No. 229. Industry.
The punishments of the middle ages are remarkable, still more so in other countries than in England, for a mixture of a small amount of feeling of strict justice with a very large proportion of the mere feeling of vengeance. Savage ferocity in the commission of crime led to no less savage cruelty in retaliation. We have seen, in a former chapter, that this was not the sentiment of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, but that their criminal laws were extremely mild; but after the Norman conquest, more barbarous feelings on this subject were brought over from the Continent. Imprisonment itself, even before trial, was made frightfully cruel; the dungeons into which the accused were thrown were often filthy holes, sometimes with water running through them, and, as a refinement in cruelty, loathsome reptiles were bred in them, and the prisoners were not only allowed insufficient food, but they were sometimes stripped naked, and thrown into prison in that condition. In the early English romance of the “Seven Sages” (the text printed by Weber), when the emperor was persuaded by his wife to order her step-son for execution, he commanded that he should be taken, stripped naked of his clothes, and then hanged aloft— Quik he het (commanded) his sone take,
And spoili him of clothes nake,
And beten him with scourges stronge,
And afterward him hegge (high) anhonge.
—Weber, iii. 21.
At the intercession of one of the wise men, the youth is respited and thrown into prison, but without his clothing; and when, on a subsequent occasion, he was brought out of prison for judgment, he remained still naked.
Our three cuts which follow illustrate the subject of mediæval punishments for crimes and offences. The first ([No. 230]) is taken from a well-known manuscript, in the British Museum, of the fourteenth century (MS. Reg. 10 E. iv.), and represents a monk and a lady, whose career has brought them into the stocks, an instrument of punishment which has figured in some of our former chapters. It is a very old mode of punishing offenders, and appears, under the Latin name of cippus, in early records of the middle ages. An old English poem, quoted by Mr. Halliwell in his Dictionary, from a manuscript at least as old as the fifteenth century, recounting the punishments to which some misdoers were condemned, says:— And twenty of thes oder ay in a pytt,
In stokkes and feturs for to sytt.
The stocks are frequently referred to in writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and they have not yet become entirely obsolete. The Leeds Mercury for April 14, 1860, informs us that, “A notorious character, named John Gambles, of Stanningley (Pudsey), having been convicted some months ago for Sunday gambling, and sentenced to sit in the stocks for six hours, left the locality, returned lately, and suffered his punishment by sitting in the stocks from two till eight o’clock on Thursday last.” They were formerly employed also, in place of fetters, in the inside of prisons—no doubt in order to cause suffering by irksome restraint; and this was so common that the Latin term cippus, and the French ceps, were commonly used to designate the prison itself. It may be remarked of these stocks, that they present a peculiarity which we may perhaps call a primitive character. They are not supported on posts, or fixed in any way to the spot, but evidently hold the people who are placed in them in confinement merely by their weight, and by the impossibility of walking with them on the legs, especially when more persons than one are confined in them. This is probably the way in which they were used in prisons.
No. 230. A Party in the Stocks.
No. 231. An Offender Exposed to Public Shame.
A material part of the punishment of the stocks, when employed in the open air, consisted, of course, in the public disgrace to which the victim was exposed. We might suppose that the shame of such exposure was keenly felt in the middle ages, from the frequency with which it was employed. This exposure before the public was, we know, originally, the chief characteristic of the cucking-stool, for the process of ducking the victim in the water seems to have been only added to it at a later period. Our cut [No. 231], taken from an illumination in the unique manuscript of the “Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles,” in the Hunterian Library, at Glasgow, represents a person thus exposed to the scorn and derision of the populace in the executioner’s cart, which is drawn through the streets of a town. To be carried about in a cart was always considered as especially disgraceful, probably because it was thus that malefactors were usually conducted to the gallows. In the early romances of the cycle of king Arthur we have an incident which forms an apt illustration of the prevalence of this feeling. Sir Lancelot, when hastening to rescue his lady, queen Guenever, has the misfortune to lose his horse, and, meeting with a carter, he seizes his cart as the only means of conveyance, for the weight of his armour prevented him from walking. Queen Guenever and her ladies, from a bay window of the castle of sir Meliagraunce, saw him approach, and one of the latter exclaimed, “See, madam, where as rideth in a cart a goodly armed knight! I suppose that he rideth to hanging.” Guenever, however, saw by his shield that it was sir Lancelot. “‘Ah, most noble knight,’ she said, when she saw him in this condition, ‘I see well that thou hast been hard bested, when thou ridest in a cart.’ Then she rebuked that lady that compared him to one riding in a cart to hanging. ‘It was foul mouthed,’ said the queen, ‘and evil compared, so to compare the most noble knight of the world in such a shameful death. Oh Jhesu! defend him and keep him,’ said the queen, ‘from all mischievous end.’”
Our next cut ([No. 232]) is taken from the same manuscript in the British Museum which furnished us with [No. 230]. The playful draughtsman has represented a scene from the world “upso-down,” in which the rabbits (or perhaps hares) are leading to execution their old enemy the dog.