The Laws of Halifax were administered from the Moot Hall (demolished 1957) which stood on a site near the Parish Church in Nelson Street. It was from here that the Lords of the Manor held their court and imposed fines and punishment for a wide variety of offences. Early records show that John de Warren, Earl of Surrey, held court here in 1286. In the same year, the Earls of Warren were granted by the Crown the 'Royalty' to execute thieves and other criminals, from which the Halifax Gibbet Law developed. It was in that first year that John of Dalton was decapitated, the first known victim of the Halifax Gibbet, although formal records of victims did not begin until 1541.

Up to the arrival of the Tudor dynasty in the late fifteenth century, Halifax was little more than a hamlet consisting of some fifteen cottages. However, its strategic position and abundance of clear spring water, made it an ideal location for the fast developing cloth trade. By 1556 the hamlet had grown to more than 500 households, all thanks to cloth manufacture. At that time, the newly manufactured cloth was delivered weekly to the town where it was washed and stretched out on wooden tenterframes and left to dry in the open air. Considering the size of the Halifax trade, the surrounding hillsides would have been covered by row upon row of these frames, leaving exposed and vulnerable the valuable pieces of cloth. And with the cloth reaching high prices, delivery of the bolts became a more and more dangerous occupation. Alarmed at the increase in thefts and at the number that went unpunished, local traders were fearful that the unchecked crime wave could lead to economic damage.

Evidence of the arrival of the gibbet is recorded in Thomas Deloney's "Thomas, of Reading", a romantic and racy ballad in which 'Hodgskins, of Halifax, and his fellow clothiers are represented as having obtained the valuable privilege of the gibbet from the Crown, for the purpose of punishing those who filched their cloth from the tenters.' Local legend goes onto tell of how the good gentlemen of Halifax found it impossible to take on the role of hangman, but that eventually 'a "feat friar" came to the rescue of the tender consciences of the townsfolk, by the timely invention of a "gin" [engine] which was capable of cutting off the heads of "valiant rogues" without the direct intervention of human hands.'