By the English common law in force here in the early times a common scold
was liable to a peculiar form of punishment. Blackstone (4 Black. Com.
168) says:
“A common scold—communis rixatrix—(for our law confines it to the
feminine gender) is a public nuisance to her neighborhood for which
offence she may be indicted, and if convicted shall be sentenced to
be placed in a certain engine of correction called the trebucket,
castigatory or cucking stool, which in the Saxon language is said to
signify the scolding stool, though now it is frequently corrupted into
ducking stool, because the residue of the judgment is that when she is
placed therein she shall be plunged in the water for her punishment.”
Oct. 24, 1673—“John Petty complaines agt Goodwife Hunter for offering
to mischiefe his wife & giving her ill language; calling her as ye
testimonys speake:
Railing, scolding & other exorbitancys of ye Young appearing as by ye
Testimonys of Mary Brookes & Mercy Johns on file & also ye neighbors,
declaring her continual trade upon every occasion to be exorbitant in her
Toung as particularly Sam Marshfull & John Bagg so declared. I sentenced
her to be gaged or else set on a ducking stool & dipped in water as law
provides. Shee to choose wh of ym shee pleases within this half houre;
or else I do determine & order either as I see cause. Shee not choosing
either, I order her to be gagged & so to stand half an hour in ye open
street wh was done accordingly; & for her reproaching Goodie Petty shoe
did openly cleare her of all shee spake agt her & asked forgiveness wch
G. Petty accepting of shee was released as to yt.”
The Puritan Fathers are often blamed on account of their witchcraft
persecutions. Long after Massachusetts had confessed her wrong-doing,
England and Germany put people to death for witchcraft. Twenty-five
years after persecution had ceased in New England, Chief Justice Matthew
Hale, of England, sent a mother and her little daughter to the scaffold
for the same offence; and one hundred and one years afterwards Germany
did likewise. The age in which these men lived is responsible for these
things, and not the men themselves. They were founders of schools, and
were not intolerant. I do not believe in the cry of the “good old times”
simply. There are more good men and women now than ever before. I think
it almost unfortunate to explain away witchcraft and some other peculiar
things of those times, as then some people would have nothing to talk
about and sneer at and criticise the Pilgrim Fathers. Some persons like
to continue this. Dr. Blake of Boston, says that a good Baptist brother
had often met him and chaffingly asked, “How is Roger Williams to-day?”
when Mr. Blake, tiring of the question, answered, “Oh, he is warm and
dry by this time.” The Pilgrims had especially three noble qualities:
Earnestness, definiteness of belief and stalwartness of spiritual life.