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The Tower and the Scaffold,
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Chapel of the Tower,
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From Hell, Hull and Halifax, good Lord, deliver us. Fuller says the foregoing is part of the
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Beggars' and Vagrants' Litany, and goes on to state:
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Of these three frightful things unto them, it is to be feared that they least fear the first, conceiving it the farthest from them. Hull is terrible to them as a town of good government, where beggars meet with punitive charity; and, it is to be feared, are oftener corrected than amended. Halifax is formidable for the law thereof, whereby thieves, taken in the very act of stealing cloth, are instantly beheaded with an engine, without any further legal proceedings. Doubtless, the coincidence of the initial letters of these three words helped much the setting on foot of the proverb. The Halifax gibbet law has been traced back to a remote period. It has been suggested that it was imported into the country by some of the Norman barons. Holinshed's
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Chronicle (edition published in 1587) contains an interesting note bearing on this subject.
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There is, and has been, of ancient time, says Holinshed,