Note 32 — HISTORY
Reading edition
“The Christian Prudence of this Customary Law” is defended in a little work, “Hallifax and its Gibbet-Law Placed in a True Light,” 1708, containing an illustration copied in Gough’s edition of Camden’s “Britannia,” and in the enlarged “Magna Britannia,” ed. 1731, vi. 384. In “Hallifax and its Gibbet-Law” it is stated, with every appearance of probability, that the custom goes back to a date before the Norman Conquest. It appears that the last persons executed were Abraham Wilkinson and Anthony Mitchell in 1650 for stealing 9 yards of cloth and two colts.