Richard le Forester, for attempting to defraud with a false garland or metal chaplet for the head, was sentenced to stand in the pillory, and afterwards to forswear the city for a year and a day. Traders convicted of having blankets vamped in foreign parts with the hair of oxen and of cows were punished, and the blankets were burnt under the pillory on Cornhill. Similarly, false gloves, braces, and pouches were burnt in the High Street of Chepe near the stone cross there. John Penrose, a taverner, convicted of selling unsound wine, was adjudged to drink a draught of the said wine, and the remainder was then poured out on his head. Alice, wife of Robert de Cranstom, was put in the thew, or pillory for women, for selling ale by short measure; and so was Margery Hore for selling putrid soles, the fish being burnt, and the cause of her punishment proclaimed. Two servants of John Naylere were placed in the stocks upon Cornhill for one hour, and their sacks burnt beside them, for selling a deficient measure of charcoal, while their master’s three horses were seized and detained by the Mayor’s sergeant until he (Naylere) came and answered for the aforesaid falsity and deceit. William Avecroft, having unsound wine, the sheriffs were ordered to pour all the wine in the street and wholly make away with it, according to the custom of the city.
The ‘Liber Albus’ contains other ordinances against brawlers and loose livers. The former, whether male or female, were taken to the thew, a form of pillory, carrying a distaff dressed with flax and preceded by minstrels. The latter, whether male, female, or clerics, were marched behind music to Newgate, and into the Tun in Cornhill.[12] Repeated offences were visited with expulsion, and the culprits were compelled to forswear the city for ever. The men on exposure had their heads and beards shaved, except a fringe on their heads two inches in breadth; women who made the penance in a hood of “rag” or striped cloth had their hair cut round about their heads. Worse cases of both sexes were shaved like “an appealer,” or false informer. The crime of riotous assembling was very sharply dealt with, as appears from the proclamation made in the King’s (Edward III.) departure for France. It was then ordained that “no one of the city, of whatsoever condition he shall be, shall go out of the city to maintain parties, such as taking leisure, or holding days of love (days of reconciliation between persons at variance), or making other congregations within the city or without in disturbance of the peace of our lord the king, or in affray of the people, and to the scandal of the city.” Any found guilty thereof were to be taken and put into the prison of Newgate, and there retained for a year and day; and if he was a freeman of the city, he lost his freedom for ever.
The city authorities appear to have been very jealous of their good name, and to have readily availed themselves of Newgate as a place of punishment for any who impugned it. A certain John de Hakford, about the middle of the fourteenth century, was charged with perjury in falsely accusing the chief men in the city of conspiracy. For this he was, presumably upon proof, remanded by the Mayor and aldermen to Newgate, there to remain until they shall be better advised as to their judgment. A little later on, Saturday the morrow of St. Nicholas (6 Dec., 1364), this judgment was delivered, to the effect that the said John shall remain in prison for one whole year and a day, and the said John within such year shall four times have the punishment of the pillory, that is to say, one day in each quarter of the year, beginning on the Saturday aforesaid, and in this manner: “The said John shall come out of Newgate without hood or girdle, barefoot and unshod, with a whetstone hung by a chain from his neck and lying on his breast, it being marked with the words ‘a false liar,’ and there shall be a pair of trumpets trumpeting before him in his way to the pillory, and there the cause of this punishment shall be solemnly proclaimed, and the said John shall remain in the pillory for three hours of the day, and from thence shall be taken back to Newgate in the same manner, there to remain until his punishment be completed in manner aforesaid.” This investiture of the whetstone was commonly used as a punishment for misstatement;[13] for it is recorded in 1371 that one Nicholas Mollere, servant of John Toppesfield, smith, had the punishment of the pillory and whetstone for “circulating lies,” amongst others that the prisoners at Newgate were to be taken to the Tower of London, and that there was to be no longer a prison at Newgate.
Again in 1383, William Berham for slandering the Mayor was adjudged to be put upon the pillory on the same day, there to stand for one hour of the day with one large whetstone hung from his neck in token of the lie he told against the Mayor, and another smaller whetstone in token of a lie told against a lesser personage. After that he was to be taken back to Newgate, and thence for the five following days