The Cucking Stool. Ts 
deux bouts voisins la chaise qui est entre eux, et qui y est attachée 
par le céte comme avec un essieu, de telle maniére qu’elle a du jeu 
et qu’elle demeure toujours dans l'état naturel et horizontal auquel 
une chaise doit étre, afin qu’on puisse s’asseoir dessus, soit qu’on 
Péléve, soit qu’on l’abaisse. On dresse un poteau sur le bord d’un 
etang ou dune riviére, et sur ce poteau on pose presque en équilibre 
la double piéce de bois, 4 une des extrémités de laquelle la chaise 
se trouve au dessus de l’eau. On met la femme dans cette chaise, 
et on la plonge ainsi autant de fois qu’ il a été ordonné pour rafraicher 
un peu sa chaleur immoderée” 
Mr. Ozell, in his translation of this work printed in 1715, thus 
translates this passage :—“‘Cucking Stool—the way of punishing 
scolding women is pleasant enough. They fasten an arm chair to 
the end of two beams, twelve or fifteen foot long, and parallel to 
each other, so that these two pieces of wood with their two ends 
embrace the chair which hangs between them on a sort of axle, by 
which means it plays freely, and always remains in the natural 
horizontal position in which a chair should be that a person may 
sit conveniently in it, whether you raise it or let it down. They 
set up a post, upon the bank of a pond or river, and over this post 
they lay almost in equilibrio the two pieces of wood, at one end of 
which the chair hangs just over the water ; they place the woman 
in this chair, and so plunge her into the water, as often as the 
sentence directs, in order to cool her immoderate heat.’’ 
It would seem that a punishment nearly or quite the same as 
that of the Cucking Stool was applied at Chester, as early as the 
reign of Edward the Confessor, to persons making bad beer, as in 
the Domesday Survey Div. Chester, (p. 262, of the printed copy of 
that work) is the following entry :— 
«'T. R. E. Viv sive mulier falsam mensuram in civitate faciens 
deprehensus iiij solid. emendabat: similiter malam cervisiam faciens 
aut in cathedra ponebatur stercoris aut 11ij°* solid. dabat prepositis,”’ 
which may be thus translated—“In the time of King Edward, 
a man or woman taken making false measure in the city, was fined 
4s.; likewise, one making bad beer, was either put in the chair of , 
muck, or gave 4s. to the stewards.” 
