ay, "for troublance made upon Andro Watson, is discernit for his
demerits to be put in the cuck-stule, there to remain till four hours
after noon." The length of time of punishment--usually twenty-four
hours--would plainly show there was no attendant ducking; and this
cuck-stool, or cucking-stool, must not be confounded with the
ducking-stool, which dates to the days of Edward the Confessor. The
cuck-stool was simply a strong chair in which an offender was fastened,
thus to be hooted at or pelted at by the mob. Sometimes, when placed on
a tumbrel, it was used for ducking.

At the time of the colonization of America the ducking-stool was at the
height of its English reign; and apparently the amiability of the lower
classes was equally at ebb. The colonists brought their tempers to the
new land, and they brought their ducking-stools. Many minor and some
great historians of this country have called the ducking-stool a Puritan
punishment. I have never found in the hundreds of pages of court records
that I have examined a single entry of an execution of ducking in any
Puritan community; while in the "cavalier colonies," so called, in
Virginia and the Carolinas, and in Quaker Pennsylvania, many duckings
took place, and in law survived as long as similar punishments in
England.

In the Statute Books of Virginia from Dale's time onward many laws may
be found designed to silence idle tongues by ducking. One reads:

"Whereas oftentimes many brabling women often slander and scandalize
their neighbours, for which their poore husbands are often brought into
chargeable and vexatious suits and cast in great damages, be it enacted
that all women found guilty be sentenced to ducking."

Others dated 1662 are most explicit.

"The court in every county shall cause to be set up near a Court House a
Pillory, a pair of Stocks, a Whipping Post and a Ducking-Stool in such
place as they think convenient, which not being set up within six month
after the date of this act the said Court shall be fined 5,000 lbs. of
tobacco.

"In actions of slander caused by a man's wife, after judgment past for
damages, the woman shall be punished by Ducking, and if the slander be
such as the damages shall be adjudged as above 500 lbs. of Tobacco, then
the woman shall have ducking for every 500 lbs. of Tobacco adjudged
against the husband if he refuse to pay the Tobacco."

The fee of a sheriff or constable for ducking was twenty pounds of
tobacco.

_The