a hole in
which the head was set fast, and usually with two openings also for the
hands. Often the ears were nailed to the wood on either side of the
head-hole. Examples exist of a small finger-pillory or thumb-stocks, but
are rare.

It would be impossible to enumerate the offences for which Englishmen
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 fo