Note 38 — Chapter I

The lords pronounced a singular sentence, that she should be burned or beheaded at the king's pleasure. Burnet says the judges complained of this as unprecedented. Perhaps in strictness the king's right to alter a sentence is questionable, or rather would be so, if a few precedents were out of the way. In high treason committed by a man, the beheading was part of the sentence, and the king only remitted the more cruel preliminaries. Women, till 1791, were condemned to be burned. But the two queens of Henry, the Countess of Salisbury, Lady Rochford, Lady Jane Grey, and, in later times, Mrs. Lisle, were beheaded. Poor Mrs. Gaunt was not thought noble enough to be rescued from the fire. In felony, where beheading is no part of the sentence, it has been substituted by the king's warrant in the cases of the Duke of Somerset and Lord Audley. I know not why the latter obtained this favour; for it had been refused to Lord Stourton, hanged for murder under Mary, as it was afterwards to Earl Ferrers.