The Parish Stocks were, as may be supposed, sometimes tampered with, and became the medium of practical jokes, of which, perhaps, the best story on record is that of a Chief Justice in the stocks. The story is as follows:—
Lord Camden, when Chief Justice, was on a visit to Lord Dacre, his brother-in-law, at Alely in Essex, and had walked out with a gentleman to the hill where, on the summit by the roadside, were the Parish Stocks. He sat down upon them, and asked his companion to open them, as he had an inclination to know what the punishment was. This being done the gentleman took a book from his pocket and sauntered on until he forgot the Judge and his situation, and returned to Lord Dacre. The learned Judge was soon tired of his situation, but found himself unequal to open the stocks! He asked a countryman passing by to assist him in obtaining his liberty, who said "No, old gentleman, you were not placed there for nothing"—and left him until he was released by some of the servants who were accidentally going that way! Not long after he presided at a trial in which a charge was brought against a magistrate for false imprisonment and setting the plaintiff in the stocks. The counsel for the defendant made light of the charge and particularly of setting in the stocks, which, he said, everybody knew, was no punishment at all! The Lord Chief Justice rose, and, leaning over the Bench, said, in a half whisper—"Brother, were you ever in the stocks?" The Barrister replied, "Really, my Lord, never."—"Then, I have been," rejoined his Lordship, "and I do assure you, brother, it is not such a trifle as you represent!"
One cannot refrain from expressing a lingering sense of regret over the last of its kind, whether of the last of the Mohicans, or the last minstrel. The parish of Meldreth, I relieve, stands alone in the Cambridgeshire side of the Royston district as still possessing the visible framework of its old Parish Stocks, thanks to the commendable interest taken in the preservation of old time memorials by Mr. George Sandys, of Royston, by whom the Meldreth Stocks were some time ago "restored," or, rather, the original pieces were brought more securely together into one visible whole. The parish of Meldreth, too, affords, I believe, one of the latest, if not the latest, instances of placing a person in the stocks, when, some forty or fifty years ago, a man was "stocked" for brawling in Church or some such misbehaviour. These stocks, when they were renovated by Mr. Sandys, had lost the upper part which completed the process of fastening an offender in them, but such as they then were will be seen in the illustration on the opposite page, which is reproduced from an excellent photograph taken by Mr. F. R. Hinkins, of Royston. The original upper part has since been found and placed in position by Mr. A. Jarman, of Meldreth.
THE OLD PARISH STOCKS AT MELDRETH.
Some other things deserve to be mentioned as old penalties besides actual punishment for crimes. One of these was the penalty for felo de se, so well described by Hood in his punning verses on Faithless Nelly Gray and Ben Battle, the soldier bold, who hung himself, and—
A dozen men sat on his corpse,
To find out how he died;
And they buried Ben at four cross-roads,
With a stake in his inside.
In 1779, John Stanford, who hung himself at the Red Lion, Kneesworth, was found to be a felo de se, and was "ordered to be buried in a cross-road."