to be ducked in the Potomac River.
She was, however, released with a fine, and appears to us to-day to have
been insane--possibly through over-humored temper.

[Illustration: The Stocks.]

III

THE STOCKS

One of the earliest institutions in every New England community was a
pair of stocks. The first public building was a meeting-house, but often
before any house of God was builded, the devil got his restraining
engine. It was a true English punishment, and to a degree, a Scotch; and
was of most ancient date. In the _Cambridge Trinity College Psalter_, an
illuminated manuscript illustrating the manners of the twelfth century,
may be seen the quaint pictures of two men sitting in stocks, while two
others flout them. So essential to due order and government were the
stocks that every village had them. Sometimes they were movable and
often were kept in the church porch, a sober Sunday monitor. Shakespeare
says in King Lear:

"Fetch forth the stocks
You stubborn ancient knave!"

In England, petty thieves, unruly servants, wife-beaters, hedge-tearers,
vagrants, Sabbath-breakers, revilers, gamblers, drunkards,
ballad-singers, fortune-tellers, traveling musicians and a variety of
other offenders, were all punished by the stocks. Doubtless the most
notable person ever set in the stocks for drinking too freely was that
great man, Cardinal Wolsey. About the year 1500 he was the incumbent at
Lymington, and getting drunk at a village feast, he was seen by Sir
Amyas Poulett, a strict moralist, and local justice of the peace, who
humiliated the embryo cardinal by thrusting him in the stocks.

The Boston magistrates had a "pair of bilbowes" doubtless brought from
England; but these were only temporary, and soon stocks were ordered. It
is a fair example of the humorous side of Puritan law so frequently and
unwittingly displayed that the first malefactor set in these strong new
stocks was the carpenter who made them:

"Edward Palmer for his extortion in taking L1, 13s., 7d. for the plank
and woodwork of Boston stocks is fyned L5 & censured to bee sett an
houre in the stocks."

Thus did our ancestors make the "punishment fit the crime." It certainly
was rather a steep charge, for Carpenter Robert Bartlett of New London
made not long after "a pair of stocks with nine holes fitted for the
irons," and only charged thirteen shillings and fourpence for his work.
The carpenter of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, likewi