• The leaden cloaks which Frederick put upon malefactors were straw in comparison. The Emperor Frederick II is said to have punished traitors by wrapping them in lead, and throwing them into a heated cauldron. I can find no historic authority for this. It rests only on tradition; and on the same authority the same punishment is said to have been inflicted in Scotland, and is thus described in the ballad of “Lord Soulis,” Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border , IV 256:⁠— “On a circle of stones they placed the pot, On a circle of stones but barely nine; They heated it red and fiery hot, Till the burnished brass did glimmer and shine. “They roll’d him up in a sheet of lead, A sheet of lead for a funeral pall, And plunged him into the cauldron red, And melted him⁠—lead, and bones, and all.” We get also a glimpse of this punishment in Ducange, Glos. Capa Plumbea , where he cites the case in which one man tells another:⁠— “If our Holy Father the Pope knew the life you are leading, he would have you put to death in a cloak of lead.” ↩
• Comedy of Errors , IV 2:⁠— “A devil in an everlasting garment hath him.” ↩