Curious Punishments of Bygone Days

								

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 woodwork 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