common jargon surrounding execution in Elizabethan and Jacobean England.

Glossary of Terms

The following is a list of common jargon surrounding execution in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. 

BENEFIT OF CLERGY	Clerks in holy orders where exempt from the jurisdiction of criminal courts; they could only be subject to the justice of ecclesiastical courts.  This protection was later expanded to any male defendant who could read.  If a prisoner could  read the famous "neck verse" from the Bible (Psalm 51), he could avoid execution.  Of course, many illiterate men memorized this passage to evade death.  If a felon took this privilege or "benefit of  clergy" once, his thumb was branded and he was denied its use in the future unless he was truly in a holy order.  Offenses were later divided into clergyable and non-clergyable.  The practice was removed in 1827.
BILBOES	Fetters or stocks
CAGE	A prison
CHATS, CHEATS  also TRINING-CHEATS	The gallows
CONDEMNED PROCESSION	The journey to the gallows
CRACK-HEMP	A gallows-bird
CUTTING DOWN	When the executioner cut down the body
DANCE THE HEMPEN JIG	A pirate's term for being hung
DEATH SPEECH	The prisoner's last words
DERRICK	Hangman; gallows.  From the name of a Tyburn hangman (c. 1600).  The first hangman at Tyburn was reported to be named Bull.
DONE	"Done to death," put to death
THE FATAL TREE	The gallows
FURCA (L.)	Gallows
HALTER or TYBURN TIPPET	The hangman's noose
LIMBO	The holding cell for the condemned in Newgate Prison
MALEFACTOR	The condemned prisoner; see John Taylor's verse for other possible nicknames
THE PARTING CUP	As part of the procession to the gallows at Tyburn, the condemned would be allowed to stop at taverns along the way.  Combined with the heavy drinking indulged in at Newgate Prison, many prisoners went to the gallows completely inebriated much to the consternation of the prison chaplain.
QUEER-KEN	A prison house
QUEER-BIRD	Jail-bird
THE FATAL TREE	The gallows
TRINE	To go; to hang
TRINE TO THE  CHEATS	To be hanged
TRINING	Hanging
TURNED OFF	The initiation of the hanging by the executioner.  The cart on which a prisoner was standing would be driven away or the ladder he was standing on would be pushed away.
TYBURN FAIR or  THE HANGING MATCH	The day of execution
WESTWARD (TO BE CARRIED)	To be taken to Tyburn gallows
WHITTINGTON	Newgate Prison

Entries have been compiled from Antony Babington's The English Bastille (1971), Thomas Harman's A Caveat for Common Cursitors (1566), E.D. Pendry's Elizabethan Prisons and Prison Scenes (1974), Gamini Salgado's The Elizabethan Underworld (1992), A.V. Judges' The Elizabethan Underworld (1965), and the plays of William Shakespeare.

Most of the following slang may be confined to the 18th century:  

CRAMP WORDS	the sentence of death
A HANGING MATCH, COLLAR DAY, THE SHERIFF'S BALL, A HANGING FAIR, and PADDINGTON FAIR	the day of a hanging
TO SWING, DANCE THE PADDINGTON FRISK, TO MORRIS, TO GO WEST, TO RIDE UP HOLBORN HILL, TO DANGLE IN THE SHERIFF'S PICTURE FRAME, or TO CRY COCKLES	to hang
TO BE JAMMED, FRUMMAGEMMED, COLLARED, NOOZED, SCRAGGED, TWISTED, NUBBED, BACKED, STRETCHED, TRINED, CHEATED, CRAPPED, TUCKED UP, or TURNED OFF	to be hanged
DIE GAME	possibly a reference to "dying well"

Compiled from Peter Linebaugh's article, "The Tyburn Riot Against the Surgeons," in Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England and The Newgate Calendar