40 



Facts relating to Marlborough. 



place of these recurved appendages, two bands of iron plate, 

 crossing each other at right angles on the crown of the head, their 

 extremities being riveted to the horizontal hoop or collar. In that 

 preserved at the Guildhall, Lich- 

 field, and exhibited by kind per- 

 mission of the mayor at one of the 

 meetings of the Institute, a more 

 complete frame-work or skeleton 

 head piece is formed by five pieces 

 of iron hoop, which meet on the 

 crown of the head, where they 

 are conjoined by a single rivet.* 

 (See Woodcut). Lastly, a more 

 complicated arrangement is shown 

 in the brank preserved at Ham- 

 stall Ridware, Stafibrdshire, in Brank belonging to the To^.nCouncO,Lichfield. 



the ancient manor-house in the possession of Lord Leigh, described 

 in Shaw's History of that county. It bears resemblance to a 

 lantern of conical form, presenting in front a grotesque mask 

 pierced for eyes, nose, and mouth, and opening with a door behind. 

 The construction of this singular engine of punishment is suffici- 

 ently shown by the accompanying Woodcuts, prepared from 

 drawings, for which we are indebted to Mr. Jewitt. 



There was a brank at Beaudesert, Stafibrdshire, as also at Wal- 

 sall, and at Holme, Lancashire. There was one in the town-hall at 

 Leicester, now in private hands in that town. That which is 

 recorded in 1623 as existing at Macclesfield, and is still seen in 

 the town-hall,2 had been actually used, as I was assured by a 

 friendly correspondent, within the memory of an aged official of 

 the municipal authorities in that town. The hideous " brydle for 

 a curste queane " remains suspended, with an iron straight- waist- 



* It is believed that this is the same which Shaw mentions as formerly in 

 Greene's Museum at Lichfield. 



* This is the Brank mentioned by Ormerod, alluded tq_ above, p. 33. The 

 ducking-pool also, with the tumbrel post, remained at Macclesfield in the last 

 century. Hist, of Cheshire, vol. iii., p. 385. 



