It is said that Chaucer wrote these lines:
"But for my daughter Julian,
I would she were well bolted with a Bridle,
That leaves her work to play the clack,
And lets her wheel stand idle;
For it serves not for she-ministers,
Farriers nor Furriers,
Cobblers nor Button-makers,
To descant on the Bible."
Mr. Andrews has confined his account of curious punishments mainly to
England and Scotland. Our Puritan ancestors must, we think, have seen
some of the instruments of torture here described, and perhaps some of
our great-great, etc., grandmothers may have been "ducked" or
"silenced by a brank" many years before the sailing of the "Mayflower"
or the "Lyon" or the "Angel Gabriel."
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It was once the custom in New England for a sermon to be preached
before the prisoner upon the day of his execution. In the
"Massachusetts Gazette," Dec. 26, 1786, is the following notice:--
SALEM, _Dec._ 23. Thursday last, being the day appointed for the
execution of Isaac Coombs, an Indian, with whose crime and
sentence the publick have before been made acquainted, the
unfortunate criminal was in the forenoon conducted to the
Tabernacle, where a Sermon, which we are told was well adapted to
the melancholy occasion, was preached by the Rev.
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