Curious Punishments of Bygone Days

								

for the same offence, thus degrading them far and wide; and when in
Salem they were "sett in the stockes," we find always 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 wharfs; and the sweet-fern and
cedars on the common give forth a pungent dry hot scent that is wafted
down to the square where stands the Governor's house, the market, the
church, the 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 but 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 defensive 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 well-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 clogging bilboes, your body aches from the clamps of
your trumpery armor, but you will have to sit there in distress and in
obloquy 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 of the Boston bilboes was soon to end, it was to be
"laid flat," as Sir Matthew Hale would say; a rival entered the field.