Here are six guineas for you. Do not hack me as you did my Lord Russell. I have heard that you struck him three or four times. My servant will give you some more gold if you do the work well.

Words addressed to John Ketch the executioner, "a wretch who had butchered many brave and noble victims, and whose name has, during a century and a half, been vulgarly given to all who have succeeded him in his odious office."—T. B. Macaulay, The History of England, vol. 1 (1849) ch. 5