224 Ancient Cirencester, and its Streets and Hundreds. 



goging stool, a ducking stool, or cuching stool, called in Domesday 

 cathedra stercoris^ properly a ganging stool, gong stool, or gang stool.' 

 That such was sometimes its form is proved hy the engraving in 

 Boy^s History of Sandwich, which exhibits the cucking stool used 

 there. In the Statutes it is called, apparently from its construction, 

 trebuchetiis and tumhrellus. The first mention of this mode of 

 punishing offenders appears in Domesday Book, among the laws of 

 Chester, in the time of Edward the Confessor, where it is described 

 as the punishment for brewing bad beer. It became subsequently 

 the punishment of scolds and women of immoral and disorderly 

 life. The pillory for male offenders and cucking stool for females 

 were essentially appendant to the view of Frankpledge or Leet; 

 inquest was ordered to be made respecting the sufficient provision 

 of both by the statute assigned to 51 Hen, III., c. 6. : and while 

 on the other hand the Eschaetor was bound to see that no pillory 

 or tumbrel was set up without the King^s license, on the other 

 hand the Dean of Lincoln A.D. 1384 lost his liberties and had 

 them forfeited into the King's hands, because he did not maintain 

 pillory and tumbrel in certain of his manors in Derbyshire, but 

 punished offenders against the assize of bread and beer by fine 

 instead.^' The corruption from Gongstool River to Gunstoole River 

 is not very great, especially as by the Promptorium gong appears 

 to have been pronounced goonge; it was the handiest water to the 

 centre of the town, and as in those days there was a mill just inside 

 the Abbey wall, that part would have been the mill-dam with a 

 good depth of water for the purpose. As the practice was continued 

 till the beginning of last century, if the existing Cirencester court 

 rolls contained presentments, or if the earlier rolls were in existence, 

 we might have found some instance of the infliction of what an early 

 French traveller calls our comical way of punishing scolds and 

 debauched women, by which their immoderate heat was slightly 

 cooled; and if so we might have also found a confirmation or 

 contradiction of the derivation I have suggested. What appears to 

 be an early mention of our modern Gosditch seems also rather to 

 point to one form of the same word : in a charter of Roger, Earl of 

 Hereford, about A.D. 1150, granting two hides of land, one is said 



