Curious Punishments of Bygone Days

								

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.

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