The Stang was a wooden pole on which the luckless culprit was tied, and carried ignominiously through the courts of his college. In John Ray’s Collection of English Words not Generally Used, London, 1674, it is said that the “word is still used in some colleges in the University of Cambridge; to stang scholars in Christmas, being to cause them to ride on a colt-staff or pole for missing of chappel.” References to the place where the pole was kept occur in the account-books of Trinity, St John’s, Queens’, and Christ’s. In Parne’s unpublished manuscript history of Trinity College, allusion is made to stanging as though at the beginning of the eighteenth century it had become recently obsolete. From his language it would seem also that undergraduates themselves inflicted the punishment on those of their members who declined to take part in the Christmas revelries.
Fines.
Pecuniary fines have been used to [216] ]enforce discipline from the earliest times by the University as well as by the colleges: after the renaissance, the increasing age and means of students made fines a suitable penalty for many of the less serious offences, such as participation in forbidden amusements, visits to places out of bounds, walking across the grass in college courts, smoking in public places, the failure to wear academic dress when required, non-attendance at lectures, chapel, hall, etc. Probably grave misconduct was punished otherwise, or by fines combined with additional penalties. A fine, if heavy, presses unequally on men of different means; and thus a system of fines on a fixed scale cannot be regarded as equitable. Fines are still used as penalties for the infraction of rules.
Discommonsing. Dissizaring.
To be put out of commons was a well-recognized penalty, applicable chiefly to scholars and sizars, part of whose emolument consisted of a right to dine in hall and, in some cases, to have commons (bread, butter, and beer) to a limited amount each day. To deprive such a student of the right to dine in hall or of his commons was equivalent to a pecuniary fine, and in the case of a poor scholar might be a severe, though not a satisfactory, punishment; probably a modicum of bread and beer was supplied to students even when discommonsed. In some comments, published [217] ]in 1768, on university education at Cambridge, discommonsing is described as “one of the most idle and anile punishments ... inflicted rather on the parent than on the young man, who being prohibited to eat in Hall is driven to purchase a dinner at a tavern or coffee house.”
Here is an example of an order of discommonsing at Trinity in the seventeenth century: “Agreed that Cassill should be punisht a monthes commons.... Agreed at the same time that Pepys besides a monthes commons, should have an admonition and pay the charges of the chirurgion for the healinge Cassil’s head wh he broke with a key.” (Conclusion, 1 August 1643.) Its preservation is due to the fact that Pepys’ punishment was combined with an admonition, and evidence that an admonition had been given might be required if subsequently a question of expulsion arose. The culprit in question was Thomas Pepys (B.A. 1645) and not the Samuel of immortal memory.
In 1815, Mansel, master of Trinity and bishop of Bristol, was accustomed to put men out of sizings and commons if they appeared in hall in trousers instead of knee breeches, and it would seem then that to be put out of sizings further deprived the student of obtaining private supplies from the college kitchens. Half a century ago the penalty was still in use at Trinity, being imposed on [218] ]scholars in waiting, who failed to appear after hall to say grace.
Loss of Days.
To qualify for a degree and for an emolument, it is and has been generally necessary to keep a certain number of days by residence in each of certain specified terms. At one time a common form of punishment was to cancel a certain number of days already kept. Thus the student would be obliged to stay at Cambridge for so many additional days to make up for the requisite number which had to be kept in the course of that term. In the seventeenth century the authorities went further and sometimes cancelled terms that had been kept. I believe this form of punishment has long been obsolete.