Page:Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, Etc., with an Appendix Containing a Rare Tract.djvu/215

 Saxon times the fosse, over which the correctional stool was suspended, was used for the ordeal of plunging. In the ancient collection of laws entitled "Regia Majestas Scotiarum," it is stated that criminal pleas belonged to those barons who held their courts with "Sac et soc furca et fossa [gallows and pit], toll et theam, infangtheof et utfangtheof." On the words "furca et fossa," Sir Henry Spelman remarks, that they express the right of hanging male and drowning female criminals; and adduces an instance in which the latter punishment was used in the reign of Richard II. "The Manchester stool (says Rev. John Whitaker) remained within these few years (1775) an open-bottomed chair of wood, placed on the end of a long pole (balanced upon a pivot), and suspended over the large collection of water called Pool-house, or Pool Fold, which continued open until about the middle of the seventeenth century. It was afterwards suspended over the water of Daub Holes (afterwards the Infirmary Pond), and was used to punish scolds and common prostitutes."

BEHEADING A THIEF. Whitaker remarks that from an old perambulation record of the township of Wiswall, near Whalley, it appears that one of the meres, or landmarks, was called "Jeppe knave grave," for one Jeppe, says the record, "ki fust decolle come laron" (who was beheaded as a thief). Jeppe (pronounced Yep) is a monosyllabic Saxon name; but this punishment could not have been prior to the Conquest, for the Saxon laws imposed either a money fine or banishment for theft, which they did not punish capitally. It is said that Earl Waltheof was the first person upon whom the