Elizabethan wit, “that drinking of St. Giles’s bowl as he went to Tyburn, said:--‘That were good drink if a man might tarry by it.’” The Lazar went, but the St. Giles’s bowl lingered, only no longer a shaven monk, but the landlord of the Bowl or the Crown, or what not, handed up the liquor. Bowl Yard, which vanished into Endell Street, long preserved the memory of this “last refreshing.” At York a like custom prevailed, whereof local tradition recorded a quaint apologue. The saddler of Bawtry needs must hang--why and wherefore no man knoweth. To the amazement and horror of all he most churlishly refused the proffered bowl. Pity was but wasted (so our forefathers thought) on such a fellow. Before a dry-eyed crowd he was strung up with the utmost dispatch, but a reprieve arriving, was cut down just as quickly. All too late, however! He was done with this world. Had he but reasonably tarried, as others did, for his draught, he had died in his bed like many a better man. Hence the rustic moralist taught how the saddler of Bawtry was hanged for leaving of his ale. The compilers of the Sunday school treatises have scandalously neglected this leading case of lost opportunities. Nay, though a pearl “richer than all his tribe,” you shall search the works of Dr. Smiles for it in vain. But the day wears on, and our procession must farther westward along Tyburn Road (now Oxford Street). It is soon quit of houses; yet the crowd grows ever denser, and, though Tyburn Tree stands out grim and gaunt in our view, it is some time ere the cart pulls up under the beam. Soon the halter is fixed, and the parson says his last words to the trembling wretch. And now it is proper for him to address the crowd, confessing his crimes, and warning others to amend their ways. If a broken-down cleric or the like, his last devotions and dying speech are apt to be prosy and inordinate; so that the mob jeers or even pelts him and his trusty Ketch himself. Or “some of the Sheriff’s officers discovering impatience to have the execution dispatched” (thus Samuel Smith, the Ordinary of a case in 1684), Jack cuts things short by whipping up his horses and leaves his victim dangling and agape. More decorously the cap is drawn over his face, and he himself gives the signal to turn off. The Hangman, if in genial mood, now stretches the felon’s legs for him, or thumps his breast with the benevolent design of expelling the last breath; but the brute is usually too lazy or too careless, and these pious offices are performed by friends.