Between 1805 and 1818 five hundred and one convictions were said to have been obtained, resulting in 207 executions. In 1817 the number of forged one-pound notes detected was stated to have been 28,412. Cruikshank's satirical pattern (see Fig. 32) is inscribed, "Bank Restriction Note. Specimen of a Bank Note-not to be imitated. Submitted to the Consideration of the Bank Directors and the inspection of the Public." Eleven bodies (men and women) are hanging from a long

FIG. 32.-G. Cruikshank's satirical pattern for a Bank of England note (1818).

gibbet, and "Jack Ketch" (the traditional nickname for the hangman), "for the Governor and Company of the Bank of England," promises to perform the hangingsthe number ad libitum-"during the Issue of Bank Notes easily imitated, and until the Resumption of Cash Payments, or the Abolition of the Punishment of Death." These "Bank Restriction Notes" were published by William Hone, at his shop in Ludgate Hill, London, and when they were first exhibited such crowds gathered

round his shop-window that the police had to disperse them. Cruikshank maintained that by this caricature he had taken a considerable part in the abolition of the death-penalty for comparatively trivial offences. In 1821 all one-pound and two-pound bank-notes were withdrawn from circulation. The last execution in England for forgery of any sort was that of Thomas Maynard, in 1829.

This "Bank Restriction Note" of Cruikshank and

FIG. 33.-Satirical anti-republican pattern for a Bank-note (1819).

Hone, in 1818, evidently gave rise to the "anti-republican" satirical pattern note (see Fig. 33), published in 1819 by S. Knight, 3, Sweetings Alley, Royal Exchange, London. It is inscribed, "House of Correction, 1819. I promise to pay to all Republicans, Jacobins and Knaves, the sum of a Perpetual Flagellation; to be strictly inflicted and most judiciously applied, until their turbulent spirits be duly expunged. . . . For the King and Constitution-J. Flogwell." On the left of the note is a man at the cart-tail being flogged by "Jack

R

Ketch." The man who is being flogged is evidently meant to represent William Hone (the publisher of Cruikshank's note), who, in 1817, had been prosecuted by the Government, but acquitted. The men drawing the cart are labelled H-T (Hunt) and C-TT (Cobbett). The accompanying inscription is, "Pain Exemplified, or the Age of Reason" (an allusion to Thomas Paine's Age of Reason). Above, on the left, is a devil acting as hangman, arranging the rope on a gallows, with the inscription: "A Printer's Devil. The Knave's desert, or a strong binding for a bookseller." The bookseller referred to was certainly William Hone. Below, on the left, is a man in the stocks, with the inscription, "A Scourge for Rogues with Venomed Stings." The man in the stocks also undoubtedly represents Hone, for the stocks themselves are so drawn as to represent the capital letter H, and this is followed by the "One" to resemble the "One" on one-pound notes. The "pattern" note is numbered in two places, N° 222, the N° being formed by a lion with a looped tail, and the twos by figures of men kneeling to be flogged, labelled respectively "C—tt,” "H-t," and "H-e," for William Cobbett (1762-1835), Henry Hunt (known as "Orator Hunt," 1773–1835), and William Hone (1710-1842), the author and bookseller referred to above. In this connexion it may be remembered that in 1810 Cobbett had been fined and imprisoned for publishing censures on flogging in the army. I do not know who designed this "satirical bank-note," and it has apparently attracted little attention. A few other less elaborate caricature notes were published about the same time.

Death's-heads might appropriately have adorned the handles of an executioner's sword, and though I know no

example of that, I have seen a scourge with iron tails, part of the handle of which was formed by a death's-head carved in wood.

Though in Shakespeare's Tempest (Act iii., Scene 2) the drunken butler, Stephano, says, "He that dies pays all debts," death can scarcely be supposed to cancel everything. I do not know of any medals referring to the idea of death (voluntary or involuntary) as an act of atonement— apart, of course, from religious medals. There are some medals, however, on which might have been inscribed the first Napoleon's saying: "Death may expiate faults, but it does not repair them."

The fancied terrors of death and hell have naturally been much more illustrated on engravings, drawings, and paintings than on medals, engraved gems, &c.; but this subject will be again referred to under Heading xx., on the "Fear of Death."

Certain satirical medals might be mentioned here, especially the English political ones of the toy-shop class (see back), issued in 1741, representing the devil leading Sir Robert Walpole by a rope round his neck towards the open jaws of a monster (hell), with the inscription: MAKE ROOM FOR SIR · ROBERT NO EXCISE.212

Emblems of the Death's-head class, when employed to inspire terror in certain cases and in certain ways, may be supposed to have exercised a panic-striking effect similar to that produced (according to stories of former days) when pirates of the traditional Captain William Kidd style ran up their Death's-head ensign,213 the hoisting of the flag causing doubtless an equivalent

212 See Medallic Illustrations, 1885, vol. ii. p. 561, Nos. 190-192. 213 The 66 black flag" (with white skull and crossbones on it) of the pirates, according to boys' pirate-stories of the "Captain Kidd" and "penny dreadful" kind the "Jolly Roger," as Sir Walter Scott calls it, in The Pirate (chapter xxxi.).

sinking of the blood-pressure and courage in some of those who looked at it. In regard to the terror inspired by the Gorgon's head in the ancient world, C. W. King 214 writes that, accepting the explanation that "at its origin this terrific visage was designed for the vera effigies' of the queen of the dead, it was the most speaking emblem of her office that could possibly be chosen." It occupied the centre of the Aegis of Zeus and Athene, and in the Heroic ages it was depicted upon the warrior's shield; with the progress of art, cut in cameo, it became the regular decoration of the Roman Emperor's breastplate; "in which post it served, as Lucian in his Philopatris remarks, both to terrify enemies and [as an amulet] to avert all danger from the wearer.''

The terror-inspiring use of the symbols of death is very intelligible, and is analogous to the employment during warfare of war-paint (and terrifying devices of all kinds) by savage tribes, in former times by native races of North America, &c. The military emblems. referred to further on, under Heading vi., have likewise some significance in this connexion, and so has certain hideous devil-like armour for face and head. Devil-like masks are to be seen in collections of European armour of the sixteenth century, and the hideous Chinese masks are well-known. The ancient Korean warriors (e.g. of the fourth century A.D.) are represented wearing fiendish masks (for instance, faces with two or three pairs of eyes) designed to terrify the enemy and ward off evil spirits.

In this connexion there is some interest in the account of the so-called Arii by Tacitus (De Moribus et Populis Germaniae, cap. 43, as quoted by Edward Gibbon): "The Arii study to improve by art and

214 C. W. King, The Gnostics and their Remains, second edition, London, 1887, p. 184.