Curious Punishments of Bygone Days - Chapters I-V



CHAPTER I. THE BILBOES
 
There is no doubt that our far-away grandfathers, whether of English, 
French, Dutch, Scotch or Irish blood, were much more afraid of ridicule 
than they were even of sinning, and far more than we are of extreme 
derision or mockery to-day. This fear and sensitiveness they showed in 
many ways. They were vastly touchy and resentful about being called 
opprobrious or bantering names; often running petulantly to the court 
about it and seeking redress by prosecution of the offender. And they were 
forever bringing suits in petty slander and libel cases. Colonial court-
rooms "bubbled over with scandal and gossip and spite." A creature as
obsolete as his name, a "makebayt," was ever-present in the community, 
ever whispering slander, ever exciting contention, and often also haled to 
the court for punishment; while his opposite, a make-peace, was everywhere 
sadly needed. Far-seeing magistrates declared against the make-bait, as 
even guilty of stirring up barratry, or as Judge Sewall, the old Boston 
Puritan termed it, at least "gravaminous."

Equally with personal libel did all good citizens and all good Christians 
fiercely resent of word, not only of derision or satire, but even of 
dispassionate disapproval of either government or church. A tithe of the 
plain-speaking criticism cheerfully endured in politics to-day would have 
provoked a civil war two centuries ago; while freedom of judgment or 
expression in religious matters was ever sharply silenced and punished in 
New England.

That ultra-sensitiveness which made a lampoon, a jeer, a scoff, a taunt, 
an unbearable and inflaming offense, was of equal force when used against 
the men of the day in punishment for real crimes and offenses.

In many -- indeed, in nearly all -- of the penalties and punishments of 
past centuries, derision, scoffing, contemptuous publicity and personal 
obloquy were applied to the offender or criminal by means of demeaning, 
degrading and helpless exposure in grotesque, insulting and painful 
"engines of punishment," such as the stocks, bilboes, pillory, brank, 
ducking-stool or jougs. Thus confined and exposed to the free gibes and 
constant mocking of the whole community, the peculiar power of the 
punishment was accented. Kindred in their nature and in their force were 
the punishments of setting on the gallows and of branding; the latter, 
whether in permanent form of searing of flesh, or by mutilation; or 
temporarily, by labeling with written placards or affixed initials.

One of the earliest of these degrading engines of confinement for public 
exposure, to be used in punishment in this country, was the bilboes. 
Though this instrument to "punyssche transgressours ageynste ye Kinges 
Maiesties lawes" came from old England, it was by tradition derived from 
Bilboa. It is alleged that bilboes were manufactured there and shipped on 
board the Spanish Armada in large numbers to shackle the English prisoners 
so confidently expected to be captured. This occasion may have given them 
their wide popularity and employment; but this happened in 1588, and in 
the first volume of Hakluyt's Voyages, page 295, dating some years 
earlier, reference is made to bilbous.

They were a simple but effective restraint; a long heavy bolt or bar of 
iron having two sliding shackles, something like handcuffs, and a lock. In 
these shackles were thrust the legs of the offenders or criminals, who 
were then locked in with a padlock. Sometimes a chain at one end of the 
bilboes attached both bilboes and prisoner to the floor or wall; but this 
was superfluous, as the iron bar prevented locomotion. Whether the Spanish 
Armada story is true or not, bilboes were certainly much used on board 
ship. Shakespeare says in Hamlet: "Methought I lay worse than the mutines 
in the bilboes." In Cook's Voyages and other sea-tales we read of "bilboo-
bolts" on sailors.

The Massachusetts magistrates brought bilboes from England as a means of 
punishing refractory or sinning colonists, and they were soon in constant 
use. In the oldest court records, which are still preserved, of the 
settlement of Boston -- the Bay colony -- appear the frequent sentences of 
offenders to be placed in the bilboes. The earliest entry is in the 
authorized record of the Court held at Boston on the 7th of August, 1632. 
It reads thus: "Jams Woodward shall be sett in the bilbowes for being 
drunk at the Newe-towne." "Newe-towne" was the old name of Cambridge. Soon 
another colonist felt the bilboes for "selling peeces and powder and shott 
to the Indians," ever a bitterly-abhorred and fiercely-punished crime. And 
another, the same year, for threatening -- were he punished -- he would 
carry the case to England, was summarily and fearlessly thrust into the 
bilboes.

Then troublesome Thomas Dexter, with his ever-ready tongue, was hauled up 
and tried on March 4, 1633. Here is his sentence: "Thomas Dexter shal be 
sett in the bilbowes, disfranchized, and fyned £15 for speking rpchfull 
and seditios words agt the government here established." He also suffered 
in the bilboes for "prophane saying dam ye come." Thomas Morton of Mare-
Mount, that amusing old debauchee and roysterer, was sentenced to be 
"clapt into the bilbowes." And he says "the harmeles salvages" stared at 
him in wonder "like poore silly lambes" as he endured his punishment, and 
doubtless some of "the Indesses, gay lasses in beaver coats" who had 
danced with him around his merry Maypole and had partaken of his cask of 
"claret sparkling neat" sympathized with him and cheered him in his 
indignity.

The next year another Newe-towne man, being penitent, Henry Bright, was 
set in the bilboes for "swearynge." Another had "sleited the magistrates 
in speaches." In 1635, on April 7, Griffin Montagne "shal be sett in ye 
bilbowes for stealing boards and clapboards and enjoyned to move his 
habitacon." Within a year we find offenders being punished in two places 
for the same offence, thus degrading them far and wide; and when in Salem 
they were "sett in the stockes," we always find in Boston that the bilboes 
claimed its own. Women suffered this punishment as well as men. Francis 
Weston's wife and others were set in the bilboes.

It is high noon in Boston in the year 1638. The hot June sun beats down on 
the little town, the narrow paths, the warfs; and the sweet-fern and 
cedars on the common give forth a pungent dry hot scent that is wafted 
down to the square where stand the Governor's house, the market, the 
church, and homes of the gentlefolk. A crowd is gathered there around some 
interesting object in the middle of the square; visitors from Newe-towne 
and Salem, Puritan women and children, tawny Indian braves in wampum and 
war-paint, gaily dressed sailors from two great ships lying at anchor in 
the bay -- all staring and whispering, or jeering and biting the thumb. 
They are gathered around a Puritan soldier, garbed in trappings of 
military bravery, yet in a sorry plight. For it is training day in the Bay 
colony, and in spite of the long prayer with which the day's review began, 
or perhaps before that pious opening prayer, Serjeant John Evins has 
drunken too freely of old Sack or Alicant, and the hot sun and the sweet 
wine have sent him reeling from the ranks in disgrace. There he sits, 
sweltering in his great coat "basted with cotton-wool and thus made 
defnsive ag't Indian arrowes;" weighed down with his tin armor, a heavy 
corselet covering his body, a stiff gorget guarding his throat, clumsy 
tasses protecting his thighs, all these "neatly varnished black," and 
costing twenty-four shillings apiece of the town's money. Over his 
shoulder hangs another weight, his bandelier, a strong "neat's leather" 
belt, carrying twelve boxes of solid cartridges and a wll-filled bullet-
bag; and over all and heavier than all hangs from his neck -- as of 
lead -- the great letter D. Still from his wrist dangles his wooden gun-
rest, but his "bastard musket with a snaphance" lies with his pike 
degraded in the dust.

The serjeant does not move at the jeers of the sailors, nor turn away from 
the wondering stare of the savages -- he cannot move, he cannot turn away, 
for his legs are firmly set in the strong iron bilboes which John Winthrop 
sternly brought from England to the new land. Poor John Evins! Your head 
aches from the fumes of the cloying sack, your legs ache from the bonds of 
the clamping bilboes, your body aches from the clamps of your trumpery 
armor, but you will have to sit there in distress and in obloquoy till 
acerb old John Norton, the pious Puritan preacher, will come "to chide" 
you, as is his wont, to point out to your fellow-citizens and to visitors 
your sinful fall, the disgracing bilboes, and the great letter that brands 
you as a drunkard.

The decade of life in the Boston bilboes was soon to end, it was to be 
"laid flat," as Sir Matthew Hale would say; a rival entered the field. In 
1639 Edward Palmer made for Boston with "planks and woodwork," a pair of 
stocks.

Planks and woodwork were plentiful everywhere in the new world, and iron 
and iron-workers at first equally scarce; so stocks soon were seen in 
every town, and the bilboes were disused, sold perhaps for old iron, 
wherein they again did good service. In Virginia the bilboes had a short 
term of use in the earliest years of the settlement; the Provost-marshal 
had a fee of ten shillings for "laying by the heels;" and he was 
frequently employed; but there, also, stocks and pillory proved easier of 
construction and attainment.

I would not be over-severe upon the bilboes in their special use in those 
early colonial settlements. There had to be some means of restraint of 
vicious and lawless folk, of hindering public nuisances, and a prison 
could not be built in a day; the bilboes seemed an easy settlement of the 
difficulty, doing effectively with one iron bar what a prison cell does 
with many. It was not their use, but their glare of publicity that was 
offensive. They were ever placed on offenders in the marketplace, in front 
of the meeting house on lecture day, on market day; not to keep prisoners 
in lonely captivity but in public obloquy and as here been cited, for what 
appear to us to-day slight offenses.



CHAPTER II. THE DUCKING STOOL

The ducking stool seems to have been placed on the lowest and most 
contempt-bearing stage among English instruments of punishment. The 
pillory and stocks, the gibbet, and even the whipping-post, have seen many 
a noble victim, many a martyr. But I cannot think any save the most 
ignoble criminals ever sat in a ducking-stool. In all the degrading and 
cruel indignities offered the many political and religious offenders in 
England under the varying rules of both church and state, through the 
fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the ducking-stool played 
no part and secured no victims. It was an engine of punishment specially 
assigned to scolding women; though sometimes kindred offenders, such as 
slanderers, "makebayts," "chyderers," brawlers, railers, and women of 
light carriage also suffered through it. Though gruff old Sam Johnson said 
to a gentle Quaker lady: "Madam, we have different modes of restraining 
evil -- stocks for men, a ducking-stool for women, and a pound for
beasts;" yet men as well as women-scolds were punished by being set in the 
ducking-stool, and quarrelsome married couples were ducked, tied back-to-
back. The last person set in the Rugby ducking-stool was a brutal husband 
who had beaten his wife. Brewers of bad beer and bakers of bad bread were 
deemed of sufficiently degraded ethical standing to be ducked. Unruly 
paupers also were thus subdued.

That intelligent French traveler, Misson, who visited England about the 
year 1700, and who left in his story of his travels so much valuable and 
interesting information of the England of that day gives this lucid 
description of a ducking-stool:

"The way of punishing scolding women is pleasant enough. They fasten an 
armchair to the end of two beams twelve or fifteen feet long, and parallel 
to each other, so that these two pieces of wood with their two ends 
embrace the chair, which hangs between them by a sort of axle, by which 
means it plays freely, and always remains in the natural horizontal 
position in which a chair should be, that a person may sit conveniently in 
it, whether you raise it or let it down. They set up a post on the bank of 
a pond or river, and over this post they lay, almost in equilibrio, the 
two pieces of wood, at one end of which the chair hangs just over the 
water. They place the woman in this chair and so plunge her into the water 
as often as the sentence directs, in order to cool her immoderate heat."

The adjectives pleasant and convenient as applied to a ducking-stool would 
scarcely have entered the mind of any one but a Frenchman. Still the chair 
itself was sometimes rudely ornamented. The Cambridge stool was carved 
with devils laying hold of scolds. Others were painted with appropriate 
devices such as a man and woman scolding. Two Plymouth ducking-stools 
still preserved are of wrought iron of good design. The Sandwich ducking-
stool bore the motto:

"Of members ye tonge is worst or beste
An yll tonge oft doth breede unreste."
We read in Blackstone's Commentaries:

"A common scold may be indicted, and if convicted shall be sentenced to be 
placed in a certain engine of correction called the trebucket, 
castigatory, or ducking-stool."

The trebuchet, or trebucket, was a stationary and simple form of a ducking 
machine consisting of a short post set at the water's edge with a long 
beam resting on it like a see-saw; by a simple contrivance it could be 
swung round parallel to the bank, and the culprit tied in the chair 
affixed to one end. Then she could be swung out over the water and see-
sawed up and down into the water. When this machine was not in use, it was 
secured to a stump or bolt in the ground by a padlock1 because when left 
free it proved too tempting and convenient an opportunity for tormenting 
village children to duck each other.

A tumbrel or scold's-cart, was a chair set on wheels and having very long 
wagon-shafts, with a rope attached to them about two feet from the end. 
When used it was wheeled into a pond backward, the long shafts were 
suddenly tilted up, and the scold sent down in a backward plunge into the 
water. When the ducking was accomplished, the tumbrel was drawn out of the 
water by the ropes. Collinson says in his History of Somersetshire, 
written in 1791: "In Shipton Mallet was anciently set up a tumbrel for the 
correction of unquiet women." Other names for a like engine were gumstool 
and coqueen-stool.

Many and manifold are the allusions to the ducking-stool in English 
literature. In a volume called Miscel/aneous Poems, written by Benjamin 
West and published in 1780, is a descriptive poem entitled The Ducking 
stool, which runs thus

"There stands, my friend, in yonder pool
An engine called the ducking-stool;
By legal power commanded down
The joy and terror of the town.
If jarring females kindle strife,
Give language foul, or lug the coif,
If noisy dames should once begin
To drive the house with horrid din,
Away, you cry, you'll grace the stool;
We'll teach you how your tongue to rule.
The fair offender fills the seat
In sullen pomp, profoundly great;
Down in the deep the stool descends,
But here, at first, we miss our ends;
She mounts again and rages more
Than ever vixen did before.
So, throwing water on the fire
Will make it but burn up the higher.
If so, my friend, pray let her take
A second turn into the lake,
And, rather than your patience lose,
Thrice and again repeat the dose.
No brawling wives, no furious wenches,
No fire so hot but water quenches."

In Scotland "flyting queans" sat in ignominy in cucking-stools. Bessie 
Spens was admonished: "Gif she be found flyteing with any neighbour, man 
or wife, and specially gains Jonet Arthe, she shall be put on the cuck-
stule and sit there twenty-four hours." A worthless fellow, Sande Hay, 
"for troublance made upon Andro Watson, is discernit for his demerits to 
be put in the cuck-stule, there to remain till four hours after noon." The 
length of time of punishment -- usually twenty-four hours -- would plainly 
show there was no attendant ducking; and this cuck-stool, or cucking-
stool, must not be confounded with the ducking-stool, which dates to the 
days of Edward the Confessor. The cuck-stool was simply a strong chair in 
which an offender was fastened, thus to be hooted at or pelted at by the 
mob. Sometimes, when placed on a tumbrel, it was used for ducking.

At the time of the colonization of America the ducking-stool was at the 
height of its English reign; and apparently the amiability of the lower 
classes was equally at ebb. The colonists brought their tempers to the new 
land, and they brought their ducking-stools. Many minor and some great 
historians of this country have called the ducking-stool a Puritan 
punishment. I have never found in the hundreds of pages of court records 
that I have examined a single entry of an execution of ducking in any 
Puritan community; while in the "cavalier colonies," so called, in 
Virginia and the Carolinas, and in Quaker Pennsylvania, many duckings took 
place, and in law survived as long as similar punishments in England.

In the Statute Books of Virginia from Dale's time onward many laws may be 
found designed to silence idle tongues by ducking One reads:

"Whereas oftentimes many brabling women often slander and scandalize their 
neighbours, for which their poore husbands are often brought into 
chargeable and vexatious suits and cast in great damages, be it enacted 
that all women found guilty be sentenced to ducking."

Others dated 1662 are most explicit.

"The court in every county shall cause to be set up near a Court House a 
Pillory, a pair of Stocks, a Whipping Post and a Ducking-Stool in such 
place as they think convenient, which not being set up within six month 
after the date of this act the said Court shall be fined 5,000 lbs. of 
tobacco.

"In actions of slander caused by a man s wife, after judgment past for 
damages, the woman shall be punished by Ducking, and if the slander be 
such as the damages shall be adjudged as above 500 lbs. of Tobacco, then 
the woman shall have ducking for every 500 lbs. of Tobacco adjudged 
against the husband if he refuse to pay the Tobacco."

The fee of a sheriff or constable for ducking was twenty pounds of tobacco.

The American Historical Record, Vol. 1, gives a letter said to have been 
written to Governor Endicott, of Massachusetts, in 1634, by one Thomas 
Hartley, from Hungars Parish, Virginia. It gives a graphic description of 
a ducking-stool, and an account of a ducking in Virginia. I quote from it:

"The day afore yesterday at two of ye clock in ye afternoon I saw this 
punishment given to one Betsey wife of John Tucker who by ye violence of 
her tongue has made his house and ye neighborhood uncomfortable. She was 
taken to ye pond near where I am sojourning by ye officer who was joined 
by ye Magistrate and ye Minister Mr. Cotton who had frequently admonished 
her and a large number of People. They had a machine for ye purpose yt 
belongs to ye Parish, and which I was so told had been so used three times 
this Summer. It is a platform with 4 small rollers or wheels and two 
upright posts between which works a Lever by a Rope fastened to its 
shorter or heavier end. At ye end of ye longer arm is fixed a stool upon 
which sd Betsey was fastened by cords, her gown tied fast around her 
feete. The Machine was then moved up to ye edge of ye pond, ye Rope was 
slackened by ye officer and ye woman was allowed to go down under ye water 
for ye space of half a minute. Betsey had a stout stomach, and would not 
yield until she had allowed herself to be ducked 5 several times. At 
length she cried piteously, Let me go Let me go, by God's help I'll sin no 
more. Then they drew back ye Machine, untied ye Ropes and let her walk 
home in her wetted clothes a hopefully penitent woman."

Bishop Meade, in his Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Yirginia, 
tells of a "scolding quean" who was ordered to be ducked three times from 
the yard arm of a vessel lying in James Rver. A woman in Northampton 
County, Virginia, suffered a peculiarly degrading punishment for slander. 
In the lack of a ducking-stool she was "drawen ouer the Kings Creeke at 
the starne of a boate or Canoux, also the next Saboth day in the time of 
diuine seruise" was obliged to present herself before the minister and 
congregation and acknowledge her fault and beg forgiveness. From the 
Decisions of Virginia General Court now being printed by the Virginia 
Historical Society, we learn of one Margaret Jones that at a court held at 
"James-Citty" on the 12th of October, 1626: "for ye severall offences 
aforenamed, of ye said Margaret Jones, yt Shee bee toughed or dragged at a 
boats Starne in ye River from ye shoare unto the Margaret & John and 
thence unto the shoare againe."

Toughed would seem a truly appropriate word for this ordeal. The provost 
marshal's fees decreed by this court at this time were ten shillings "for 
punishing any man by ducking."

In 1633 two women were sentenced to be either drawn from King's Creek 
"from one Cowpen to another at the starn of a boat or kanew," or to 
present themselves before the congregation and ask public forgiveness of 
each other and God.

In 1633 it was ordered that a ducking- stool be built in every county in 
Maryland, but I have no proof that they were ever built or used, though it 
is probable they were. At a court-baron at St. Clements, the county was 
prosecuted for not having one of these "public conveniences."

Half a century elapsed after the settlement of Massachusetts ere that 
commonwealth ordered a ducking-stool. On the 15th of May, 1672, while 
Richard Bellingham was Governor, the court at Massachusetts Bay passed 
this law:

"Whereas there is no expresse punishment by any law hitherto established 
affixed to the evill practise of sundry persons by exorbitancy of the 
tonge in rayling and scolding, it is therefore ordered, that all such 
persons convicted, before any Court or magistrate that hath propper 
cognizance of the cause for rayling or scolding, shalbe gagged or sett in 
a ducking stoole & dipt ouer head & eares three times in some convenient 
place of fresh or salt water as the Court or magistrate shall judge meete."

Governor Bellingham's sister was a notorious scold, who suffered death as 
a witch.

John Dunton, writing from Boston in 1686, does not note the presence of a 
ducking-stool, but says

"Scolds they gag and set them at their own Doors for certain hours 
together, for all comers and goers to gaze at; were this a Law in England 
and well executed it wou'd in a little Time prove an Effectual Remedy to 
cure the Noise that is in many Women's heads."

This was a law well-executed at the time in Scotland, though Dunton was 
ignorant of it.

There are no entries to show that the law authorizing ducking ever was 
executed in Massachusetts nor in Maine, where a dozen towns -- Kittery, 
York and others -- were fined for "having no coucking-stool." It was 
ordered on Long Island that every Court of Sessions should have a ducking-
stool; but nothing exists in their records to prove that the order was 
ever executed, or any Long Island woman ducked; nor is there proof that 
there was in New York city a ducking-stool, though orders were issued for 
one; a Lutheran minister of that city excused himself for striking a woman 
who angered him by her "scholding" because she was not punished by law 
therefor.

Pennsylvania, mild with the thees and thous of non-belligerent Quakers, 
did not escape scolding women. In 1708 the Common Council of Philadelphia 
ordered a ducking-stool to be built. In 1718 it was still lacking, and 
still desired, and still necessary.

"Whereas it has been frequently and often presented by several former 
Grand Jurys for this City the Necessity of a Ducking-stool and house of 
Correction for the just punishment of scolding Drunken Women, as well as 
divers other profligate and Unruly persons in this Town who are become a 
Publick Nuisance and disturbance to the Town in Generall, Therefore we the 
present Grand Jury Do Earnestly again present the same to the Court of 
Quarter Sessions for the City Desireing their Immediate Care That these 
Public Conveniances may not be any Longer Delay'd but with all possible 
Speed provided for the Detention and Quieting such Disorderly Persons."

For several years later the magistrates clamored for a ducking-stool, and 
the following indictment was brought against an unruly woman:

"City of Philadelphia. We the grand Inquest for our Lord the King upon 
respective oaths and affirmations Do present that Mary wife of John Austin 
late of Philadelphia, Cordwainer, the twenty-ninth day of September and 
divers other days and times as well before as after in the High City Ward 
in the City afforsd within the Jurisdiction of this Court was and yet is a 
Common Scold, And the Peace of our Lord the King a common and publick 
Disturber, And Strife and Debate among her neighbours a Comon Sower and 
Mover, To the Great Disburbance of the Leige Subjects of our sd Lord the 
King Inhabiting the City afforsd, And to the Evill Example of other Such 
Cases & Delinquents And also agt the Peace of our Lord the King his Crown 
and Dignity."

As late as 1824 a Philadelphia scold was sentenced by this same Court of 
Sessions to be ducked; but the punishment was not inflicted, as it was 
deemed obsolete and contrary to the spirit of the time.

In 1777 a ducking-school was ordered at the confluence of the Ohio and 
Monongahela rivers -- and doubtless it was erected and used.

In the year 1811, at the Supreme Court at Milledgeville, Georgia, one 
"Miss Palmer, who, the account says, "seems to have been rather glib on 
the tongue," was indicted, tried convicted and punished for scolding, by 
being publicly ducked in the Oconee River. The editor adds: "Numerous 
spectators attended the execution of the sentence." Eight years later the 
Grand Jury of Burke County, of the same state, presented Mary Cammell as a 
"common scold and disturber of the peacable inhabitants of the County." 
The Augusta Chronicle says this of the indictment:

"We do not know the penalty, or if there be any, attached to the offense 
of scolding; but for the information of our Burke neighbours we would 
inform them that the late lamented and distinguished Judge Early decided, 
some years since, when a modern Xantippe was brought before him, that she 
should undergo the punishment of lustration by immersion three several 
times in the Oconee. Accordingly she was confined to the tail of a cart, 
and, accompanied by the hooting of a mob, conducted to the river, where 
she was publicly ducked, in conformity with the sentence of the court. 
Should this punishment be accorded Mary Cammell, we hope, however, it may 
be attended with a more salutary effect than in the case we have just 
alluded to -- the unruly subject of which, each time as she rose from the 
watery element, impiously exclaimed, with a ludicrous gravity of 
countenance, 'Glory to God.'"

It is doubtful whether these Georgia duckings were done with a regularly 
constructed ducking-stool; the cart was probably run down into the water.

One of the latest, and certainly the most notorious sentences to ducking 
was that of Mrs. Anne Royal, of Washington, D. C., almost in our own day. 
This extraordinary woman had lived through an eventful career in love and 
adventure; she had been stolen by the Indians when a child, and kept by 
them fifteen years; then she was married to Captain Royall, and taught to 
read and write. She traveled much, and wrote several vituperatively 
amusing books. She settled down upon Washington society as editor of a 
newspaper called the "Washington Paul Pry"' and of another, the " 
Huntress"; and she soon terrorized the place. No one in public office was 
spared, either in personal or printed abuse, if any offense or neglect was 
given to her. A persistent lobbyist, she was shunned like the plague by 
all congressmen. John Quincy Adams called her an itinerant virago. She was 
arraigned as a common scold before Judge William Cranch, and he sentenced 
her to be ducked in the Potomac River. She was, however, released with a 
fine, and appears to us to-day to have been insane -- possibly through 
over-humored temper. 



CHAPTER III. THE STOCKS

One of the earliest institutions in every New England community was a pair 
of stocks. The first public building was a meeting-house, but often before 
any house of God was builded, the devil got his restraining engine. It was 
a true English punishment, and to a degree, a Scotch; and was of most 
ancient date. In the Cambridge Trinity College Psalter, an illuminated 
manuscript illustrating the manners of the twelfth century, may be seen 
the quaint pictures of two men sitting in the stocks, while two others 
flout them. So essential to due order and government were the stocks that 
every village had them. Sometimes they were movable and often were kept in 
the church porch, a sober Sunday monitor. Shakespeare says in King Lear:

"Fetch forth the stocks
You stubborn ancient knave!"

In England, petty thieves, unruly servants, wife-beaters, hedge-tearers, 
vagrants, Sabbath-breakers, revilers, gamblers, drunkards, ballad-singers, 
fortune-tellers, traveling musicians and a variety of other offenders, 
were all punished by the stocks. Doubtless the most notable person ever 
set in the stocks for drinking too freely was that great man, Cardinal 
Wolsey. About the year 1500 he was the incumbent at Lymington, and getting 
drunk at a village feast, he was seen by Sir Amyas Poulett, a strict 
moralist, and local justice of the peace, who humiliated the embryo 
cardinal by thrusting him in the stocks.

The Boston magistrates had a "pair of bilbowes" doubtless brought from 
England; but these were only temporary, and soon stocks were ordered. It 
is a fair example of the humorous side of Puritan law so frequently and 
unwittingly displayed that the first malefactor set in these strong new 
stocks was the carpenter who made them:

"Edward Palmer for his extortion in taking £1, 13s., 7d. for the plank and 
wood work of Boston stocks is fyned £5 & censured to bee sett an houre in 
the stocks,"

Thus did our ancestors make the "punishment fit the crime." It certainly 
was rather a steep charge, for Carpenter Robert Bartlett of New London 
made not long after "a pair of stocks with nine holes fitted for the
irons," and only charged thirteen shillings and fourpence for his work. 
The carpenter of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, likewise, as Pepys said of a 
new pair of stocks in his neighborhood, took handsel of the stocks of his 
own making.

In Virginia a somewhat kindred case was that of one Mr. Henry Charlton of 
Hungar's Parish in 1633. For slandering the minister, Mr. Cotton, Charlton 
was ordered "to make a pair of stocks and set in them several Sabbath days 
after divine service, and then ask Mr. Cotton's forgiveness for using 
offensive words concerning him."

In Maryland in 1655 another case may be cited. One William Bramhall having 
been convicted of signing a rebellious petition, was for a second offense 
of like nature ordered to be "at the Charge of Building a Pair of Stocks 
and see it finished within one Month." There is no reference to his 
punishment through the stocks of his own manufacture.

With a regard for the comfort of the criminal strangely at variance with 
what Cotton Mather termed "the Gust of the Age," and a profound submission 
to New England climate, a Massachusetts law; enacted June 18, 1645, 
declares that "he yt offens in excessive and longe drinkinge, he shalbe 
sett in the stocks for three howers when the weather is seasonable."

Just as soon as the Boston stocks had been well warmed by Carpenter Palmer 
they promptly started on a well-filled career of usefulness. They gathered 
in James Luxford, who had been "psented for having two wifes." He had to 
pay a fine of £100 and be set in the stocks one hour upon the following 
market-day after lecture, and on the next lecture-day also, where he could 
be plainly seen by every maid and widow in the little town, that there 
might be no wife Number Three. Then a watchman of the town, "for drinking 
several times of strong waters," took his turn. Soon a man for "uncivil 
carriages" was "stocked."

Every town was enjoined to build stocks. In 1655 Medfield had stocks, and 
in 1638 Newbury and Concord were fined for "the want of stocks," and 
Newbury was given time till the next court session to build them. The town 
obeyed the order, and soon John Perry was set in them for his "abusive 
carriage to his wife and child." Dedham and Watertown were "psent'd" in 
1639 for "the want of stocks." Ipswich already had them, for John Wedgwood 
that same year was set in the stocks simply for being in the company of 
drunkards. In Yarmouth, a thief who stole flax and yarn, and in Rehoboth, 
one who stole an Indian child, were "stocked." Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 
built stocks and a cage. Plymouth had a constant relay of Quakers to keep 
her stocks from ever lying idle, as well as other offenders, such as Ann 
Savory, of unsavory memory. Rhode Island ordered "good sufficient stocks" 
in every town. In the southern and central colonies the stocks were a 
constant force. The Dutch favored the pillory and whipping-post, but a few 
towns had stocks. We find the Heer officer in Beverwyck (Albany) 
dispensing justice in a most summary manner. When Martin de Metslaer 
wounded another in a drunken brawl, the authorities hunted Martin up, 
"early hauled him out of bed and set him in the stocks." Connecticut was a 
firm advocate of the stocks, and plentiful examples might be given under 
New Haven and Connecticut laws.

Web Adey, who was evidently a "single-man," for "two breaches of the 
Saboth" was ordered to be set in the stocks, then to find a master, and if 
not complying with this second order the town would find one for him and 
sell him for a term of service. This was the arbitrary and not unusual 
method of disposing of lazy, lawless and even lonely men, as well as of 
more hardened criminals, who, when sold for a term of service, usually got 
into fresh disgrace and punishment through disobedience, idleness and 
running away.

I do not find many sentences of women to be set in the stocks. Jane 
Boulton of Plymouth was stocked for reviling the magistrates; one of her 
neighbors sat in the stocks and watched her husband take a flogging. Goody 
Gregory of Springfield in 1640, being grievously angered by a neighbor, 
profanely abused her, saying "Before God I could break thy head." She 
acknowledged her "great sine and fault" like a woman, but she paid her 
fine and sat in the stocks like a man, since she swore like one.

And it should be noted that the stocks were not for the punishment of 
gentlemen, they were thoroughly plebeian. The pillory was aristocratic in 
comparison, as was also branding with a hot iron.

Fiercely hedged around was divine worship. The stocks added their 
restraint by threatened use. "All persons who stand out of the meeting-
house during time of service, to be set in the stocks."

In Plymouth in 1665 "all persons being without the dores att the meeting 
house on the Lords daies in houres of exercise, demeaneing themselves by 
jesting, sleeping and the like, if they shall psist in such practices hee 
(the tithing-man) shall sett them in the stocks."

Regard for church and state were often combined by making public 
confession of sin in church with punishment in front of the church after 
the service. This was simply a carrying out of English customs. Mr. 
Hamilton, author of that interesting book, Quarter Sessions from Queen 
Elizaheth to Queen Anne, says, dealing with Devonshue:

"A favorite punishment for small offenses, such as resisting the 
constable, was the stocks. The offender had to come into the church at 
morning prayer, and say publicly that he was sorry; he was then set in the 
stocks until the end of the evening prayer. The punishment was generally 
repeated on the next market-day."

It seems scarcely necessary to describe the shape and appearance of 
stocks, for pictures of them are so common. They were formed by two heavy 
timbers the upper one of which could be raised, and when lowered, was held 
in place by a lock. In these two timbers were cut two half-circle notches 
which met two similar notches when the upper timber was in place and thus 
formed round holes, holding firmly in place the legs of the imprisoned 
culprit; sometimes the arms were thrust into smaller holes similarly 
formed. Usually, however, the culprit sat on a low bench with simply his 
legs confined. Thus securely restrained, he was powerless to escape the 
jests and jeers of every idler in the community.

The stocks were the scene of many striking figures, and many amusing ones; 
what a sight was that when an English actor who had caused the playing of 
the Midsummer-Night's Dream in the very house of the Bishop of Lincoln, 
and on Sunday, too, was set in stocks at the Bishop's gate with an ass's 
head beside him and a wisp of hay -- in derision of the part he had 
played, that of Bottom the weaver. This in 1631-- after both Plymouth and 
Boston had been settled.

And the stocks were not without their farcical side in New England. 
Governor Winthrop's account of the exploits of a Boston Dogberry in 1644 
is certainly amusing.

"There fell out a troublesome business in Boston. An English sailor 
happened to be drunk, and was carried to his lodging, and the constable (a 
godly man and much zealous against such disorders), hearing of it, found 
him out, being upon his bed asleep, so he awaked him, and led him to the 
stocks, no magistrate being at home. He being in the stocks, one of La 
Tour's French gentlemen visitors in Boston lifted up the stocks and let 
him out. The constable, hearing of it, went to the Frenchman (being then 
gone and quiet) and would needs carry him to the stocks. The Frenchman 
offered to yield himself to go to prison, but the constable, not 
understanding his language pressed him to go to the stocks: the Frenchman 
resisted and drew his sword; with that company came in and disarmed him, 
and carried him by force to the stocks, but soon after the constable took 
him out and carried him to prison, and presently after, took him forth 
again, and delivered him to La Tour. Much tumult was there about this: 
many Frenchmen were in town, and other strangers, who were not satisfied 
with this dealing of the constable yet were quiet. In the morning the 
magistrate examined the cause, and sent for La Tour, who was much grieved 
for his servant's miscarriage, and also for the disgrace put upon him (for 
in France it is a most ignominious thing to be laid in the stocks), but 
yet he complained not of any injury, but left him wholly with the 
magistrates to do with him what they pleased, etc. . . .

The constable was the occasion of all this transgressing the bounds of his 
office and that in six things. 1. In fetching a man out of his lodging 
that was asleep upon his bed and without anv warrant from authority. 2. In 
not putting a hook upon the stocks, nor setting some to guard them. 3. In 
laying hands upon the Frenchman that had opened the stocks when he was 
gone and quiet. 4. In carrying him to prison without warrant. 5. In 
delivering him out of prison without warrant. 6. In putting such a 
reproach upon a stranger and a gentleman when there was no need, for he 
knew he would be forthcoming and the magistrate would be at home that 
evening; but such are the fruits of ignorant and misguided zeal. . . . But 
the magistrates thought not convenient to lay these things to the 
constable's charge before the assembly, but rather to admonish him for it 
in private, lest they should have discouraged and discountenanced an 
honest officer."

Truly this is a striking and picturesque scene in colonial life, one 
worthy of Hogarth's pencil. The bronzed English sailor, inflamed with 
drink, ear-ringed, pigtailed, with short, wide, flapping trousers and 
brave with sash and shining cutlass; the gay, volatile French-man, in the 
beautiful and courtly dress of his day and nation, all laces and falbalas; 
and the solemn pragmatic Puritan tipstaff, with long wand of black and 
white, and horn lanthorn, with close-cropped head, sad-colored in 
garments, severe of feature, zealous in duty; and the spectators standing 
staring at the stocks; Indian stragglers, fair Puritan maidens, fierce 
sailor-men, a pious preacher or sober magistrate -- no lack of local color 
in that picture.

It is interesting to note in all the colonies the attempt to exterminate 
all idle folk and idle ways. The severity of the penalties were so 
salutary in effect, that as Mrs. Goodwin says in her Colonial Cavalier, 
they soon would have exterminated even that social pest, the modern tramp. 
Vagrants, and those who were styled "transients," were fiercely abhorred 
and cruelly spurned. I have found by comparison of town records that they 
were often whipped from town to town, only to be thrust forth in a few 
weeks with fresh stripes to another grudged resting place. Such entries as 
this of the town of Westerly, Rhode Island, might be produced in scores:

"September 26, 1748. That the officer shall take the said transient 
forthwith to some publick place in this town and strip him from the waist 
upward, & whyp him twenty strypes well layd on his naked back, and then be 
by said officer transported out of this town."

The appearance of crime likewise had to be avoided. In 1635 Thomas Petet 
"for suspition of slander, idleness and stubbornness is to be severely 
whipt and kept in hold."

More shocking and still more summary was the punishment meted out to a 
Frenchman who was suspected only of setting fire to Boston in the year 
1679. He was ordered to stand in the pillory, have both ears cut off, pay 
the charges of the court, and lie in prison in bonds of five hundred 
pounds until sentence was performed.

These Massachusetts magistrates were not the only ones to sentence 
punishment on suspicion. In Scotland one Richardson, a tailor, being 
"accusit of pickrie," or pilfering, was adjudged to be punished with 
"twelve straiks with ane double belt because there could be nae sufficient 
proof gotten, but vehement suspition."

Writing of punishments of bygone days, an English rhymester says:

"Each mode has served its turn, and played a part
For good or ill with man; but while the bane
Of drunkenness corrupts the nation's heart --
Discrediting our age -- methinks the reign
Of stocks, at least, were well revived again."

There is, in truth, a certain fitness in setting in the stocks for 
drunkenness; a firm confining of the wandering uncertain legs; a fixing in 
one spot for quiet growing sober, and meditating on the misery of 
drunkenness, a fitness that with the extreme of publicity removed, or the 
wantonness of the spectators curbed, perhaps would not be so bad a 
restraining punishment after all. Some of the greatness and self-control 
of the later years of Cardinal Wolsey's life may have come from those 
hours of mortification and meditation spent in the stocks. And over the 
stocks might be set "a paper" as of yore, bearing in capital letters the 
old epitaph found in solemn warning of eternity on many an ancient 
tombstone but literally applicable in this temporal matter.

"All Ye who see the State of Me
Think of the Glass that Runs for Thee."



CHAPTER IV. THE PILLORY

Hawthorne says in his immortal Scarlet Letter: "This scaffold constituted 
a portion of a penal machine which now, for two or three generations past, 
has been merely historical or traditionary among us, but was held in the 
old time to be as effectual in the promotion of good citizenship as ever 
was the guillotine among the terrorists of France. It was, in short, the 
platform of the pillory; and above it rose the framework of that 
instrument of discipline, so fashioned as to confine the human head in its 
tight grasp, and thus hold it up to the public gaze. The very ideal of 
ignominy was embodied and made manifest in this contrivance of wood and 
iron. There can be no outrage, methinks -- against our common nature -- 
whatever be the delinquencies of the individual -- no outrage more 
flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his face for shame."

This "essence of punishment" -- the pillory or stretch-neck -- can be 
traced back to a remote period in England and on the Continent -- 
certainly to the twelfth century. In its history, tragedy and comedy are 
equally blended; and martyrdom and obloquy are alike combined. Seen in a 
prominent position in every village and town, its familiarity of presence 
was its only retrieving characteristic; near church-yard and in public 
square was it ever found; local authorities forfeited the right to hold a 
market unless they had a pillory ready for use.

A description of a pillory is not necessary to one who has read any 
illustrated history of the English Church, of the Quakers, Dissenters, or 
of the English people; for the rude prints of political and religious 
sufferers in the pillory have been often reproduced. Douce, in his 
Illustrations of Shakespeare gives six different forms of the pillory. It 
was an upright board, hinged or divisible in twain, with a hole in which 
the head was set fast, and usually with two openings also for the hands. 
Often the ears were nailed to the wood on either side of the head-hole. 
Examples exist of a small finger-pillory or thumb-stocks, but are rare.

It would be impossible to enumerate the offences for which Englishmen were 
pilloried: among them were treason, sedition, arson, blasphemy, witch-
craft, perjury, wife-beating, cheating, forestalling, forging, coin-
clipping, tree-polling, gaming, dice-cogging, quarrelling, lying, 
libelling, slandering, threatening, conjuring, fortune-telling,
"prigging," drunkenness, impudence. One man was set in the pillory for 
delivering false dinner invitations; another for a rough practical joke; 
another for selling an injurious quack medicine. All sharpers, beggars, 
impostors, vagabonds, were liable to be pilloried. So fierce sometimes was 
the attack of the populace with various annoying and heavy missiles on 
pilloried prisoners that several deaths are known to have ensued. On the 
other side, it is told in Chamber's Book of Days that a prisoner, by the 
sudden collapse of a rotten footboard, was left hanging by his neck in 
danger of his life. On being liberated he brought action against the town 
and received damages.

The pillory in England has seen many a noble victim. The history of 
Puritanism, of Reformation, is filled with hundreds of pages of accounts 
of sufferings on the pillory. When such names as those of Leighton, 
Prynne, Lilburne, Burton and Bastwick appear as thus being punished we do 
not think of the pillory as a scaffold for felons, but as a platform for 
heroes. Who can read unmoved that painful, that pathetic account of the 
punishment of Dr. Bastwick. His weeping wife stood on a stool and kissed 
his poor pilloried face, and when his ears were cut off she placed them in 
a clean handkerchief and took them away, with emotions unspeakable and 
undying love.

De Foe said, in his famous Hymn to the Pillory:

"Tell us, great engine, how to understand
Or reconcile the justice of this land;
How Bastwick, Prynne, Hunt, Hollingsby and Pye --
Men of unspotted honesty --
Men that had learning, wit and sense,
And more than most men have had since,
Could equal title to thee claim
With Oates and Fuller, men of fouler fame."

Lecture-day, as affording in New England, in the pious community, the 
largest gathermg of reproving spectators, was the day chosen in preference 
for the performance of public punishment by the pillory. Hawthorne says of 
the Thursday Lecture: "The tokens of its observance are of a questionable 
cast. It is in one sense a day of public shame; the day on which 
transgressors who have made themselves liable to the minor severities of 
the Puritan law receive their reward of ignominy." Thus Nicholas Olmstead, 
in Connecticut, is to "stand on the pillory at Hartford the next lecture-
day." He was to be "sett on a lytle before the beginning and to stay 
thereon a lytle after the end."

The disgrace of the pillory clung, though the offence punished was not 
disgraceful. Thus in the year 1697 a citizen of Braintree, William Veasey, 
was set in the pillory for ploughing on a Thanksgiving day, which had been 
appointed in gratitude for the escape of King William from assassination. 
The stiff old Braintree rebel declared that James II was his rightful 
king. Five years later Veasey was elected a member of the General Court, 
but was not permitted to serve as he had been in the pillory.

Throughout the Massachusetts jurisdiction the pillory was in use. In 1671 
one Mr. Thomas Withers for "surriptisiously endeavoring to prevent the 
Providence of God by putting in several votes for himself as an officer at 
a town meeting" was ordered to stand two hours in the pillory at York, 
Maine. Shortly after (for he was an ingenious rogue) he was similarly 
punished for "an irregular way of contribution," for putting large sums of 
money into the contribution box in meeting to induce others to give 
largely, and then again "surriptisiously" taking his gift back again.

There was no offense in the southern colonies more deplored, more 
reprobated, more legislated against than what was known as " ingrossing, 
forestalling, or regrating."

This was what would to-day be termed a brokerage or speculative sale, such 
as buying a cargo about to arrive, and selling at retail, buying a large 
quantity of any goods in a market to re-sell, or any form of huckstering. 
Its prevalence was held to cause dearth, famine and despair; English 
"regratours" and forestallers were frequently pilloried. Even in Piers 
Plowman we read:

"For these aren men on this molde that moste harm worcheth,
To the pore peple that parcel-mele buyggen
Thei rychen thorow regraterye."

The state archives of Maryland are full of acts and resolves about 
forestallers, etc., and severe punishments were decreed. It was, in truth, 
the curse of that colony. All our merchandise brokers to-day would in 
those days have been liable to be thrust in prison or pillory.

In the year 1648 I learn from the Maryland archives that one John Goneere, 
for perjury, was "nayled by both eares to the pillory 3 nailes in each 
eare and the nailes to be slitt out, and whipped 20 good lashes." The same 
year Blanch Howell wilfully, unsolicited and unasked, committed perjury. 
The "sd Blanche shall stand nayled in the Pillory and loose both her 
eares." Both those sentences were "exequuted."

In New York the pillory was used. Under Dutch rule, Mesaack Maartens, 
accused of stealing cabbages from Jansen, the ship-carpenter living on 't 
maagde paatje, was sentenced to stand in the pillory with cabbages on his 
head. Truly this was a striking sight. Dishonest bakers were set in the 
pillory with dough on their heads. At the trial of this Mesaack Maartens, 
he was tortured to make him confess. Other criminals in New York bore 
torture; a sailor -- wrongfully, as was proven --a woman, for stealing 
stockings. At the time of the Slave Riots cruel tortures were inflicted. 
Yet to Massachusetts, under the excitement and superstition caused by that 
tragedy in New England history, the witchcraft trials, is forever accorded 
the disgrace that one of her citizens was pressed to death, one Giles 
Corey. The story of his death is too painful for recital.

Mr. Channing wrote an interesting account of the Newport of the early 
years of this century. He says of crimes and criminals in that town at 
that time:

"The public modes of punishment established by law were four, viz.: 
executions by hanging, whipping of men at the cart-tail, whipping of women 
in the jail-yard, and the elevation of counterfeiters and the like to a 
movable pillory, which turned on its base so as to front north, south, 
east and west in succession, remaining at each point a quarter of an hour. 
During this execution of the majesty of the law the neck of the culprit 
was bent to a most uncomfortable curve, presenting a facial mark for those 
salutations of stale eggs which seemed to have been preserved for the 
occasion. The place selected for the infliction of this punishment was in 
front of the State House."

A conviction and sentence in Newport in 1771 was thus reported in the 
daily news- papers, among others the Essex Gazette of April 23:

"William Carlisle was convicted of passing Counterfeit Dollars, and 
sentenced to stand One Hour in the Pillory on Little-Rest Hill, next 
Friday, to have both Ears cropped, to be branded on both Cheeks with the 
Letter R, to pay a fine of One Hundred Dollars and Cost of Prosecution, 
and to stand committed till Sentence performed."

Severe everywhere were the punishments awarded to counterfeiters. The 
Continental bills bore this line: "To counterfeit this bill is Death." In 
1762 Jeremiah Dexter of Walpole, for passing on two counterfeit dollars, 
"knowing them to be such," stood in the pillory for an hour; another 
rogue, for the same offense, had his ears cropped.

Mr. Samuel Breck, speaking of methods of punishment in his boyhood in 
Boston, in 1771, said:

"A little further up State Street was to be seen the pillory with three or 
four fellows fastened by the head and hands, and standing for an hour in 
that helpless posture, exposed to gross and cruel jeers from the 
multitude, who pelted them constantly with rotten eggs and every repulsive 
kind of garbage that could be collected."

Instances of punishment in Boston by the pillory of both men and women are 
many. In the Boston Post-Boy of February, 1763, I read:

"BOSTON, JANUARY 31. -- At the Superiour Court held at Charlestown last 
Week, Samuel Bacon of Bedford, and Meriam Fitch wife of Benjamin Fitch of 
said Bedford, were convicted of being notorious Cheats, and of having by 
Fraud, Craft and Deceit, possess'd themselves of Fifteen Hundred Johannes 
the property of a third Person; were sentenced to be each of them set in 
the Pillory one Hour, with a Paper on each of their Breasts and the words 
A CHEAT wrote in Capitals thereon, to suffer three months' imprisonment, 
and to be bound to their good Behaviour for one Year and to pay Costs."

From the Boston Chronicle, November 20, 1769:

"We learn from Worcester that on the eighth instant one Lindsay stood in 
the Pillory there one hour, after which he received 30 stripes at the 
public whipping-post, and was then branded in the hand his crime was 
Forgery."

The use of the pillory in New England extended into this century. On the 
15th of January, 1801, one Hawkins, for the crime of forgery, stood for an 
hour in a pillory in Salem, and bad his ears cropped. The pillory was in 
use in Boston, certainly as late as 1803. In March of that year the 
brigantine "Hannah" was criminally sunk at sea by its owner Robert 
Pierpont and its master H. R. Story, to defraud the underwriters. The two 
criminals were sentenced after trial to stand one hour in the pillory in 
State Street on two days, be confined in prison for two years and pay the 
costs of the prosecution. As this case was termed "a transaction exceeding 
in infamy all that has hitherto appeared in the commerce of our country," 
this sentence does not seem severe.

The pillory lingered long in England. Lord Thurlow was eloquent in its 
defence, calling it "the restraint against licentiousness provided by the 
wisdom of past ages." In 1812 Lord Ellenborough, equally warm in his 
approval and endorsement, sentenced a blasphemer to the pillory for two 
hours, once each month, for eighteen months; and in 1814 he ordered Lord 
Cochrane, the famous sea-fighter of Brasque Roads fame, to be set in the 
pillory for spreading false news. But Sir Francis Burdett declared he 
would stand on the pillory by Lord Cochrane's side, and public opinion was 
more powerful than the Judge. By this time the pillory was rarely used 
save in cases of perjury. As late as 1830 a man was pilloried for that 
crime. In 1837 the pillory was ordered to be abandoned, by Act of 
Parliament; and in 1832 it was abolished in France. 



CHAPTER V. PUNISHMENTS OF AUTHORS AND BOOKS

The punishments of authors deserve a separate chapter; for since the days 
of Greece and Rome their woes have been many. The burning of condemned 
books begun in those ancient states. In the days of Augustus no less than 
twenty thousand volumes were consumed; among them, all the works of 
Labienus, who, in despair thereat, refused food, pined and died. His 
friend Cassius Severus, when he heard sentence pronounced, cried out in a 
loud voice that they must burn him also if they wished the books to 
perish, as he knew them all by heart.

The Bible fed the flames by order of Dioclesian. And in England the public 
hangman warmed his marrow at both literary and religious flames. Bishop 
Stockesly caused all the New Testament of Tindal's translation to be 
openly burnt in St. Paul's churchyard. On August 27, 1659, Milton's books 
were burnt by the hangman; Marlow's translations kept company. These 
vicarious sufferings were as nothing in the recital of the author's woes, 
for the sight of an author or a publisher with his ear nailed to a pillory 
was too common to be widely noted, for anyone who printed without 
permission could, by the law of the land, be thus treated; when the author 
was released, if his bleeding ear was left on the pillory, that did not 
matter. The rise of the Puritans and their public expression of faith is 
marked by most painful episodes for those unterrified men. Dr. Leighton, 
who wrote Zion's Plea Against Prelacy, paid dearly for calling the Queen a 
daughter of Heth, and Episcopacy satanical. He was degraded from the 
ministry, pilloried, branded, whipped, his ear was cut off, his nostril 
slit; he was fined £10,000 and languished eleven years in prison, only to 
be told on his tardy release, with the irony of fate, that his mutilation 
and imprisonment had been illegal.

In 1664 Benjamin Keach, a Baptist minister, was arraigned for writing and 
publishing a seditious book. His arrest was brought about by another 
minister named Disney, who, as his fellow-countrymen would say, "sings 
small" in the matter. Disney wrote "to his honoured friend Luke Wilkes, 
esqre, at Whitehall, with speed, these presents":

"Honour'd Sir And Loving Brother:

This Primmer owned by Benjamin Keach as the Author and bought by my man 
George Chilton for five pence of Henry Keach of Stableford Mill neare me, 
a miller; who then sayd that his brother Benjamin Keach is author of it, 
and that there are fiveteen hundred of them printed. This Benjamin Keach 
is a Tayler, and one that is a teacher in this new-fangled-way and lives 
at Winslow a market town in Buckinghamshire. Pray take some speedie course 
to acquaint my Lord Archbishop his Grace with it, whereby his authoritye 
may issue forth that ye impression may be seized upon before they be much 
more dispersed to ye poisoning of people; they containing (as I conceive) 
schismaticall factions and hereticall matter. Some are scattered in my 
parish, and perchance in no place sooner because he hath a sister here and 
some others of his gang, two whereof I have bought up. Pray let me have 
your speedie account of it. I doubt not but it will be taken as acceptable 
service to God's church and beleeve it a very thankeful obligement to
Honoured Sir,
Your truely Loving Brother,"
THOMAS DISNEY.

As a result of Disney's neighborly and zealous offices, Benjamin Keach was 
thus sentenced:

"That you shall go to gaol for a fortnight without bail or mainprise; and 
the next Saturday to stand upon the pillory at Ailsbury for the space of 
two hours, from eleven o'clock to one, with a paper on your head with this 
inscription: For writing, printing and publishing a schismatical book, 
entitled 'The Child's Instructor; or, a New and Easy Primmer.' And the 
next Thursday so stand, and in the same manner and for the same time, in 
the market of Winslow; and there your book shall be openly burnt before 
your face by the common hangman, in disgrace to you and your doctrine. And 
you shall forfeit to the King's Majesty the sum of £20, and shall remain 
in gaol till you find securities for your good behaviour and appearance at 
the next assizes, there to renounce your doctrine and to make such public 
submission as may be enjoined you.

Keach stood twice with head and hands set in the pillory, and his book was 
burnt, and his fine was paid; but never was he subdued, and never did he 
make recantation."

Pope wrote a well-known, oft-quoted, yet false line:

"Earless on high stood unabashed De Foe."
The great Daniel De Foe did stand on high on a pillory, but he was not 
earless. He was by birth and belief a Dissenter, and he wrote a severe 
satire against the Church party, entitled The Shortest Way with the 
Dissenters, which so ironically, and with such apparent soberness, reduced 
the argument of the intolerant to an absurdity, that for a short time it 
deceived zealous church-folk, who welcomed and praised it, but who turned 
on him with redoubled hatred when they finally perceived the satire. It 
was termed a scandalous and seditious pamphlet, and fifty pounds reward 
was offered for him. He was arrested, tried, pilloried in three places, 
and imprisoned for a year; but the Queen paid his fine for his release 
from prison, and his pillory was hung with garlands of flowers, and his 
health was drunk, and scraps of his vigorous doggerel from his Hymn to the 
Pillory passed from lip to lip.

Men that are men in thee can feel no pain
And all thy insignificants disdain
Contempt that false new word for shame
Is, without crime, an empty name. 
The first intent of laws
Was to correct the effect and check the cause
And all the ends of punishment
Were only future mischiefs to prevent.

But justice is inverted when
Those engines of the law
Instead of pinching vicious men
Keep honest ones in awe."

Williams, the bookseller, set in the pillory in the year 1765 for 
republishing the North Briton was also treated with marks of consideration 
and kindness. He held a sprig of laurel in his hand as he stood, and a 
purse of two hundred guineas for his benefit was collected in the crowd.

As times changed, so did opinions. The Bishop of Rochester denounced 
Martin Luther and all his works, and Luther's books were burned in the 
public squares. Puritan publications by the hundreds fed the flames; 
Quaker and Baptist books took their turns. Then the Parliamentary soldiers 
burned the Book of Common Prayer. In France, in the year 1790, the 
monasteries were ransacked and their books burned. In Paris eight hundred 
thousand were burned; in all France over four million: of these twenty-six 
thousand were in manuscript.

Crossing the Atlantic to a land void of printing presses could not silence 
Puritan authors. They still had pen and ink, and manuscripts could be sent 
back across the ocean to a land full of presses and type.

A rather amusing episode of early Massachusetts history anent authors 
happened in 1634, as may be found in Volume I, page 137, of the Colonial 
Records.

"Whereas Mr. Israel Stoughton hath written a certain book, which hath 
occasioned much trouble and offence to the Court; the said Mr. Stoughton 
did desire of the court, that the said book might be burnt, as being weak 
and offensive."

Such extraordinary and unparalleled modesty on the part of an author did 
not save Mr. Stoughton's bacon, for he was disabled from holding any 
office in the commonwealth for the space of three years. Winthrop said he 
used "weak arguments," all of which did not prevent his being a brave 
soldier in the Pequot Wars, and serving as a colonel in the Parliamentary 
army in England.

A fuller account of the trials of a Puritan author in a new land is told 
through notes taken from the court records. First may be given a 
declaration of the Court:

"The Generall Court, now sittinge at Boston, in New England, this 
sixteenth of October, 1650. There was brought to or hands a booke writen, 
as was therein subscribed, to William Pinchon, Gent, in New England, 
entituled The Meritorious Price of or Redemption, Justifycation, &c. 
clearinge it from some common Errors &c. which booke, brought ouer hither 
by a shippe a few dayes since and contayninge many errors & heresies 
generally condemned by all orthodox writers that we haue met with and haue 
judged it meete and necessary, for vindicatio of the truth, so far as in 
vs lyes, as also to keepe & pserue the people here committed to or care & 
trust in the true knowledge & faythe of or Lord Jesus Christ, & of or owne 
redemption by him, and likewise for the clearinge of orselves to or 
Christian brethren & others in England, (where this booke was printed & is 
dispersed), hereby to ptest or innocency, as being neither partyes nor 
priuy to the writinge, composinge, printinge, nor diuulging thereof; but 
that, on the contrary, we detest & abhorre many of the opinions & 
assertions therein as false, eronyous, & hereticall; yea, & whatsoeuer is 
contayned in the sd booke which are contrary to the Scriptures ofthe Old & 
New Testament, & the generall received doctrine ofthe orthodox churches 
extant since the time ofthe last & best reformation & for proffe and 
euidence of or sincere & playne meaninge therein, we doe hereby condemne 
the sd booke to be burned in the market place, at Boston, by the common 
executionor, & doe purpose with all convenient speede to convent the sd 
William Pinehon before authority, to find out whether the sd William 
Pinchon will owne the sd booke as his or not; which if he doth, we purpose 
(Gd willinge) to pceede with him accordinge to his demerits, vnles he 
retract the same, and giue full satisfaction both here & by some second 
writinge to be printed and dispersed in England; all of which we thought 
needfull, for the reasons aboue aleaged, to make knowne by this short 
ptestation & declaration. Also we further purpose, with what convenient 
speede we may, to appoynt some fitt psn to make a pticuler answer to all 
materiall & controuersyall passages in the sd booke, & to publish the same 
in print, that so the errors & falsityes therein may be fully discoued, 
the truth cleared, & the minds of those that loue & seeke after truth 
confirmed therein p curia."

"It is agreed vppon by the whole Court, that Mr. Norton, one of the reuend 
elders of Ipswich, should be intreated to answer Mr. Pinchon's booke with 
all convenient speed."

The sentence of this book to be burned by the common hangman was changed 
to be burned by some person appointed to the duty who would consent to 
perform it. It was not always easy to get a hangman.

In 1684 a man in Maryland "of tender years" was convicted of horse-
stealing and sentenced to death. A "private and secret" pardon was issued 
by the Assembly, but he was given no knowledge of it until he was conveyed 
to the place of execution and the rope placed round his neck, when he was 
respited on condition that he would perform the part for life of common 
hangman, which he did.

The hangman was usually some respited prisoner under sentence of death. In 
some shires in England, he had to be hung at last himself, else the power 
of possessing a hangman lapsed from the town. One hangman, mortally sick, 
was bolstered up by his friends with a shoemaker's bench and kit in front 
or him, pretending to work, and when the sheriffs came to seize him and 
carry him to the gallows, he did not seem very sick and they left the 
house without him. He died that night peaceably in bed. All these doings 
seem too barbarous for civilized England.

Thomas Maule was a Salem Quaker and an author. His book was ordered to be 
burned in 1695 in Boston market place. The diary of the Reverend Dr. 
Bentley says of him:

"Tho's Maule, shopkeeper of Salem, is brought before the Council to answer 
for his printing and publishing a pamphlet of 260 pages entitled "Truth 
held Forth and Maintained," owns the book but will not own all, till he 
sees his copy which is at New York with Bradford who printed it. Saith he 
writt to ye Gov'r of N. York before he could get it printed. Book is 
ordered to be burnt -- being stuff'd wth notorious lyes and scandals, and 
he recognizes to it next Court of Assize and gen'1 gaol delivery to be 
held for the County of Essex. He acknowledges that what was written 
concerning the circumstance of Major Gen. Atherton's death was a mistake, 
was chiefly insisted on against him, which I believe was a surprize to 
him, he expecting to be examined in some point of religion, as should seem 
by his bringing his Bible under his arm."

In 1654 the writings of John Reeves and Ludowick Muggleton, self-styled 
prophets, were burned in Boston market-place by that abhorred public 
functionary the hangman. Other Quaker books were similarly burned, and 
John Rogers of New London, who hated the Quakers, but whom the Boston 
magistrates persisted in regarding and classifying as a Quaker, had to see 
his books perish in the flames in company with Quaker publications. In 
1754 a pamphlet called The Monster of Monsters, a sharp criticism on the 
Massachusetts Court which caused much stir in provincial political 
circles, was burned by the hangman in King Street, Boston. We learn from 
the Connecticut Gazette that about the same time another offending 
publication was sentenced to be "publickly whipt according to Moses Law, 
with forty stripes save one, and then burnt." The true book-lover winces 
at the thought of the blood-stained hands of the hangman on any book, even 
though a "Monster."