From this it is clear that at that time undergraduates, even of mature age, were liable to be flogged as a part of the ordinary discipline of the University and College, but probably it was unusual to inflict the penalty.
Thirty years later, after the disturbances of 20 February 1607, following the performance of a comedy in King’s College, an order was issued that thereafter every ringleader in any similar disturbances should be banished from the University: and every less responsible offender should, if a graduate, pay for the harm done, be suspended from his degree, and for one year refused leave to take a further degree; and if a non-graduate should for [212] ]one year be refused leave to graduate, and further, if non-adult, be corrected in the schools by the rod, and, if adult, make an open confession of his guilt in the schools: also the offender if not a scholar should be set in the stocks at the bull ring in the market place. Here, it will be noticed, the punishment by the rod is restricted to those non-adulti.
In a list of punishments inflicted at Corpus Christi College in 1622, quoted by Lamb, admonitions, fines, suspensions, and whippings are mentioned. Even as late as 1648 there is a record of “Benton per Tutorem suum Magistrum Johnson virgis castigandis.”
In 1648 an undergraduate bible-clerk of Peterhouse, age about seventeen, Tobias Conyers by name was “corrected publicly”—which, I take it, means flogged—for toasting the king. But times were abnormal, and if Conyers ventured into the stirring field of politics, he had to take the consequences.
The liability to a flogging still existed after the restoration. Thus in the Poor Scholar, by R. Nevile, London, 1662, there are references to it in Act ii, Scene 6, and Act v, Scene 4, as being still in use in colleges though whether adults were so liable is uncertain. If the author’s statements refer to contemporary matters and are trustworthy it [213] ]would seem that the punishment was then common, the culprits being mounted on barrels, and the flogging inflicted at the butteries. The birch was also still occasionally used in university discipline, for on 20 March 1674, the vice-chancellor ordered Ellethorpe of St John’s, and Hodges of Sidney Sussex to be whipped for having been rude to the junior proctor, Peter Parham, of Caius College: neither of the offenders had matriculated.
These references provide the strongest evidence with which I am acquainted for the assertions that flogging was a usual punishment at Cambridge during the seventeenth century. There is a widely spread tradition that when at Christ’s College, Milton was flogged, but Peile has shown that there is no satisfactory evidence for it, and it is intrinsically improbable. In a disciplinary order of Corpus Christi College in 1684, the only punishments mentioned are discommonsings, admonitions, rustications, deprivation of seniority, and refusal of college testimonials, so, comparing this with the orders of 1622 and 1648 which I have quoted above, perhaps we may take it that the use of the rod there had become obsolete.
The above extracts are sufficient to show that corporal punishment was recognized under the Elizabethan codes, though it seems probable that public opinion was against its use, unless the students [214] ]were quite young; perhaps this was always the practice, and thus, as the age of entry rose, the use of the birch died out. Incepting bachelors and senior students were usually punished for serious offences by deferring their admission to degrees, loss of terms, or rustication: being adult, they were in effect regarded as not subject to corporal punishment.
Stocks. Stangs.
A couple of other physical punishments—ignominious and sometimes painful—may be mentioned in passing.
One of these was confinement in Stocks. To this allusion has already been made in the orders of 1572 and 1607. Another instance is to be found in the records of Corpus Christi College, where about 1580, one of the students, Tobias Bland, who had libelled the master, was compelled to confess his fault publicly, next put in the stocks, and then expelled. In the old dining hall of Trinity College there were stocks in the minstrel’s gallery, but there is no evidence that they were re-erected when the hall was rebuilt in 1605; perhaps the punishment was then becoming unusual, though against this may be set the fact that there are references to the college stocks in 1610 at King’s, in 1625 at Christ’s, and in 1642 at Emmanuel. The stocks at King’s and Emmanuel, like those at Trinity, were in the hall. Allusions to their use are rare. The punishment [215] ]continued to be inflicted after the restoration, for on 10 April 1680, Thomas Grigson, who had been rude to the junior proctor, Thomas Verdon of St John’s College, was ordered to be “sett fast in the stocks, by the heeles for one whole houre, which was presently effected by the Constable of Saint Bennett’s Parish in Cambridge.” He had partially atoned for his offence by begging pardon on his knees, and so escaped a worse punishment.