Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 May 1878 — Origin of Lynch Law. [ARTICLE]

Origin of Lynch Law.

James Lynch was Mayor of Galway. Ireland, in 1473. He had made several voyages to Spain, and on one occasion brought home with him the son of a respectable Spanish merchant, named Comez. Walter Lynch, the only son of the Mayor of Galway was engaged to a beautiful young lady of good family and fortune. Preparatory to the nuptials the Mayor gave a splendid entertainment, at which young Lynch fancied his intended bride viewed his Spanish friend with too much regard. He accused his beloved Agnes of unfaithfulness to him, and she, irritated at his injustice, disdained to deny the charge, and they parted in anger. On the following night, while Walter Lynch slowly passed the residence of Agnes, he observed young Gomez to leave the house, he having been invited by her father to spend that evening with him. In the madness of jealousy, Lynch rushed on his unsuspecting friend, who fled to a solitary quarter of the town near the shore. Lynoh maintained the pursuit till his victim had nearly reached the water’s edge, when he overtook him, and stabbed him to the heart, and threw the body into the sea, which cast it back again on the shore, where it was found and recognized on the following morning. The wretched murderer suriendered himself, and his father being chief magistrate of the town, intrusted with the power of life and death, found himself obliged to condemn his son to death. On the night preceding his execution, his mother went to the heads of her family and prevailed on them to attempt a rescue. The morning of the execution an immense crowd had assembled, who cried loudly for mercy to the culprit. The Mayor exhorted them to submit to the laws; but, finding them determined on a rescue, he, by a desperate victory, overcame parental feelings, and, finding that his efforts to accomplish the ends of justice in the usual place, and by the usual hands, were fruitless, he became executioner himself, and from the window of his own house launched his unfortunate son into eternity.