By F. A. Carrington, Esq. 



29 



Marlborough. It seems to have been a fixed tre-buchet, and I am 

 told by Mr. T. Baverstock Merriman that according to tradition, 

 it was placed at the edge of the stream near the south front of the 

 Master's lodge at Marlborough College. This Cucking Stool must 

 have been in pretty frequent use as it appears from the Corporation 

 accounts, that it was repaired in 1580 : repaired again in 1582, 

 and in 1584, they were obliged to have a new one. 



There appears to have been a Cucking Stool at Salisbury as late 

 as 1750. It is shown on Naish's plan of the city, published by 

 Collins, and dedicated to the then Bishop [John Gilbert]. Its 

 situation, together with that of the Cage, was on the Canal near 

 the western extremity of Milford Street, towards the New Canal. 



The Cucking Stool appears to have been used as a punishment 

 in some of the Colonies. My friend Mr. Duncan Stewart, of the 

 Chancery Bar, saw a black woman ducked in the sea for theft by 

 a Cucking Stool on the see-saw principle at Bermuda, about thirty 

 years ago. 



The Brank, or Scolds' Bridle. 



This instrument, used for the punishment of scolds, of which a 

 specimen, now in my possession, was exhibited at the Meeting of the 

 Society at Marlborough, appears to have been in use in this country 

 from the time of the Commonwealth to the reign of King William 

 the Third. 



As far as I am aware, it never was a legal punishment ; indeed 

 in the year 1655, Mr. Gardiner, in his work hereafter cited, com- 

 plains of it as illegal and improper. The punishment for scolds 

 was, and is still, by the laws of England, the Cucking-stool, and 

 I have not found the word "Brank," in any dictionary. 



I know of the existence of branks in several places, and no doubt 

 there are other examples ; the punishment, must therefore, have 

 been quite a common one. 



There was, in the year 1655, a brank at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 

 and it possibly exists there still. Dr. Plot mentions branks at New- 

 castle under-Lyme and at Walsall, in the reign of King James II. 



