To continue with Harrison: If one “be conuicted of wilfull murther, doone either vpon pretended malice, or in anie notable robberie, he is either hanged aliue in chaines neere the place where the fact was committed (or else vpon compassion taken first strangled with a rope) and so continueth till his bones consume to nothing.” “Such as hauing wals and banks neere vnto the sea, and doo suffer the same to decaie (after conuenient admonition) whereby the water entereth and drowneth vp the countrie, are by a certeine custome apprehended, condemned, and staken in the breach, where they remaine for euer as parcell of the foundation of the new wall that is to be made vpon them, as I haue heard reported.” This also is strange, showing that a machine practically identical with the guillotine was in use in England centuries before the re-invention of the machine by Dr. Guillotin:— “There is and hath beene of ancient time a law or rather a custome in Halifax, that who soeuer dooth commit anie fellonie, and is taken with the same, or confesse the fact vpon examination: if it be valued by foure constables to amount to the sum of thirteene pence halfe penie, he is foorthwith beheaded upon one of the next market daies.… The engine wherewith the execution is doone, is a square block of wood of the length of foure foote and an halfe, which dooth ride vp and downe in a slot, rabet, or regall betweene two peeces of timber, that are framed and set vpright of fiue yardes in height. In the neather end of the sliding blocke is an ax keied or fastened with an iron into the wood, which being drawne vp to the top of the frame is there fastned by a wooden pin (with a notch made into the same after the manner of a Samsons post) vnto the middest of which pin also there is a long rope fastened that commeth downe among the people, so that when the offendor hath made his confession, and hath laid his necke ouer the neathermost blocke, euerie man there present dooth either take hold of the rope (or putteth foorth his arme so neere to the same as he can get, in token that he is willing to see true iustice executed) and pulling out the pin in this maner, the head blocke wherein the ax is fastened dooth fall downe with such a violence, that if the necke of the transgressor were so big as that of a bull, it should be cut in sunder at a stroke, and roll from the bodie by an huge distance. If it be so that the offendor be apprehended for an ox, oxen, sheepe, kine, horsse, or anie such cattell: the selfe beast or other of the same kind shall haue the end of the rope tied somewhere vnto them, so that they being driuen doo draw out the pin wherby the offendor is executed.”[32] Harrison says that “we have vse neither of the wheele nor of the barre, as in other countries,” and these punishments are not to be found in the chronicles.