigh Of poor Mary, ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... quiet compulsion and conciliation to which Elizabeth had trusted for the religious reunion of her subjects was foiled; and the English Catholics, fined, imprisoned at every crisis of national danger, and deprived of their teachers by the prison and the gibbet, were severed more hopelessly than ever from the national Church. A fresh impulse was thus given to the growing current of opinion which was to bring England at last to recognize the right of every man to freedom both of conscience and of worship. "In Henry's days, the father of this Elizabeth," ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... urbanity and candor merely to conceal an incapable and huckstering soul, he only awakens for himself the irrevocable contempt of the very mind that he would gall or subdue; since that mind, under such circumstances, invariably rises above its detractor, and leaves him exposed on the same creaking gibbet that he has prepared for the object ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... battlemented tower. And must he fly—the grand vizier! the pasha of three tails! O'er the horizon's bounding hills, where distant vision fails, All stealthily, with eyes on earth, and shrinking from the sight, As a nocturnal robber holds his dark and breathless flight, And thinks he sees the gibbet spread its arms in solemn wrath, In every tree that dimly throws its shadow on ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... I was a Highland outlaw of the Rebellion. Always I fought for a lost cause, and always my sympathies were with the rebel. I feasted with Robin Hood on the King's venison; I fared forth with Dick Turpin on the gibbet-haunted heath; I followed Morgan, the Buccaneer, into strange and exotic lands of trial and treasure. It was a wonderful gift of visioning that was mine in those days. It was the bird-like flight of the pure child-mind to whom the unreal is ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... his side offering a glass of liquor on a tray. The scene well depicts the low estate to which White's had fallen. It recalls a bit of dialogue from Farquhar's Beaux' Stratagem (act III, scene 2), where Aimwell says to Gibbet, who is a highwayman: "Pray, sir, ha'nt I seen your face at Will's Coffee House?" "Yes sir, and at White's, too," answers ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... masterly excellence. A portfolio was filled with sketches of equal skill,—but these last were mostly subjects that appalled the eye and revolted the taste: they displayed the human figure in every variety of suffering,—the rack, the wheel, the gibbet; all that cruelty has invented to sharpen the pangs of death seemed yet more dreadful from the passionate gusto and earnest force of the designer. And some of the countenances of those thus delineated were sufficiently removed from the ideal to show that they were portraits; in a large, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... pronounc'd with Noise, When constru'd, but for a plain Yeoman go, And a good sober Two-pence, and well so. Hence then,'you Proud Imposters, get you gone, You Picts in Gentry and Devotion, You Scandal to the Stock of Verse, a Race Able to bring the Gibbet in Disgrace. Hyperbolus by suffering did traduce The Ostracism, and sham'd it out of Use. The Indian that Heaven did forswear Because he heard some Spaniards were there. Had he but known what Scots in Hell ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... pipe from his mouth on seeing the coach, stood up, and cut some solemn capers high on his beam, and shook a new rope in the air, crying with a voice high and distant as the caw of a raven hovering over a gibbet, "A robe ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... with him! To the castle! He will lodge to-night in the deepest dungeon of yon fortification," pointing to the Curfew Tower above them, "there to await the king's judgment; and to-morrow night it will be well for him if he is not swinging from the gibbet near the bridge. Bring ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... take the hundred reals, and, some time to-morrow, be sure you get out of this island, nor set foot in it again these ten years, unless you would finish your banishment in the next life: for if I find you here, I will make you swing on a gibbet—at least the hangman shall do it for me: so let no man reply, or ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... would do any good to the rising generation, I would cheerfully give my consent to the disinterment of the bones of any genteel highwayman (the more genteel, the more cheerfully), and to their exposure, piecemeal, on any sign-post, gate, or gibbet, that might be deemed a good elevation for the purpose. My reason is as well convinced that these gentry were as utterly worthless and debauched villains, as it is that the laws and jails hardened them in their evil courses, or that their wonderful escapes were effected by the ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens |
