were pilloried: among them were treason, sedition, arson, blasphemy,
witch-craft, perjury, wife-beating, cheating, forestalling, forging,
coin-clipping, tree-polling, gaming, dice-cogging, quarrelling, lying,
libelling, slandering, threatening, conjuring, fortune-telling,
"prigging," drunkenness, impudence. One man was set in the pillory for
delivering false dinner invitations; another for a rough practical joke;
another for selling an injurious quack medicine. All sharpers, beggars,
impostors, vagabonds, were liable to be pilloried. So fierce sometimes
was the attack of the populace with various annoying and heavy missiles
on pilloried prisoners that several deaths are known to have ensued. On
the other side, it is told in Chamber's _Book of Days_ that a prisoner,
by the sudden collapse of a rotten footboard, was left hanging by his
neck in danger of his life. On being liberated he brought action
against the town and received damages.
The pillory in England has seen many a noble victim. The history of
Puritanism, of Reformation, is filled with hundreds of pages of accounts
of sufferings on the pillory. When such names as those of Leighton,
Prynne, Lilburne, Burton and Bastwick appear as thus being punished we
do not think of the pillory as a scaffold for felons, but as a platform
for heroes. Who can read unmoved that painful, that pathetic account of
the punishment of Dr. Bastwick. His weeping wife stood on a stool and
kissed his poor pilloried face, and when his ears were cut off she
placed them in a clean handkerchief and took them away, with emotions
unspeakable and undying love.
De Foe said, in his famous _Hymn to the Pillory_:
"Tell us, great engine, how to understand
Or reconcile the justice of this land;
How Bastwick, Prynne, Hunt, Hollingsby and Pye--
Men of unspotted honesty--
Men that had learning, wit and sense,
And more than most men have had since,
Could equal title to thee claim
With Oates and Fuller, men of fouler fame."
Lecture-day, as affording in New England, in the pious community, the
largest gathering of reproving spectators, was the day chosen in
preference for the performance of public punishment by the pillory.
Hawthorne says of the Thursday Lecture: "The tokens of its observance
are of a questionable cast. It is in one sense a day of public shame;
the day on which transgressors who have made themselves liable to the
minor severities of the Puritan law receive their reward of ignominy."
Thus Nicholas Olmstead, in Connecticut, is to "stand on the pillory at
Hartford the next lecture-day." He was to be "sett on a lytle before the
beginning and to stay thereon a lytle after the end."
The disgrace of the pillory clung, though the offence punished was not
disgraceful. Thus in the year 1697 a citizen of Braintree, William
Veasey, was set in the pillory for ploughing on a Thanksgiving day,
which had been appointed in gratitude for the escape of King William
from assassination. The stiff old Braintree rebel declared that James
II was his rightful king. Five years later Veasey was elected a member
of the General Court, but was not permitted to serve as he had been in
the pillory.
Throughout the Massachusetts jurisdiction the pillory was in use. In
1671 one Mr. Thomas Withers for "surriptisiously endeavoring to prevent
the Providence of God by putting in several votes for himself as an
officer at a town meeting" was ordered to stand two hours in the pillory
at York, Maine. Shortly after (for he was an ingenious rogue) he was
similarly punished for "an irregular way of contribution," for putting
large sums of money into the contribution box in meeting to induce
others to give largely, and then again "surriptisiously" taking his gift
back again.
There was no offense in the southern colonies more deplored, more
reprobated, more legislated against than what was known as "ingrossing,
forestalling, or regrating."
This was what would to-day be termed a brokerage or speculative sale,
such as buying a cargo about to arrive, and selling at retail, buying a
large quantity of any goods in a market to re-sell, or any form of
huckstering. Its prevalence was held to cause dearth, famine and
despair; English "regratours" and forestallers were frequently
pilloried. Even in _Piers Plowman_ we read:
"For these aren men on this molde that moste harm worcheth,
To the pore peple that parcel-mele buyggen
Thei rychen thorow regraterye."
The state archives of Maryland are full of acts and resolves about
forestallers, etc., and severe punishments were decreed. It was, in
truth, the curse of that colony. All our merchandise brokers to-day
would in those days have been liable to be thrust in prison or pillory.
In the year 1648 I learn from the Maryland archives that one John
Goneere, for perjury, was "nayled by both eares to the pillory 3 nailes
in each eare and the nailes to be slitt out, and whipped 20 good
lashes." The same year Blanch Howell wilfully, unsolicited and unasked,
committed perjury. The "sd Blanche shall stand nayled in the Pillory and
loose both her eares." Both those sentences were "exequuted."
In New York the pillory was used. Under Dutch rule, Mesaack Maartens,
accused of stealing cabbages from Jansen, the ship-carpenter living on
_'t maagde paatje_, was sentenced to stand in the pillory with cabbages
on his head. Truly this was a striking sight. Dishonest bakers were set
in the pillory with dough on their heads. At the trial of this Mesaack
Maartens, he was tortured to make him confess. Other criminals in New
York bore torture; a sailor--wrongfully, as was proven--a woman, for
stealing stockings. At the time of the Slave Riots cruel tortures were
inflicted. Yet to Massachusetts, under the excitement and superstition
caused by that tragedy in New England history, the witchcraft trials, is
forever accorded the disgrace that one of her citizens was pressed to
death, one Giles Corey. The story of his death is too painful for
recital.
Mr. Channing wrote an interesting account of the Newport of the early
years of this century. He says of crimes and criminals in that town at
that time:
"The public modes of punishment established by law were four, viz.:
executions by hanging, whipping of men at the cart-tail, whipping of
women in the jail-yard, and the elevation of counterfeiters and the like
to a movable pillory, which turned on its base so as to front north,
south, east and west in succession, remaining at each point a quarter of
an hour. During this execution of the majesty of the law the neck of the
culprit was bent to a most uncomfortable curve, presenting a facial mark
for those salutations of stale eggs which seemed to have been preserved
for the occasion. The place selected for the infliction of this
punishment was in front of the State House."
A conviction and sentence in Newport in 1771 was thus reported in the
daily newspapers, among others the _Essex Gazette_ of April 23:
"William Carlisle was convicted of passing Counterfeit Dollars, and
sentenced to stand One Hour in the Pillory on Little-Rest Hill, next
Friday, to have both Ears cropped, to be branded on both Cheeks with the
Letter R, to pay a fine of One Hundred Dollars and Cost of Prosecution,
and to stand committed till Sentence performed."
Severe everywhere were the punishments awarded to counterfeiters. The
Continental bills bore this line: "To counterfeit this bill is Death."
In 1762 Jeremiah Dexter of Walpole, for passing on two counterfeit
dollars, "knowing them to be such," stood in the pillory for an hour;
another rogue, for the same offense, had his ears cropped.
Mr. Samuel Breck, speaking of methods of punishment in his boyhood in
Boston, in 1771, said:
"A little further up State Street was to be seen the pillory with three
or four fellows fastened by the head and hands, and standing for an hour
in that helpless posture, exposed to gross and cruel jeers from the
multitude, who pelted them constantly with rotten eggs and every
repulsive kind of garbage that could be collected."
Instances of punishment in Boston by the pillory of both men and women
are many. In the _Boston Post-Boy_ of February, 1763, I read:
"BOSTON, JANUARY 31.--At the Superiour Court held at Charlestown last
Week, Samuel Bacon of Bedford, and Meriam Fitch wife of Benjamin Fitch
of said Bedford, were convicted of being notorious Cheats, and of having
by Fraud, Craft and Deceit, possess'd themselves of Fifteen Hundred
Johannes the property of a third Person; were sentenced to be each of
them set in the Pillory one Hour, with a Paper on each of their Breasts
and the words A CHEAT wrote in Capitals thereon, to suffer three months'
imprisonment, and to be bound to their good Behaviour for one Year and
to pay Costs."
From the _Boston Chronicle_, November 20, 1769:
"We learn from Worcester that on the eighth instant one Lindsay stood in
the Pillory there one hour, after which he received 30 stripes at the
public whipping-post, and was then branded in the hand his crime was
Forgery."
The use of the pillory in New England extended into this century. On the
15th of January, 1801, one Hawkins, for the crime of forgery, stood for
an hour in a pillory in Salem, and had his ears cropped. The pillory was
in use in Boston, certainly as late as 1803. In March of that year the
brigantine "Hannah" was criminally sunk at sea by its owner Robert
Pierpont and its master H. R. Story, to defraud the underwriters. The
two criminals were sentenced after trial to stand one hour in the
pillory in State Street on two days, be confined in prison for two years
and pay the costs of the prosecution. As this case was termed "a
transaction exceeding in infamy all that has hitherto appeared in the
commerce of our country," this sentence does not seem severe.
The pillory lingered long in England. Lord Thurlow was eloquent in its
defence, calling it "the restraint against licentiousness provided by
the wisdom of past ages." In 1812 Lord Ellenborough, equally warm in his
approval and endorsement, sentenced a blasphemer to the pillory for two
hours, once each month, for eighteen months; and in 1814 he ordered Lord
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.
[Illustration: The Burning of Books]
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 L10,000 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
me, a miller; who then sayd that his brother Benjamin Keach is author of
it, and that there are fiveteen hundred of them printed. This Benjamin
Keach is a Tayler, and one that is a teacher in this new-fangled-way and
lives at Winslow a market town in Buckinghamshire. Pray take some
speedie course to acquaint my Lord Archbishop his Grace with it, whereby
his authoritye may issue forth that ye impression may be seized upon
before they be much more dispersed to ye poisoning of people; they
containing (as I conceive) schismaticall factions and hereticall matter.
Some are scattered in my parish, and perchance in no place sooner
because he hath a sister here and some others of his gang, two whereof
I have bought up. Pray let me have your speedie account of it. I doubt
not but it will be taken as acceptable service to God's church and
beleeve it a very thankeful obligement to
Honoured Sir,
Your truely Loving Brother,"
THOMAS DISNEY.
As a result of Disney's neighborly and zealous offices, Benjamin Keach
was thus sentenced:
"That you shall go to gaol for a fortnight without bail or mainprise;
and the next Saturday to stand upon the pillory at Ailsbury for the
space of two hours, from eleven o'clock to one, with a paper on your
head with this inscription: _For writing, printing and publishing a
schismatical book, entitled 'The Child's Instructor; or, a New and Easy
Primmer_.' And the next Thursday so stand, and in the same manner and
for the same time, in the market of Winslow; and there your book shall
be openly burnt before your face by the common hangman, in disgrace to
you and your doctrine. And you shall forfeit to the King's Majesty the
sum of L20, and shall remain in gaol till you find securities for your
good behaviour and appearance at the next assizes, there to renounce
your doctrine and to make such public submission as may be enjoined
you."
Keach stood twice with head and hands set in the pillory, and his book
was burnt, and his fine was paid; but never was he subdued, and never
did he make recantation.
Pope wrote a well-known, oft-quoted, yet false line:
"Earless on high stood unabashed De Foe."
The great Daniel De Foe did stand on high on a pillory, but he was not
earless. He was by birth and belief a Dissenter, and he wrote a severe
satire against the Church party, entitled _The Shortest Way with the
Dissenters_, which so ironically, and with such apparent soberness,
reduced the argument of the intolerant to an absurdity, that for a short
time it deceived zealous church-folk, who welcomed and praised it, but
who turned on him with redoubled hatred when they finally perceived the
satire. It was termed a scandalous and seditious pamphlet, and fifty
pounds reward was offered for him. He was arrested, tried, pilloried in
three places, and imprisoned for a year; but the Queen paid his fine for
his release from prison, and his pillory was hung with garlands of
flowers, and his health was drunk, and scraps of his vigorous doggerel
from his _Hymn to the Pillory_ passed from lip to lip.
"Men that are men in thee can feel no pain
And all thy insignificants disdain
Contempt that false new word for shame
Is, without crime, an empty name.
The first intent of laws
Was to correct the effect and check the cause
And all the ends of punishment
Were only future mischiefs to prevent.
But justice is inverted when
Those engines of the law
Instead of pinching vicious men
Keep honest ones in awe."
Williams, the bookseller, set in the pillory in the year 1765 for
republishing the _North Briton_ was also treated with marks of
consideration and kindness. He held a sprig of laurel in his hand as he
stood, and a purse of two hundred guineas for his benefit was collected
in the crowd.
As times changed, so did opinions. The Bishop of Rochester denounced
Martin Luther and all his works, and Luther's books were burned in the
public squares. Puritan publications by the hundreds fed the flames;
Quaker and Baptist books took their turns. Then the Parliamentary
soldiers burned the Book of Common Prayer. In France, in the year 1790,
the monasteries were ransacked and their books burned. In Paris eight
hundred thousand were burned; in all France over four million: of these
twenty-six thousand were in manuscript.
Crossing the Atlantic to a land void of printing presses could not
silence Puritan authors. They still had pen and ink, and manuscripts
could be sent back across the ocean to a land full of presses and type.
A rather amusing episode of early Massachusetts history anent authors
happened in 1634, as may be found in Volume I, page 137, of the
_Colonial Records_.
"Whereas Mr. Israel Stoughton hath written a certain book, which hath
occasioned much trouble and offence to the Court; the said Mr. Stoughton
did desire of the court, that the said book might be burnt, as being
weak and offensive."
Such extraordinary and unparalleled modesty on the part of an author did
not save Mr. Stoughton's bacon, for he was disabled from holding any
office in the commonwealth for the space of three years. Winthrop said
he used "weak arguments," all of which did not prevent his being a brave
soldier in the Pequot Wars, and serving as a colonel in the
Parliamentary army in England.
A fuller account of the trials of a Puritan author in a new land is told
through notes taken from the court records. First may be given a
declaration of the Court:
"The Generall Court, now sittinge at Boston, in New England, this
sixteenth of October, 1650. There was brought to or hands a booke
writen, as was therein subscribed, to William Pinchon, Gent, in New
England, entituled The Meritorious Price of or Redemption,
Justifycation, &c. clearinge it from some common Errors &c. which booke,
brought ouer hither by a shippe a few dayes since and contayninge many
errors & heresies generally condemned by all orthodox writers that we
haue met with and haue judged it meete and necessary, for vindicatio of
the truth, so far as in vs lyes, as also to keepe & pserue the people
here committed to or care & trust in the true knowledge & faythe of or
Lord Jesus Christ, & of or owne redemption by him, and likewise for the
clearinge of orselves to or Christian brethren & others in England,
(where this booke was printed & is dispersed), hereby to ptest or
innocency, as being neither partyes nor priuy to the writinge,
composinge, printinge, nor diuulging thereof; but that, on the contrary,
we detest & abhorre many of the opinions & assertions therein as false,
eronyous, & hereticall; yea, & whatsoeuer is contayned in the sd booke
which are contrary to the Scriptures of the Old & New Testament, & the
generall received doctrine of the orthodox churches extant since the
time of the last & best reformation & for proffe and euidence of or
sincere & playne meaninge therein, we doe hereby condemne the sd booke
to be burned in the market place, at Boston, by the common executionor,
& doe purpose with all convenient speede to convent the sd William
Pinchon before authority, to find out whether the sd William Pinchon
will owne the sd booke as his or not; which if he doth, we purpose (Gd
willinge) to pceede with him accordinge to his demerits, vnles he
retract the same, and giue full satisfaction both here & by some second
writinge to be printed and dispersed in England; all of which we thought
needfull, for the reasons aboue aleaged, to make knowne by this short
ptestation & declaration. Also we further purpose, with what convenient
speede we may, to appoynt some fitt psn to make a pticuler answer to all
materiall & controuersyall passages in the sd booke, & to publish the
same in print, that so the errors & falsityes therein may be fully
discoued, the truth cleared, & the minds of those that loue & seeke
after truth confirmed therein p curia."
"It is agreed vppon by the whole Court, that Mr. Norton, one of the
reuend elders of Ipswich, should be intreated to answer Mr. Pinchon's
booke with all convenient speed."
The sentence of this book to be burned by the common hangman was changed
to be burned by some person appointed to the duty who would consent to
perform it. It was not always easy to get a hangman.
In 1684 a man in Maryland "of tender years" was convicted of
horse-stealing and sentenced to death. A "private and secret" pardon was
issued by the Assembly, but he was given no knowledge of it until he was
conveyed to the place of execution and the rope placed round his neck,
when he was respited on condition that he would perform the part for
life of common hangman, which he did.
The hangman was usually some respited prisoner under sentence of death.
In some shires in England, he had to be hung at last himself, else the
power of possessing a hangman lapsed from the town. One hangman,
mortally sick, was bolstered up by his friends with a shoemaker's bench
and kit in front of him, pretending to work, and when the sheriffs came
to seize him and carry him to the gallows, he did not seem very sick and
they left the house without him. He died that night peaceably in bed.
All these doings seem too barbarous for civilized England.
Thomas Maule was a Salem Quaker and an author. His book was ordered to
be burned in 1695 in Boston market place. The diary of the Reverend Dr.
Bentley says of him:
"Tho's Maule, shopkeeper of Salem, is brought before the Council to
answer for his printing and publishing a pamphlet of 260 pages entitled
"Truth held Forth and Maintained," owns the book but will not own all,
till he sees his copy which is at New York with Bradford who printed it.
Saith he writt to ye Gov'r of N. York before he could get it printed.
Book is ordered to be burnt--being stuff'd wth notorious lyes and
scandals, and he recognizes to it next Court of Assize and gen'l gaol
delivery to be held for the County of Essex. He acknowledges that what
was written concerning the circumstance of Major Gen. Atherton's death
was a mistake, was chiefly insisted on against him, which I believe was
a surprize to him, he expecting to be examined in some point of
religion, as should seem by his bringing his Bible under his arm."
In 1654 the writings of John Reeves and Ludowick Muggleton, self-styled
prophets, were burned in Boston market-place by that abhorred public
functionary the hangman. Other Quaker books were similarly burned, and
John Rogers of New London, who hated the Quakers, but whom the Boston
magistrates persisted in regarding and classifying as a Quaker, had to
see his books perish in the flames in company with Quaker publications.
In 1754 a pamphlet called _The Monster of Monsters_, a sharp criticism
on the Massachusetts Court which caused much stir in provincial
political circles, was burned by the hangman in King Street, Boston. We
learn from the _Connecticut Gazette_ that about the same time another
offending publication was sentenced to be "publickly whipt according to
Moses Law, with forty stripes save one, and then burnt." The true
book-lover winces at the thought of the blood-stained hands of the
hangman on any book, even though a "Monster."
VI
THE WHIPPING-POST
John Taylour, the "Water-Poet," wrote in 1630:
"In London, and within a mile, I ween
There are jails or prisons full fifteen
And sixty whipping-posts and stocks and cages."