; has sat i' stocks all night,
poor gallant knave." Volumnia says of Coriolanus (V. 3):

"There's no man in the world
More bound to's mother; yet here let me prate
Like one i' the stocks."

Again, in the "Comedy of Errors" (III. 1), Luce speaks of "a pair of
stocks in the town," and in "King Lear" (II. 2), Cornwall, referring to
Kent, says:

"Fetch forth the stocks!
You stubborn ancient knave."

It would seem that formerly, in great houses, as in some colleges, there
were movable stocks for the correction of the servants.[37]

In Butler's "Hudibras" are allusions to the stocks. Says the poet:

"An old dull sot, who toll'd the clock
For many years at Bridewell-dock;
. . .
Engaged the constable to seize
All those that would not break the peace;
Let out the stocks and whipping-post,
And cage, to those that gave him most."

We are enabled, by the kindness of Mr. Austin Dobson, author of "Thomas
Bewick and his Pupils," to reproduce from that work a picture of the
stocks, engraved by Charlton Nesbit for Butler's "Hudibras," 1811.

[Illustration: IN THE STOCKS, BY NESBIT.]

Scottish history contains allusions to the stocks; but in North Britain
they do not appear to have been so generally used as in England. On the
24th August, 1623, a case occupied the attention of the members of the
Kirk-Session of Kinghorn. It was proved that a man named William Allan
had been guilty of abusing his wife on the Sabbath, and for the offence
was condemned to be placed twenty-four hours in the stocks, and
subsequently to stand in the jougs two hours on a market day. It was
further intimated to him that if he again abused his wife, he would be
banished from the town. We give a picture of the stocks formerly in the
Canongate Tolbooth, Edinburgh, and now in the Scottish Antiquarian
Museum.

[Illustration: STOCKS FROM THE CANONGATE TOLBOOTH.]

It was enacted, in the year 1605, that every person convicted of
drunkenness should be fined five shillings or spend six hours in the
stocks, and James I., in the year 1623, confirmed the Act. Stocks were
usually employed for punishing drunkards, but drunkenness was by no
means the only offence for which they were brought into requisition.
Wood-stealers, or, as they were styled, "hedge-tearers," were, about
1584, set in the stocks two days in the open street, with the stolen
wood before them, as a pu