The Sins of the Fathers

If you've seen any movies about historic European wars and rebellions, you may be familiar with the custom of taking enemy heads and impaling them on spikes erected above the local castle or market square. It's a dramatic presentation, to be sure, and you may have thought that it was invented by Hollywood to give a succinct picture of the brutality of the day. But it wasn't invented by Hollywood at all; it was quite real. And one thing I certainly didn't realize was just how long they left the heads up there. Here's Prebble on the heads of the Scottish rebels of the '45:

"Some of the skulls of the hanged, spiked above the gates of the cities in which they were executed, were still grinning down on the streets thirty years later when another King George faced another rebellion, this time in his Colonies." --page 232.

This certainly gives a little more bite to Benjamin Franklin's statement made upon the signing of the Declaration of Independence: "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

Pause for a moment to remember the life and death of Mr. Thomas Syddall. Mr. Prebble tells his story interspersed with the tales of eight other prisoners, all of whom were tried and punished as a group:

"The middle-aged Thomas Syddall had been the Adjutant of the Manchester Regiment. He was the son of a blacksmith, and before the Rising he had been a reputable barber in Manchester. His family's devotion to the Stuarts was as strong as Towneley's [a 38-year-old Catholic colonel of the Manchester Regiment and commandant of the Rebel forces at the ill-fated Carlisle], and its sacrifices probably greater. They were Catholics, of course, and Syddall's father had been out with Prince Charles's father in 1715, and had been hanged for it. Throughout Thomas Syddall's boyhood he had seen his father's skull whitening on top of the Market Cross in Manchester, and his desire for revenge had grown strong. When the Rebels cam south to Lancashire in November 1745, Syddall left his wife and five children and bought himself a commission in the Manchester Regiment. Exactly one month later he was a prisoner. Sentence: death.

. . . .

"All these men were hanged on 30 July. The magazines and the newspapers kept the public well-informed about the life the prisoners led from the day they were sentenced to the day they died. The reports appeared in tightly-printed, scarecely-paragraphed columns between advertisements announcing the arrival of 'exceedingly good LIMONS and BITTER ORANGES, the Bitter Oranges are fit for marmelade; also fresh chestnuts and walnuts'. The accused were heavily ironed, wrists and ankles locked together by manacles and bars, so that they seemed to move in constant modesty or prayer. At night they were fastened to the flags of their cells by staples. The waiting, the thinking and the dark of the night acted upon them according to their natures. Syddall prayed, and said that he thought unceasingly of his family, his five children for whom the best that he could wish was that they might end their lives in a martyrdom such as his."

After the men were awakened on the morning of their execution, they were given coffee to drink and brought to the Common. Each man was allowed to say whatever he wanted to say for his final words. The men had written out their speeches the night before, or (as was customary for the less oratorically inclined) paid pastors to write speeches for them. Now the story picks up with Syddall and another prisoner giving their speeches:

"The speeches of Syddall and Deacon had been written for them by a Non-Jurant minister called Creake, who was at this moment selling printed copies of them among the crowd. 'My deal fellow-countrymen', said Thomas Deacon, "I am come here to pay my last debt to nature, and I think myself happy in having an opportunity to die in so just and so glorious a cause . . .' Mr. Creake's zeal for Non-Jurant Episcopacy was strong in what he had written for Syddall: 'If any would enquire into its primitive constitution I refer them to our Common Prayer Book which is entitled A Compleat Collection of Devotions, both Publick and Private.' Both men forgave their enemies, including King George and the Duke of Cumberland, while pointing out that neither had a right to such titles."

The nine men were then hanged for three minutes, cut down, disemboweled and had their hearts cut out, and beheaded with a butcher's cleaver. (Ever wonder where the American Founding Fathers came up with that "cruel and unusual punishment" clause in the U.S. Constitution?) The king had the legal custody of the remains. The bodies were buried nearby, three of the heads were returned to their families, and the other six heads sent in three directions to be placed high on spikes for public display and example. Syddall's head, along with Thomas Deacon's, went to his hometown of Manchester.

"Thus the skull of Syddall rested where his father's had been impaled nearly thirty years before. Bishop Deacon made a vow never to pass the Market Cross lest he see his son's head, but one day a twist in the narrow streets, taken inadvertently, brought him to the sight of it. He raised his hat and passed on. For this small act of sedition he was charged and fined by the magistrates."

--pages 260-69