This murder was committed, if the evidence is to be believed, with the utmost perseverance. Witchcraft, which was believed in firmly at that time, was attributed to Mrs. Turner. It was alleged in the trial that seven forms of poison were given by her to Sir Thomas Overbury. Arsenic was mixed with his salt; when he asked to have some “pig” for dinner, she put into it _lapis cortilus_, and _cantharides_ was added to the sauce instead of pepper. The execution of Mrs. Turner excited immense interest. She had made herself famous in the fashionable world as the inventor of a yellow starch. In allusion to this circumstance, Lord Chief-Justice Coke—who had already addressed her in sufficiently contumelious terms, telling her categorically that she had been guilty of the seven deadly sins—declared that as she was the inventor of yellow starched ruffs and cuffs, he hoped that she would be the last by whom they would be worn. Accordingly, he gave strict orders that she should be hanged in the very uncomfortable attire she had made so fashionable. This amusing addition to the sentence was strictly carried out. The fair demon Mrs. Turner, on the day of her execution, came to the scaffold arrayed as if for some festive occasion, with her face mightily rouged, and a wide ruff, stiffened with yellow starch, around her neck. Numerous persons of quality, ladies as well as gentlemen, went in their coaches to Tyburn to see the last of her. The yellow ruff was never worn from that day. Yellow starch had rendered Society stiff and uncomfortable, and Society was only too pleased to discard its use when the originator of the fashion came to this ignominious end. CHAPTER IX BENEATH THE TRIPLE TREE Exactly the date at which the dreaded instrument at Tyburn assumed the form of the “Triple Tree” cannot be told. As has already been said, there is reason to believe that a permanent structure—“the common gallows” of the time—was set up in the district known as Tyburn in the closing years of the fourteenth century; and that the site was a little more eastward, beyond the present area of the Park, than the later place of execution. What particular plan the earlier structure took can only be surmised. One is inclined to think that the gallows, like other and better inventions of civilisation, underwent stages of development; that from the branch of the growing elm the old gibbet, with its single beam and angle bar, was first devised, and that the two upright posts with the crossbeam followed. In all probability the gallows was then built high, so that the victim who paid the last penalty of the law swung clear above the heads of the crowd gathered to witness the execution.