act, retired slowly and peaceably to their several dwellings.” In the council books of Galway there is said to be a minute that “James Lynch, mayor of Galway, hanged his own son out of the window for defrauding and killing strangers, without martial or common law, to show a good example to posterity.” In commemoration of this “Roman act of justice,” a stone sculptured with a skull and crossbones was erected in Lombard Street, Galway, in 1524, and in 1854 was reerected on the wall of St. Nicholas Churchyard.[15] This “Galway story” may be dismissed with but little consideration. Howell Colton Featherston of the Lynchburg (Va.) Bar has clearly shown that this act of the mayor of Galway was entirely without any definition ever attached to lynch-law and that there was no reason for bestowing upon it any name, and more particularly his name. Mayor Lynch was the legally constituted authority presiding over the tribunal in which his son had had, presumably, a fair and regular trial. He merely persisted in executing the laws in the face of popular opposition and tumult. Lynch-law has always been considered as operating wholly without, or in opposition to, established laws of government.[16] Equally fanciful and fictitious but less romantic is the “pirate story” of the origin of the name lynch-law. It is said that about 1687 one Lynch was sent to this country from England under a commission to suppress piracy. He is credited with having faithfully executed, without the formality of a trial, every pirate that he captured. It is presumed that owing to the difficulty of adhering to the usual forms of law in the colonies, this Judge Lynch was empowered to proceed summarily against pirates and thus gave rise to the term.[17] But whatever the facts may be about the methods employed by this man Lynch to suppress piracy,[18] there is no evidence to show that they were ever known as Lynch’s law or had any connection whatever with lynch-law.