Note 52 — Chapter X
Reading edition
Among these robberies there was, so far as we are aware, only one which possessed any feature of interest; and in this case the interest was of a psychological nature. Gardner, a postman, was stopped by three highwaymen on Winchmore Hill, and, on his refusing to give up his letters, they murdered him. Atrocities of this kind had been frequent, and executions had failed to check them. But the resources of civilisation were not exhausted. Lord Lovell—or the Earl of Leicester, as he had now become—waited upon the King and procured His Majesty's assent that, after execution, the highwaymen's bodies should be hung in chains. To be hanged was one thing; after hanging, to have one's body suspended in chains was another. This was an indignity to which no respectable criminal should be called upon to submit. Such would seem to be the idea conveyed in the following letter which Leicester received:—
To the Right Hon. the Earl of Leicester, at Holkham, Norfolk.
Thursday, Oct. 1753.
My Lord—I find that it was by your orders that Mr. Stockdale was hung in chains. Now, if you don't order him to be taken down, I will set fire to your house and blow your brains out the first opportunity.
Stockdale was clerk to a proctor in Doctors Commons.