"Furca et Fossa:" A Review of Certain Modes of Capital Punishment in the Middle Ages V. 1

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1 John Yonge Akerman, "Furca et Fossa:" A Review of Certain Modes of Capital Punishment in the Middle Ages 54 (1860)

handle is hein.death/frefo0001 and id is 1 raw text is: IV.- Furca et Fossa: A Review of certain modes of Capital Punishment in
the liddle Ages. By JOHN YONGE AKERMAN, Secretary.
Read 3 June, 1858.
IN an age when the voice of philanthropy is raised against the extreme penalty
of the law, an inquiry into the origin and practice of certain modes of capital
punishment, now obsolete, but long known to our ancestors, may not be deemed
unworthy the attention of this Society.
Among the manorial rights enumerated in some of our earlier charters, are
those of Furca and Fossa, or Gallows and Pit, two modes of capital punishment,
of which the former continues to this day, while the latter appears to have been
abolished, or to have fallen into disuse, several centuries ago.
Modern refinement, which regards with disgust the coarseness and brutality of
past ages, will scarcely allow that our ancestors were actuated by feelings of delicacy
in condemning women to be drowned instead of being hung as men ; but such
appears to have been the fact. It is probably to be ascribed to that reverence for
the female sex which was a characteristic of the Teutonic race. Though the
criminal had transgressed the law, and brought condign punishment upon herself,
her execution was conducted in a manner the least offensive to feminine delicacy.
I am, however, at a loss for authorities for the period when the permanent change
to hanging took place, although the chroniclers afford us a few incidents which
leave room for the inference that its final adoption may be referred to the middle
of the fifteenth century.a
In the 46th year of Henry III. we find that Ivetta de Balsham received a
pardon because, having been hung for a certain felony from hora nona on Monday
till sunrise on Tuesday, she yet lived.' Ducange cites an instance of the hanging
of a woman at Limoges in the year 1414. The criminal is sentenced a estre
et morir pendue.c In the reign of Charles the Seventh a woman was hung
a May it be referred to the growing power of the Turks in Europe, and the desire to abolish in Christendom
a mode of execution practised even to this day by that people?
b Cal. Rot. Pat. p. 34 b. ° Gloss. v. FossA.