By F. A. Carrington, Esq. 



25 



Upon this latter case the Charity Commissioners report that the 

 present owner of the land is Cornelius Cartwright, Esq., and that 

 this annuity is duly paid to a poor man for awaking sleepers in 

 Church, and keeping out dogs. 1 



Therefore, let any Lady or Gentleman, who is prone to sleep, 

 avoid attending Divine Service at Trysull Church, in the county 

 of Stafford. 



The Cucking Stool. 



There is no doubt that the legal punishment of Common Scolds 

 by the laws of England, always has been and still is, that they be 

 placed in the Clicking Stool, and immersed in the pond or stream. 

 At present the Cucking Stool is only the legal punishment for 

 Scolds, though anciently and as early as the reign of Edward the 

 Confessor it was the punishment of fraudulent brewers. 



In the Doomsday Survey under Chester (page 262 of the printed copies of 

 that work) is the following entry : — 



" T. R. E. Vir sive mulier falsam mesuram in Civitate faciens deprehensus 

 iiij solidos emendabat, similiter malam cervisiam faciens aut in Cathedra 

 ponebatur stercoris aut iiij or solidos dabat prepositis." 



Which may be thus translated.— In the time of King Edward, a man or woman 

 found 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 Reeves. 



By the Statute de pistoribus it is provided that brewers " Q,ui assisam cervisie 

 fregerint primo, secundo, et tercio, amercientur: quarto, sine redempcione subeant 

 judicium tumbrelli." 



' k Brewers who break the assize the first, second, and third time, shall be 

 amerced : but the fourth time they shall undergo without redemption, the judg- 

 ment of the tumbrel." 



Lord Chief Baron Comyns in his digest at the place before cited, says, "the 

 tumbrel or tre-bucket is an instrument for the punishment of women that scold 

 or are unquiet, now called a Cucking Stool." 



It is worthy of remark that Lord Chief Baron Comyns mentions the tumbrel 

 or the tre-bucket* as being a Cucking Stool. 



The tumbrel was an oak chair fixed on a pair of wheels with very 

 long shafts. The person seated was wheeled into the pond back- 

 wards, and the shafts being tilted up, she was of course plunged 



1 Id. v. 634. 



* An ammunition waggon used in the war which ended in 1814, was called a Tumbril. And an 

 implement of war for throwing stones into besieged towns, a Tre-buchet. Grose's Mil. Antiq. I. 

 382. 



