Reliquary_ for October, 1860. Mr. William
Andrews, in his interesting book, entitled _Old-Time Punishments_ gives
drawings of no less than sixteen branks now preserved in England. Some
of them are massive, and horrible instruments of torture.

It will be noted that the brank is universally spoken of as a punishment
for women; but men also were sentenced to wear it--paupers, blasphemers,
railers.

I am glad John Winthrop and John Carver did not bring cumbrous and cruel
iron branks to America. There are plenty of other ways to shut a woman's
mouth and to still her tongue, as all sensible men know; on every hand,
if gossips were found, a simple machine could be shaped, one far simpler
than a scold's bridle. A cleft stick pinched on the tongue was as
temporarily efficacious as the iron machine, and could be speedily put
in use. On June 4, 1651, the little town of Southampton, Long Island,
saw a well-known resident, for her "exorbitant words of imprication,"
stand for an hour in public with her tongue in a cleft stick. A neighbor
at Easthampton, Long Island, the same year received a like sentence:

"It is ordered that Goody Edwards shall pay L3 or have her tongue in a
cleft stick for contempt of court warrant in saienge she would not
come, but if they had been governor or magistrate then she would come,
and desireing the warrant to burn it."

About the same time Goodwife Hunter was gagged in Springfield for a
similar offense.

In Salem, under the sway of the rigid and narrow Puritan Endicott, the
system of petty surveillance and demeaning punishment seemed to reach
its height; and one citizen in mild sarcasm thereof said he did suppose
if he did lie abed in the morning he would be hauled up by the
magistrates,--and was promptly fined for even saying such a thing in
jest. Therefore of course "one Oliver, his wife" was adjudged to be
whipped for reproaching the magistrates and for prophesying. Winthrop,
in his _History of New England_, says of her scourging and her further
punishment:

"She stood without tying, and bare her punishment with a masculine
spirit, glorying in her suffering. But after (when she came to consider
the reproach which would stick by her, etc.), she was much dejected
about it. She had a cleft stick put on her tongue half an hour for
reproaching the elders."

In Salem in 1639 four men got drunk--young men, some of them servants.
Two named George Dill and John Cook were thus punished:

"They be fi