Many a wandering workman, accustomed to an active life and the open air, came thus, thanks to the incessant {272} ordinances of king and Parliament, to repent in the dark for his boldness, and during days and nights all alike, to regret his liberty, his family, and his “nest.” The effect of such a treatment on the physical constitution of the victims may be guessed or imagined, but without any imagining the reports of justice show it only too clearly. A roll of the time of Henry III reads, for instance, as follows:
“Assizes held at Ludinglond. The jury present that William le Sauvage took two men, aliens, and one woman, and imprisoned them at Thorlestan, and detained them in prison until one of them died in prison, and the other lost one foot, and the woman lost either foot by putrefaction. Afterwards he took them to the Court of the lord the king at Ludinglond to try them by the same Court. And when the Court saw them, it was loth to try them, because they were not attached for any robbery or misdeed for which they could suffer judgment. And so they were permitted to depart.”[375]
51. IN THE STOCKS.
(From the MS. 10 E. IV.)
How in such a condition the poor creatures could “depart,” and what became of them, the Assize Rolls do not say. Certain it is that no sort of indemnity was given {273} to help them out of trouble in their horrible condition. The justice of our fathers did not stop at trifles.
The stocks, which according to the laws of Richard II were always to be kept in good condition ready for use, consisted of two beams placed one on the other. At proper intervals round holes were cut; the upper beam was raised, and the legs of the prisoners were passed through the holes; sometimes there was a third beam, in the openings of which the wrists of the wretches were also caught; the body sometimes rested on a stool, sometimes on the ground. In certain places the stocks were pretty high; the sufferer’s legs were placed in them and he remained thus, his body stretched on the ground in the damp, his head lower than his feet; but this refinement of cruelty was not habitual.[376]
Stocks are still to be seen in many places in England; for instance, in the picturesque village of Abinger, where they stand on the green, near the churchyard. Others in a very good state of preservation are in existence at Shalford, near Guildford. They have not long ceased to be used in England; vagabonds and drunkards were seen in them within the memory of men who were not old when the present book was written. According to their remembrance people when released felt so benumbed that they were scarcely able to stand, and experienced great difficulty in getting away.
52. THE STOCKS AT SHALFORD, GUILDFORD.