ng; indeed, prior to this period
attempts had been made to check wandering vagrants. They were referred
to in the "Statute of Labourers," passed in the year 1349. Not a few
enactments were made to keep down vagrancy. In the reign of Edward VI.,
in 1547, an Act was passed, from which it appears "that any person who
had offered them work which they refused, was authorised to brand them
on the breast with a V, hold them in slavery for two years, feed them
during that period on bread and water, and hire them out to others." The
Act failed on account of its severity, and was repealed in 1549.

It was in the reign of Henry VIII., and in the year 1530, that the
famous Whipping Act was instituted, directing that vagrants were to be
carried to some market town or other place, "and there tied to the end
of a cart naked, and beaten with whips throughout such market town, or
other place, till the body shall be bloody by reason of such whipping."
Vagrants, after being whipped, had to take an oath that they would
return to their native places, or where they had last dwelt for three
years. Various temporary modifications were made in this Act, but it
remained in force until the thirty-ninth year of the reign of Queen
Elizabeth, when some important alterations were made. Persons were not
to be publicly whipped naked, as previously, but from the middle
upwards, and whipped until the body should be bloody. It was at this
time that the whipping-post was substituted for the cart. Whipping-posts
soon became plentiful. John Taylor, "the water poet," in one of his
works, published in 1630, adverts to them as follows:

"In London, and within a mile, I ween,
There are jails or prisons full eighteen,
And sixty whipping-posts and stocks and cages."

We give an illustration of the Waltham Abbey Whipping-Post and Stocks,
as they appeared when they stood within the old wooden market-house,
which was pulled down in 1853. The post bears on it the date 1598, and
is 5 feet 9 inches high; it is strongly made of oak, with iron clasps
for the hands when employed as a whipping-post, and for the feet when
used as the stocks. It is rather more elaborate than others which have
come under our notice. It will be observed the seat for the culprits
placed in the stocks was beside one of the immense oak pillars of the
market-house. They are now placed with the remains of the Pillory at the
entrance of the schoolroom, on the south-west side of the chur