of the mkett. before the vijth day of May next, and this to be done by order of the Justics wth in their sevall divisions.

3. Item yt is also ordered that euy inhabitant wthin the pishe. or towne wthin the county shall apphend euy Rogue & poore pson that shall come to his howse to aske relief or that he shall fynd in any out houses and grounds & them psently convey to the Constables, Tithingman or other Officer of the same place upon payne to be bound for his good behav', and yf the officer doo not psently cause the same poore pson or Rogue to be whipped untill his body be bloody and then make a passport according to the statute, that then euy suche officer shall forfeyt like wyse x for evy Rogue he shall leave unpunished or unconveyed accordinge to the statute, the same to be levied by distresse and sale of his goods and converted to the relief of the poore of the same place.

4. Itm yf any of the poore that are relieved by the pshe where they dwell or any other shall steale their neighbors wood, break hedges, mylke Kyne, or otherwise in their orchards, gardens, pastures, feilds, or corne grounds, shall any way annoye, trespas, or wrong them or any of them by whom they are relieved, or any other, upon just complaynt made by hym that is so annoyed to the Constable, Tithingman or Overseer, suche offendors shal be punished by whippinge in the howse of correction in the same parshe. 5. Itm, yt is ordered & agreed that there be watch ward and privy search made through this county the 1. 2. 3. dayes of May next followinge both day & night, And all suche Rogues, wanderers and suspected psons as shal be found in any of the said watches & searches, shal be punished accordinge to the statute, & after punishmt to be conveyed to the place where they were borne, or dwelt last by the space of one yeare, if their place of birth be not knowen.

By full consent.

It appears from the Corporation books that in 1599 John Welchman enjoyed the delectable office of whipping the poor, and that in 1602, the Corporation expended 5s. 8d. for four yards of gray frize for his coat. This official, in the reigns of the Stuarts,

1 In Notes and Queries [2nd S. viii. p. 494] is the following extract from the churchwardens account book at Bray which commences in 1602.

"Money laid out by the Constables, anno 1620.

was, at Newbury, Ogbourne St. George' and other places, known by the name of the Dog-rapper, as he was paid 4s. a year to beat the dogs out of the church.

In the Parishes of Claverley, in Shropshire, and Trysall, Staffordshire, the dog-rapper combined with that office the office of Awakener, as in the former Parish Mr. Richard Dovey, of Farmcote, by feoffment dated 23rd August, 1659, gave "a house and land situate at Claverley and Alveley, to John Sanders and others, their heirs and assigns in trust [inter alia] to pay yearly the sum of 8s. to a poor man of the said Parish who should undertake to awaken the sleepers, and to whip the dogs from the church of Claverley, during Divine service," and in the latter Parish, Mr. John Rudge, by his will dated 17th April, charged his lands at Seisdon, with "an annuity of 20s. a year payable at 5s. a quarter, to a poor man to go about the Parish Church of Trysull during Sermon, to keep the people awake, and to keep the dogs out of the Church."

The coate wch was for him that did whipp the rouges [sic] is now delivered this yth d. of May 1622 to Thomas Wynch by Richard Martine."

Our Editor, Canon Jackson, informs me that among the old Records of the Borough of Chippenham, there is in the "account of Wm. Gale's Bayly wicke, A.D. 1598" the following entry.

Ite. For canvass iiij ells to make good a shirt and a whipp

For whipping rougs [sic] and making

the shirt....

s. d. 4

6

1 See ante, Vol. I. p. 89.

2 Char. Com. Rep. iv. 248.

Upon this latter case the Charity Commissioners report that the present owner of the land is Cornelius Cartwright, Esq., and that this annuity is duly paid to a poor man for awaking sleepers in Church, and keeping out dogs.1

Therefore, let any Lady or Gentleman, who is prone to sleep, avoid attending Divine Service at Trysull Church, in the county of Stafford.

THE CUCKING STOOL.

There is no doubt that the legal punishment of Common Scolds by the laws of England, always has been and still is, that they be placed in the Cucking Stool, and immersed in the pond or stream. At present the Cucking Stool is only the legal punishment for Scolds, though anciently and as early as the reign of Edward the Confessor it was the punishment of fraudulent brewers.

In the Doomsday Survey under Chester (page 262 of the printed copies of that work) is the following entry :

"T. R. E. Vir sive mulier falsam mesuram in Civitate faciens deprehensus iiij solidos emendabat, similiter malam cervisiam faciens aut in Cathedra ponebatur stercoris aut iiijor solidos dabat prepositis.”

Which may be thus translated.—In the time of King Edward, a man or woman found making false measure in the city was fined 4s., likewise one making bad beer was either put in the chair of muck, or gave 4s. to the Reeves.

By the Statute de pistoribus it is provided that brewers "Qui assisam cervisie fregerint primo, secundo, et tercio, amercientur: quarto, sine redempcione subeant judicium tumbrelli."

"Brewers who break the assize the first, second, and third time, shall be amerced but the fourth time they shall undergo without redemption, the judgment of the tumbrel."

Lord Chief Baron Comyns in his digest at the place before cited, says, "the tumbrel or tre-bucket is an instrument for the punishment of women that scold or are unquiet, now called a Cucking Stool."

It is worthy of remark that Lord Chief Baron Comyns mentions the tumbrel or the tre-bucket* as being a Cucking Stool.

The tumbrel was an oak chair fixed on a pair of wheels with very long shafts. The person seated was wheeled into the pond backwards, and the shafts being tilted up, she was of course plunged

1 Id. v.
634.

*An ammunition waggon used in the war which ended in 1814, was called a Tumbril. And an implement of war for throwing stones into besieged towns, a Tre-buchet. Grose's Mil. Antiq. I.

382.

into the water. And the machine was recovered again by means of long ropes attached to the shafts.

The tre-bucket was a chair at the end of a beam which acted on the see saw principle on a stump put into the ground at the edge of the water.

Cucking Stools of the Tre-buchet kind must have been common in the last century, as my late friends Mr. Curwood, the eminent Barrister, and Mr. Bellamy, who was clerk of assize on the Oxford Circuit, and went the Circuit for 60 years, both remembered them on the village greens about the country, in a more or less perfect state as the stocks are now. And Mr. Neild, the celebrated writer on Prisons, in a note to a letter in the Gent. Mag. 1803, p. 1104, says, that one of the Cucking Stools of this kind existed in the Reservoir of the Green Park in the memory of persons then living.

In the first number of the Society's Magazine, there is a lithograph of the Tumbrel Cucking Stool at Wootton Basset. The drawing is accurate in all respects except the date, which should

be 1686 instead of 1668.

My friend Mrs. Hains of that place saw it about 60 years ago, when it was in a perfect state, chair, wheels and shafts; but the shafts were in so worm-eaten a state, that they did not appear likely to bear their own weight much longer; and when I saw it about 25 years ago, there only remained the chair and the wheels,

which were about the size of the fore wheels of a waggon. The Chair in a very good state of preservation, was lent by the Corporation of Wootton Basset to the Society, for the Temporary Museum at Marlborough, accompanied by a note from Mr. Walter Pratt, who stated that "some school boys unfortunately had more respect for animal comfort than antiquity, for they were caught in the very act of burning the wheels, and the chair would have followed but for the school

master coming upon the young Vandals." And I did not more particularly inquire as to what occurred afterwards.

There is also in the same volume, a lithograph of a Cucking Stool at Broadwater, near Worthing, from a drawing by the late Mr. Curwood, who remembered it as there represented, except that he did not see any one in it.

There is also in the unused aisle of Leominster Church, a Cucking Stool still remaining in a perfect state.1

Cucking Stool in Leominster Church, length 23 ft. 6 in.

It is neither the usual tumbrel nor the tre-buchet, but partakes of both; it is moveable and on four wheels. The Chair is at the head of a beam and worked on the see-saw principle: and I was told by Mr. Dickens, the Registrar of Births and Deaths, that he recollected a woman called Jenny Pipes, but whose real name was Crump, who was ducked at Leominster in the year 1809, and who died at a very advanced age. And he recollected Sarah Leeke being placed in this Chair and wheeled round the town,2 about the

1 At Devizes the parish tumbrel, when not in use, seems to have been deposited within the lower stage of St. Mary's Church tower, as appears from an Inventory of A.D. 1678, printed in "Wilts Mag." II. 324. The tower of Ramsbury Church still affords a similar shelter to the Fire engine.

2 The culprit when adjudged to be placed in the cucking stool does not appear to have been invariably plunged into the water. The Devizes Corporation books, circa 1585, contain a case in which Edith the wife of William Martin