There is very good reason to suppose that a single gallows would not be sufficient for the work to be done at Tyburn. A gallows in the ordinary form, two uprights and a cross-beam, could hardly take more than ten victims at a time. We must suppose that the equipment of Tyburn demanded at least two such gallows. We have seen that in 1220 the king ordered two gallows. But in 1571, just in time for Elizabeth’s penal laws, a great improvement was made in the form of the gallows; a triangular gallows was introduced, capable of hanging at one time at least twenty-four men. This is the highest number recorded as being hanged at one time, but it does not follow that the capacity of the gallows was exhausted by this number. The evidence for the introduction of the triangular gallows at this time is contained in the account of the execution of Dr. Story:— “The first daye of June [1571] the saide Story was drawn upon an herdell from the Tower of London unto Tiborn, wher was prepared for him a newe payre of gallowes made in triangular maner.”[99] There is no earlier account of a triangular gallows. My friend, Mr. P. A. Daniel, tells me that he knows of no reference in the old drama to the triangular form of the gallows of date prior to 1571. The earliest allusion to this form seems to be in 1589:— “Theres one with a lame wit, which will not weare a foure cornerd cap, then let him put on Tiburne, that hath but three corners.”[100] Of about the same date is an allusion in Tarlton’s “Newes out of Purgatorie,” 1590:— “It was made like the shape of Tiborne, three square.”[101] [Illustration: THE TRIPLE TREE ABOUT 1614. (In the uppermost lozenge on the left.)] A third reference is found in Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labour Lost,” one of his early plays:— “Thou mak’st the triumviry, the corner-cap of society, The shape of Love’s Tyburn, that hangs up simplicity.”[102] These references are followed at a short distance in date by a delineation showing not only the triangular form of the gallows but, roughly, its position. This is in a map of Middlesex, engraved by John Norden for Camden’s “Britannia.” It was first given in the folio edition of 1607, and reappears in the editions of 1610 and 1637. In this last it bears the number 17 in the left-hand corner. In the edition of 1695, Norden’s map is replaced by one by Robert Morden. In the three maps of the respective editions of 1607, 1610, and 1637, the triangular gallows is shown impinging on the north-east corner of Hyde Park, with the word “Tyborne” against it. Here, then, we have evidence that thirty-six years after the introduction of the triangular gallows it still remained here, clearly a permanent structure, probably the very gallows erected in 1571.[103] The next piece of evidence is furnished by a representation of the gallows given in the frontispiece of “The Life and Death of Edmund Geninges” published in 1614.