hours on a block four feet high, with this inscription in
Capitalls, A WANTON GOSPELLER."

This law was enacted in Boston. A similar one was in force in the
Connecticut colony. In 1650 a man was tried in the General Court in
Hartford for "contemptuous carriages" against the church and ministers,
and was thus sentenced:

"To stand two houres openly upon a blocke or stoole foure feet high
uppon a Lecture Daye with a paper fixed on his breast written in
Capitall Letters, AN OPEN AND OBSTINATE CONTEMNER OF GOD'S HOLY
ORDINANCES, that others may feare and be ashamed of breakinge out in
like wickednesse."

The latter clause would seem to modern notions an unintentional yet
positive appeal to the furtherance of time-serving and hypocrisy.

Drunkards frequently were thus temporarily labelled.

I quote an entry of Governor Winthrop's in the year 1640:

"One Baker, master's mate of the ship, being in drink, used some
reproachful words of the queen. The governour and council were much in
doubt what to do with him, but having considered that he was
distempered, and sorry for it, and being a stranger, and a chief officer
in the ship, and many ships were there in harbour, they thought it not
fit to inflict corporal punishment upon him, but after he had been two
or three days in prison, he was set an hour at the whipping post with a
paper on his head and dismissed."

Many Boston men were similarly punished. For defacing a public record
one was sentenced in May, 1652, "to stand in the pillory two Howers in
Boston market with a paper ouer his head marked in Capitall Letters A
DEFACER OF RECORDS." Ann Boulder at about the same time was ordered "to
stand in yrons half an hour with a Paper on her Breast marked PVBLICK
DESTROYER OF PEACE."

In 1639 three Boston women received this form of public punishment; of
them Margaret Henderson was "censured to stand in the market place with
a paper for her ill behavior, & her husband was fyned L5 for her yvill
behavior & to bring her to the market place for her to stand there."

Joan Andrews of York, Maine, sold two heavy stones in a firkin of
butter. She, too, had to stand disgraced bearing the description of her
wicked cheatery "written in Capitall Letters and pinned upon her
forehead." Widow Bradley of New London, Connecticut, for her sorry
behaviour in 1673 had to wear a paper pinned to her cap to proclaim her
shame.

Really picturesque was Jan of Leyden, of the New Netherland settle