“The Committee cannot, in the present state of the subscriptions, fix definitely the sum to be expended, but they recommend that the estimated cost of the several designs should be confined within the sums of £20,000 and £30,000. This condition, and that of the intended site, are the only restrictions to which the artists are limited.”
In the same newspaper of 16 May, we read of a punishment which might, occasionally, be revived with advantage, as being less dangerous than the ducking stool, and, probably, quite as efficacious, although we have the authority of St. James, “For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things of the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind, but the tongue can no man tame.” It relates how, “at the Mayor’s Court, Stafford, last week, Mary, wife of Thomas Careless, of the Broad Eye, a perfect termagant, was ordered to pay 1/- penalty, and 7/6 costs, for an unprovoked assault on Mary, the wife of Lewis Bromley. During the investigation, her garrulity was so incessant that the mayor was under the necessity of sending for the ‘scold’s bridle,’ an iron instrument of very antique construction, which, in olden times, was occasionally called into use. It is formed of an elliptical bow of iron, enclosing the head from the lower extremity of one ear to the other, with a transverse piece of iron from the nape of the neck to the mouth, and completely
covers the tongue, preventing its movement, and the whole machinery, when adjusted, is locked at the back of the head. The bridle is to be put in thorough repair, and hung in terrorem in the Mayor’s office, to be used as occasion may call it forth.”
These “scold’s bridles,” or “branks,” as they are sometimes called, are not uncommon. The earliest dated one is preserved at Walton-on-Thames, and bears the date 1633, with the inscription:
“Chester presents Walton with a bridle,
To curb women’s tongues that talk to idle.”
Brayley, in his “History of Surrey,” says that it was given by a gentleman named Chester, who lost a valuable estate through a gossiping, lying woman; but, as there are several examples of branks in the Palatinate, one being kept in the gaol at Chester, some people think it was a present from that city. There is one at Leicester, and another at Newcastle-on-Tyne, which used to hang in the mayor’s parlour, and tradition has it that many cases of disputes between women have been speedily and satisfactorily settled on his worship’s pointing to these branks.
There is one in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, which is very tender as far as the gag is concerned, but which has a leading chain fastened between the eyes. Hainstall, Ridware, Lichfield, Morpeth, Shrewsbury, Holme, Kendal, Altrincham, Macclesfield, Congleton (where it was last used in 1824), all have examples, whilst Chester has four! There are several in Scotland, and there are some in private hands, notably one which used to be in the Mayer Museum, Liverpool, which came from Warrington, where, however, the brank formerly used at Carrington is preserved, and there are several places—Newcastle-under-Lyne (now in the Mayer Collection), Manchester, and others—where they have existed. There is a very grotesque one in Doddington Park, which is a mask, having eyeholes, and a long funnel-shaped peak projecting from the mouth; and there are some very terribly cruel ones,
with fearful gags; but these can scarcely come under scold’s or gossip’s bridles. There was one at Forfar, with a spiked gag, which pierced the tongue, and an even more severe one is at Stockport; whilst those at Ludlow and Worcester are, also, instruments of torture.
CHAPTER V.
Thom, the religious fanatic—His riots and death—Delusions of his followers.