As the corpse of a gentleman was proceeding to the burial-ground, it was arrested by a sheriff's officer and his followers, under the usual warrant on a writ of capias ad satisfaciendum. The friends, who followed, immediately left their coaches, and told the officer, if he chose, he was welcome to take the body, but he should not have coffin, shroud, or any one particle in which the body was enveloped, as those things were the property of the executors; and farther insisted, that, as the deceased had, by his will, bequeathed his body to them, no execution would hold good against the corpse.
The bailiff, after attending to many literary and persuasive arguments, and having discussed the matter as fully as the time and place would admit of, was very properly convinced that the spirit of the law meant a living and not a dead body, and accordingly marched off without insisting farther on the legality of his capture.
This, it is presumed, is the first and only instance of the kind that has happened since the arrest of the dead body of a sheriff of London, not many years since.
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