Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 10.pdf/467

 432

"The country women here are chaste, and sober, very diligent in their housewifery; they hate idleness, love and obey their husbands, only in some of the great townes many of the seeming sanctificators use to follow the Presbyterian gang, and on a lecture-day put on their best rayment and doo hereby take occasion to goo a gossipping. Your merry wives of Bentley will sometimes look in ye glass, chirpe a cupp merrily yet not inde cently. In the Peak they are much given to dance after the bagpipes — almost every towne hath a bagpipe in it." Thus, if one of the Cheshire characteristics was being " hasty" perhaps the being " soon brought to temper " might be the effect of using the brank! and other equally strong measures. The brank consisted of a kind of crown, or framework, of iron, which was locked up on the head; and it was armed in front with a gag, a plate, or a sharp-cutting knife or point, which was placed in the poor woman's mouth, so as to prevent her moving her tongue, or it was so placed that if she did move it, or attempt to speak, it was cut in the most frightful manner. With this cage upon her head, and with the gag firmly pressed and locked against her tongue, the miserable creature whose sole offending, per haps, was that she had raised her voice in de fence of her social rights, against a brutal and besotted husband, or had spoken honest truth of some one high in office in her town, was paraded through the streets, led by a chain, by the hand of the bellman, the beadle, or the constable; or chained to the pillory, the whipping-post, or market cross, to be subjected to every conceivable insult and degradation, without even the power left her of asking for mercy, or of promising amend ment for the future, and, when the punish ment was over, she was turned out from the Town-hall, or the place where the brutal punishment had been inflicted, maimed, dis figured, bleeding, faint and degraded, to be the subject of comment and jeering among her neighbors, and to be reviled at by her persecutors.

The brank it appears was never a legal ized instrument of punishment; but, never theless, it was most generally used, and was one of the means by which those petty kings, but arch-tyrants, of provincial towns, the mayors, bailiffs, constables, or justices, kept up their power and held people in awe. It was one of those cruel means by which au thority was preserved and power vindicated, at the expense of all that was just, and seemly, and rational. Let our readers fancy, if they can, nowadays, a man "presenting" his wife to the mayor as a scold, or as a gos sip, and claiming that punishment should be administered to her: what would they think if they saw the poor woman " bridled," the knife point thrust into her mouth, the iron hoop locked tight round her jaws, the cross bands of iron brought over her head and clasped behind, her arms pinioned, a ring and chain attached to the brank, and thus led or driven from the market place, through all the principal streets of the town, for an hour or two, and then brought back bleed ing, faint, ill, and degraded. Let them fancy all this, and then say whether it is not indeed a happy thing that our lot is cast in better days than those in which such disgusting public punishments could be asked for by husbands, or neighbors, inflicted by the au thorities, and tolerated by the people them selves. As in Hudibras is said of the cucking stool, might also be said of the brank, that it is — '. An unchristian opera, Much used in midnight times of popery. Of running after self-inventions Of wicked and profane intentions; To scandalise that sex for scolding, To whom the saints are so beholden." The brank has frequently been alluded to by writers, and its use as " a bridle for the tongue" will be familiar to most people. Old William Bagshaw, the " Apostle of the Peak," has for the title of a sermon in 1671, "The ready way to prevent, on Prov. 30-32, with a Bridle for the Tongue." Gay also