Note 37 — Chapter XIII · BENABU. 1857.

Readers may be shocked that such barbarities are practised by the Moors; but they are a thousand years behind the civilised world, and surprise can hardly be felt when we remember that a sentence of mutilation was carried out in England little more than 300 years ago. Camden’s Annals for the year 1581 contain an account of the mutilation of one Stubbs, for publishing an attack upon Queen Elizabeth’s proposed marriage with the Duke of Alençon. The historian was an eyewitness of the scene, which has been utilised by Sir Walter Scott in the Fortunes of Nigel, chap. xiii.