Part 8 (1/2)

It is also interesting and suggestive to note that by tradition the Drunkard's Cloak was in use in Cromwell's army; but the steps that led from its use among the Roundheads to its use in the Army of the Potomac are, I fear, forever lost.

XI

BRANDING AND MAIMING

There is nothing more abhorrent to the general sentiment of humanity to-day than the universal custom of all civilized nations, until the present century, of branding and maiming criminals. In these barbarous methods of degrading criminals the colonists in America followed the customs and copied the laws of the fatherland. Our ancestors were not squeamish. The sight of a man lopped of his ears, or slit of his nostrils, or with a seared brand or great gash in his forehead or cheek could not affect the stout stomachs that cheerfully and eagerly gathered around the b.l.o.o.d.y whipping-post and the gallows.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Branding.]

Let us recount the welcome of New England Christians to the first Quakers on American soil. In 1656 the vanguard, two women, Ann Austin and Mary Fisher, appeared in Boston, from the Barbadoes. They were promptly imprisoned and speedily sent back whence they came; and a premonitory law was pa.s.sed to punish s.h.i.+pmasters who presumed to bring over more Quakers. Others immediately followed, however, and fierce laws and cruel sentences greeted them; within four years after that first appearance scores of Quakers had been stripped naked, whipped, pilloried, stocked, caged, imprisoned, laid neck and heels, branded and maimed; and four had been hanged in Boston by our Puritan forefathers. I know nothing more chilling to our present glow of Puritan ancestor-wors.h.i.+p in New England than the reading of Quaker George Bishop's account of _New England Judged by the Spirit of the Lord_. Page after page of merciless cruelty is displayed in forcible, simple language. Here is an account of a Quaker's treatment in New Haven for wors.h.i.+pping G.o.d in his chosen way:

”The Drum was Beat, the People gather'd, Norton was fetch'd and stripp'd to the Waste, and set with his Back to the Magistrates, and given in their View Thirty-six cruel Stripes with a knotted cord, and his hand made fast in the Stocks where they had set his Body before, and burn'd very deep with a Red-hot Iron with H. for Heresie.”

Quaker women were punished with equal ferocity. Bishop says of Mary Clark:

”Her tender Body ye unmercifully tore with twenty stripes of a three-fold-corded-knotted whip; as near as the Hangman could all in one place, fetching his Stroaks with the greatest Strength & Advantage.”

The constables of twelve Ma.s.sachusetts and New Hamps.h.i.+re towns were notified of four ”rougue and vagabond Quakers” named Anna Coleman, Mary Tompkins, Alice Andrews and Alice Ambrose.

”You are enjoined to make them fast to the cart-tail & draw them through your several towns, and whip them on their naked backs not exceeding ten stripes in each town, and so convey them from Constable to Constable on your Perill?”

These women were whipped until the blood ran down their shoulders and b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and the men of the town of Salisbury rose in righteous wrath and tore them away from the cart and the constables. Quakers were ordered never to return after being banished from any town. In the ”Ma.s.sachusetts Colonial Records” of the year 1657 read the penalty for disobediently returning:

”A Quaker if male for the first offense shall have one of his eares cutt off; for the second offense have his other eare cutt off; a woman shalbe severely whipt; for the third offense they, he or she, shall have their tongues bored through with a hot iron.”

They were also to be branded with the letter R on the right shoulder.

They were called ”blasphemous hereticks” by the magistrates, and any who read books of their ”devilish opinions” were to be punished with severity. New York and Virginia were likewise intolerant and cruel to the Quakers, but were less visited by them than Ma.s.sachusetts.

In the despotism of early Virginia, under the Code of Martial Law established by Sir Thomas Dale, the fierceness of punishment was appalling; possibly the arbitrariness was necessary to control the turbulent community, but the cruelty shocked Dale's successor, Governor Yeardly, who proclaimed that the ”cruel laws by which the Ancient Planters had been governed” should be abolished. Under the laws proclaimed by Dale, absence from church was a capital offense. One man was broken on the wheel, one of the few instances known in the colonies.

Blasphemy was punished by boring the tongue with a red hot bodkin; one offender was thus punished and chained to a tree to die. A Mr. Barnes of Bermuda Hundred, for uttering detracting words against another Virginia gentleman, was condemned to have his tongue bored through with an awl, to pa.s.s through a guard of forty men, and be b.u.t.ted by every one of them. At the end to be knocked down and footed out of the fort, which must have effectively finished Mr. Barnes of Virginia. Yet Dale was an ardent Christian, beloved by his pastor, who said he was ”a man of great knowledge in divinity and a good conscience in all things.” He is an interesting figure in Virginia history--a st.u.r.dy watch-dog--tearing and rending with a cruelty equal to his zeal every offender against the common-weal.

In Maryland blasphemy was similarly punished. For the first offense the tongue was to be bored, and a fine paid of twenty pounds. For the second offense the blasphemer was to be stigmatized in the forehead with the letter B and the fine was doubled. For the third offense the penalty was death. Until the reign of Queen Anne the punishment of an English officer for blasphemy was boring the tongue with a hot iron.

A curious punishment for swearing was ordered by the President of the pioneer expedition into Virginia as told by Captain John Smith. The English gallants who came to the colony for adventure or to escape punishment were very tender-handed. They were sent into the woods to cut down trees for clapboard, but their hands soon blistered under the heavy axe helves, and the pain caused them to frequently cry out in great oaths. The President ordered that every oath should be noted, and for each a can of water was poured down the sleeve of the person who had been guilty of uttering it. In Haddon, Derbys.h.i.+re, England, is a relic of a similar punishment, an iron handcuff fastened to the woodwork of the banqueting hall. A sneak-cup who ”balked his liquor” or any one who committed any violation of the convivial customs of that day and place, had his wrist placed in the iron ring, and a can of cold water, or the liquor he declined was poured up his sleeve.

It is interesting to note in the statutes of Virginia and Maryland the honor that for decades hedged around the domestic hog. The crime of hog stealing is minutely defined and specified, and vested with bitter retribution. It was enacted by the Maryland a.s.sembly that for the first offense the criminal should stand in the pillory ”four Compleat hours,”

have his ears cropped and pay treble damages; for the second offense be stigmatized on the forehead with the letter H and pay treble damages; for the third be adjudged a ”fellon,” and therefore receive capital punishment. In Virginia in 1748 the hog-stealer for the first offense received ”twenty-five lashes well laid on at the publick whipping-post;”