-"Chron. of Edward I. and Edward II.,"
vol. i. p.--102. Ed. Stubbs. Rolls Series.] It tended, too, to make
men absolutely reckless of consequences when once their passions were
roused. "As well be hung for a sheep as a lamb" was a saying that had
a grim truth in it. When a violent ruffian knew that if he robbed his
host in the night he would be sure to be hung for it, and if he
killed him he could be no more than hung, he had nothing to gain by
letting him live, and nothing to lose if he cut his throat. Where
another knew that by tampering with the coin of the realm he was sure
to go to the gallows for it, he might as well make a good fight
before he was taken, and murder any one who stood in the way of his
escape. Hanging went on at a pace which we cannot conceive, for in
those days the criminal law of the land was not, as it is now, a
strangely devised machinery for protecting the wrongdoer, but it was
an awful and tremendous power for slaying all who were dangerous to
the persons or the property of the community.
The law of the Church, on the other hand, was much more lenient. To
hurry a man to death with his sins and crimes fresh upon him, to
slaughter men wholesale for acts that could not be regarded as
enormously wicked, shocked those who had learnt that the Gospel
taught such virtues as mercy and longsuffering, and gave men hopes of
forgiveness on repentance.
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