Part 4 (1/2)
Thomas Maule was a Salem Quaker and an author. His book was ordered to be burned in 1695 in Boston market place. The diary of the Reverend Dr.
Bentley says of him:
”Tho's Maule, shopkeeper of Salem, is brought before the Council to answer for his printing and publis.h.i.+ng a pamphlet of 260 pages ent.i.tled ”Truth held Forth and Maintained,” owns the book but will not own all, till he sees his copy which is at New York with Bradford who printed it.
Saith he writt to ye Gov'r of N. York before he could get it printed.
Book is ordered to be burnt--being stuff'd wth notorious lyes and scandals, and he recognizes to it next Court of a.s.size and gen'l gaol delivery to be held for the County of Ess.e.x. He acknowledges that what was written concerning the circ.u.mstance of Major Gen. Atherton's death was a mistake, was chiefly insisted on against him, which I believe was a surprize to him, he expecting to be examined in some point of religion, as should seem by his bringing his Bible under his arm.”
In 1654 the writings of John Reeves and Ludowick Muggleton, self-styled prophets, were burned in Boston market-place by that abhorred public functionary the hangman. Other Quaker books were similarly burned, and John Rogers of New London, who hated the Quakers, but whom the Boston magistrates persisted in regarding and cla.s.sifying as a Quaker, had to see his books perish in the flames in company with Quaker publications.
In 1754 a pamphlet called _The Monster of Monsters_, a sharp criticism on the Ma.s.sachusetts Court which caused much stir in provincial political circles, was burned by the hangman in King Street, Boston. We learn from the _Connecticut Gazette_ that about the same time another offending publication was sentenced to be ”publickly whipt according to Moses Law, with forty stripes save one, and then burnt.” The true book-lover winces at the thought of the blood-stained hands of the hangman on any book, even though a ”Monster.”
VI
THE WHIPPING-POST
John Taylour, the ”Water-Poet,” wrote in 1630:
”In London, and within a mile, I ween There are jails or prisons full fifteen And sixty whipping-posts and stocks and cages.”
Church and city records throughout England show how constantly these whipping-posts were made to perform their share of legal and restrictive duties. In the reign of Henry VIII a famous Whipping Act had been pa.s.sed by which all vagrants were to be whipped severely at the cart-tail ”till the body became b.l.o.o.d.y by reason of such whipping.” This enactment remained in force nearly through the reign of Elizabeth, when the whipping-post became the usual subst.i.tute for the cart, but the force of the blows was not lightened.
The poet Cowper has left in one of his letters an amusing account of a sanguinary whipping which he witnessed. The thief had stolen some ironwork at a fire at Olney in 1783, and had been tried, and sentenced to be whipped at the cart-tail.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Whipping at the Cart's Tayle.]
”The fellow seemed to show great fort.i.tude, but it was all an imposition. The beadle who whipped him had his left hand filled with red ochre, through which, after every stroke, he drew the lash of the whip, leaving the appearance of a wound upon the skin, but in reality not hurting him at all. This being perceived by the constable who followed the beadle to see that he did his duty, he (the constable) applied the cane without any such management or precaution to the shoulders of the beadle. The scene now became interesting and exciting. The beadle could by no means be induced to strike the thief hard, which provoked the constable to strike harder; and so the double flogging continued until a la.s.s of Silver End, pitying the pityful beadle thus suffering under the hands of the pityless constable, joined the procession, and placing herself immediately behind the constable seized him by his capillary pigtail, and pulling him backwards by the same, slapped his face with Amazonian fury. This concentration of events has taken more of my paper than I intended, but I could not forbear to inform you how the beadle thrashed the thief, the constable the beadle, and the lady the constable, and how the thief was the only person who suffered nothing.”
As a good, sound British inst.i.tution, and to have familiar home-like surroundings in the new strange land, the whipping-post was promptly set up, and the whip set at work in all the American colonies. In the orders sent over from England for the restraint of the first settlement at Salem, whipping was enjoined, ”as correccon is ordaned for the fooles back”--and fools' backs soon were found for the ”correccon”; tawny skins and white shared alike in punishment, as both Indians and white men were partakers in crime. Scourgings were sometimes given on Sabbath days and often on lecture days, to the vast content and edification of Salem folk.
The whipping-post was speedily in full force in Boston. At the session of the court held November 30, 1630, one man was sentenced to be whipped for stealing a loaf of bread; another for shooting fowl on the Sabbath, another for swearing, another for leaving a boat ”without a pylott.” Then we read of John Pease that for ”stryking his mother and deryding her he shalbe whipt.”
In 1631, in June, this order was given by the General Court in Boston:
”That Philip Ratcliffe shall be whipped, have his eares cutt off, fined 40 pounds, and banished out of the limits of this jurisdiction, for uttering malicious and scandalous speeches against the Government.”
Governor Winthrop added to his account of this affair that Ratcliffe was ”convict of most foul slanderous invectives against our government.”
This episode and the execution of this sentence caused much reprehension and unfavorable comment in England, where, it would seem, whipping and ear-lopping were rife enough to be little noted. But the mote in our brother's eye seemed very large when seen across the water. Anent it, in a letter written from London to the Governor's son, I read: ”I have heard divers complaints against the severity of your government, about cutting off the lunatick man's ears and other grievances.”
In 1630 Henry Lynne of Boston was sentenced to be whipped. He wrote to England ”against the government and execution of justice here,” and was again whipped and banished. Lying, swearing, taking false toll, perjury, selling rum to the Indians, all were punished by whipping.
Pious regard for the Sabbath was fiercely upheld by the support of the whipping-post. In 1643 Roger Scott, for ”repeated sleeping on the Lord's Day” and for striking the person who waked him from his G.o.dless slumber was sentenced to be severely whipped.
Women were not spared in public chastis.e.m.e.nt. ”The gift of prophecy” was at once subdued in Boston by lashes, as was unwomanly carriage. On February 30, 1638, this sentence was rendered:
”Anne ux. Richard Walker being cast out of the church of Boston for intemperate drinking from one inn to another, and for light and wanton behavior, was the next day called before the governour and the treasurer, and convict by two witnesses, and was stripped naked one shoulder, and tied to the whipping-post, but her punishment was respited.”
Every year, every month, and in time every week, fresh whippings followed. No culprits were, however, to be beaten more than forty stripes as one sentence; and the _Body of Liberties_ decreed that no ”true gentleman or any man equall to a gentleman shall be punished with whipping unless his crime be very shameful and his course of life vitious and profligate.” In pursuance of this notion of the exemption of the aristocracy from bodily punishment, a Boston witness testified in one flagrant case, as a condonement of the offense, that the culprit ”had been a soldier and was a gentleman and they must have their liberties,” and he urged letting the case default, and to ”make no uprore” in the matter. The lines of social position were just as well defined in New England as in old England, else why was one Mr.