Possibly the added information that the crowd stole “the gibbet” is a misconception by the chronicler to whom the tradition is handed down. The passage is not without difficulty. So early in our history “Tyburn” meant merely the Ty-bourne, or brook, where it flowed from Hampstead towards the Thames, not necessarily the common place of execution which afterwards took to itself the distinctive name of Tyburn. What the “Elms” represented has never, so far as can be gathered, been satisfactorily cleared up. It is reasonably supposed that rows of trees stood on the banks of the burn where it passed through the forest and marshes, and probably their branches afforded convenient means for hanging prisoners. With so much growing timber about, it would have been useless expense and labour to bring carpenters to construct a gallows, and to people of the thirteenth century a quite unnecessary refinement. “The Elms” near Tyburn was the scene of many executions after that of Longbeard. If, in fact, the hanging-place at “the Elms” was on trees growing beside the bourne, then, owing to its course, the execution-ground must have been some few hundred yards farther eastward than the Tyburn of later days. King John not only hanged some Welsh rebels at Nottingham in 1212, but nine years later Constantine Fitz-Arnulph and two confederates were hanged for raising a tumult at Westminster, so by this time hanging as a method of capital punishment had become an accepted institution. The records tell of twelve pirates hanged in Hampshire in Henry III.’s reign, and of eighteen Lincoln Jews suffering the same fate a few years later. In London also great strife between the goldsmiths and tailors led to the imprisonment of many rioters, thirteen of whom were hanged for the trouble they had caused in the City. As if London had not enough horrors of its own, the custom was established in the reign of Edward I. of bringing offenders from the provinces to the capital for execution, and taking wrongdoers of London to certain towns in the country for the same purpose. Jews at Northampton being accused of having crucified a Christian boy on Good Friday, many “Jewes at London after Easter were drawne at horse tailes and hanged”; and such wholesale punishments of that persecuted tribe were of frequent occurrence.