Dr. Scarborough took some of his
friends, and I went with them, to see the body of a lusty fellow,
a seaman, that was hanged for a robbery. It seems one Dillon, of
a great family, was, after much endeavours to have saved him,
hanged with a silken halter this Sessions, (of his own
preparing,) not for honour only, but it being soft and sleek it
do slip close and kills, that is, strangles presently: whereas,
a stiff one do not come so close together, and so the party may
live the longer before killed. But all the Doctors at table
conclude, that there is no pain at all in hanging, for that it do
stop the circulation of the blood; and so stops all sense and
motion in an instant. To Sir W. Batten's to speak upon some
business, where I found Sir J. Minnes pretty well fuddled I
thought: he took me aside to tell me how being at my Lord
Chancellor's to-day, my Lord told him that there was a Great Seal
passing for Sir W. Pen, through the impossibility of the
Comptroller's duty to be performed by one man; to be as it were
joynt-comptroller with him, at which he is stark mad; and swears
he will give up his place.
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