ANCIENT CIVIL PUNISHMENTS.

IN the White Book, compiled by Richard Carpenter, 1419, in the Mayoralty of Richard Whittington, we find these curious enactments.

Foreign merchants were not allowed to deal with foreign merchants, or "merchant strangers," as they were called; and in an instance where this regulation was infringed, the merchandise was forfeited. In the same manner a foreigner forfeited meat which he had sold after the curfew had been rung out at St. Martin'sle-Grand. A merchant who had set a price upon his own corn was sent to prison, and another was sentenced to the pillory for offering to sell corn above the common selling price. A chaplain was committed to the Tun (a round prison on Cornhill) for "being a nightwalker; "a publican was sentenced to the thew (a sort of pillory) for using a false quart; certain bakers who had holes in their tables, by means whereof (through some contrivance unknown to us simple men of the nineteenth century) they contrived to steal their neighbours' dough, were condemned to the pillory; one woman was sent to the Tun for being out at night after lawful hours, and another was sentenced to the thew for being a common scold;" furs were forfeited because they had new work with old; a man was fined half a mark for drawing a sword; and amongst a number of punishments for deceptions, scandals, and

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evil-speaking, one person was adjudged imprisonment for a year and a day, and the pillory once a quarter for three hours, with a whetstone tied round his neck, for lies that were disproved.

Amongst the punishments that most frequently occur are the forfeitures, fines, imprisonments, and pillories awarded for selling "putrid meat," "stinking fish," birds that were not fit to be eaten, and bread with pieces of iron in it, probably intended to increase its weight. The arts of fraud were never practised more dexterously, or over a larger surface, than by our virtuous progenitors of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. There was scarcely a single craft in which duplicities were not committed; and the records teem with illustrations of these delinquencies, some of them, indeed, being unintelligible in the present day. We hear, for example, of "false hats," "false bow-strings,” "false queeks" (a kind of chess-board), and "false gloves, breeches, and pouches." Other swindles are more comprehensible: such as hides imperfectly tanned; plated latten sold for silver; drinking measures with a thick coat of pitch inserted in the bottom, to diminish their capacity; false dice; and coal-sacks of deficient size. In some cases the forfeited articles were burned; in others they were seized and detained; and in many instances the fraudulent dealers were personally punished. Nor was the watchfulness of the City authorities limited to the crimes of trade; morals were looked after with equal activity. Anybody who walked out at unseasonable hours, or who bought or sold after curfew, was at once pounced upon (unless he was lucky enough to effect his escape through the favouring darkness), and lodged in the round-house on Cornhill;

cutpurses, who were adroit, numerous, and possessed of unbounded audacity, were generally consigned to the pillory; and the same fate awaited any ingenious vagrant who practised the "Art Magic."

CAGE AND STOCKS AT LONDON BRIDGE.

We do not find that in the days of Queen Mary, London Bridge was made the scene of any of the numerous Protestant martyrdoms, which have eternally blotted her short but sanguinary reign. There is, however, in Foxe's Martyrs, a short anecdote of a curious incident in St. Magnus Church. Upon the death of Pope Julius III., in 1555, Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester and Lord Chancellor, wrote to Bonner, Bishop of London, to command him, in Queen Mary's name, to order those prayers to be used throughout his diocese which the Roman Church has appointed during a vacancy in the Papal See. Upon this commandment, says Foxe, on Wednesday in Easter week, the 17th of April, there were herses set up, and dirges sung, for the said Julius in divers places. Now, it chanced that a woman came into St. Magnus Church, at the bridge-foot, and there seeing a herse, and other preparation, asked what it meant; a bystander said—it was for the Pope, and that she must pray for him. "Nay," quoth she, "that I will not, for he needeth not my prayer; and seeing he could forgive us all our sins, I am sure he is clean himself; therefore, I need not pray for him." She was heard to say these dangerous words; and by-and-by was carried unto the * Abridged from the London Review.

cage at London Bridge, and "bade coole herselfe there." In some of the editions of Foxe, there is an engraving representing this incident, which shows that the Stocks and Cage stood by one of the archways on the bridge, and in one of the vacant spaces which looked on to the water.

About half a century before this, Cages and Stocks had been ordered to be set up in every Ward of the City by Sir William Capell, Draper, and Lord Mayor, in 1503. The last Stocks were removed about forty years since.

FLOGGING AT BRIDEWELL.

ONE of the sights of London formerly was to go to
Bridewell Hospital, in Blackfriars, and there see the
unfortunate prisoners flogged for offences committed
without the prison. Both men and women, it appears,
were whipped on their naked backs, before the Court of
Governors. The President sat with his hammer in
his hand, and the culprit was taken from the post
when the hammer fell. The calls to knock when
women were flogged were loud and incessant-
"O
good Sir Robert, knock! Pray, good Sir Robert,
knock," which became at length a common cry
of re-
proach among the lower orders, to denote that a woman
of bad character had been whipped in Bridewell:

"This labour past, by Bridewell all descend,
As morning prayers and flagellations end."

POPE'S Dunciad.

Ned Ward, in his London Spy, gives this account of the Bridewell Whippings in 1699. "We turned into the gate of a stately edifice my friend told me was

Bridewell, which to me seemed rather a prince's palace than a house of correction; till gazing round me, I saw in a room a parcel of ill-looking mortals, stripped to their shirts like haymakers pounding a pernicious weed, which I thought from their unlucky aspects seemed to threaten their destruction. From thence we turned into another court, the buildings being, like the former, magnificently noble; where straight before us was another grate, which proved the women's apartment. We followed our noses, and walked up to take a view of the ladies, who we found were shut up as close as nuns; but, like so many slaves, were under the care and direction of an overseer, who walked about with a very flexible weapon of offence, to correct such hempen-journey women as were unhappily troubled with the spirit of idleness. My friend now re-conducted me into the first quadrangle, and led me up a pair of stairs into a spacious chamber, where the court was sat in great grandeur and order. A grave gentleman was mounted in the judgement-seat, armed with a hammer, like a change-broker at Lloyd's Coffee-house, and a woman under the lash in the next room, where folding-doors were opened, that the whole court might view the punishment. At last down went the hammer, and the scourging ceased; so that, I protest, till I was undeceived, I thought they had sold their lashes by auction. The honourable court, I observed, was chiefly attended by fellows in blew coats and women in blew aprons. Another accusation being then delivered by a flat-cap against a poor wench, who having no friend to speak in her behalf, proclamation was made, viz., ‹ All you who are willing E-th T-11 should have present punishment, pray hold up your hands;' which