Sentence:  And of those base-minded jesters or buffons, some have beene seene, that even at the point of death would never leave their jesting and scoffing. He whom the <WSD>heads-man</WSD> threw off from the Gallowes cried out, ‘Row the Gally,' which was his ordinarie by-word. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  An executioner whose method of dispatching the condemned is decapitation.