NBURGH.]

Paul Methven, minister at Jedburgh, in the year 1563, admitted that he
had been guilty of adultery. The General Assembly conferred with the
Lords of the Council respecting his conduct. Three years later, we are
told, that he was "permitted to prostrate himself on the floor of the
Assembly, and with weeping and howling to entreat for pardon." His
sentence was as follows: "That in Edinburgh, as the capital, in Dundee,
as his native town, and in Jedburgh, the scene of his ministrations, he
should stand in sackcloth at the church door, also on the repentance
stool, and for two Sundays in each place."

A man, on his own confession, was tried for adultery at the Presbytery
of Paisley, on November 16th, 1626, and directed to "stand and abyde six
Sabbaths barefooted and barelegged at the kirk-door of Paisley between
the second and third bell-ringing, and thereafter to goe to the place of
public repentance during the said space of six Sabbaths."

At Stow, in 1627, for a similar crime, a man was condemned to "sittin'
eighteen dyetts" upon the stool of repentance. Particulars of many cases
similar to the foregoing may be found in the pages of "Social Life in
Scotland," by the Rev. Charles Rogers, in "Old Church Life in Scotland,"
by the Rev. Andrew Edgar, and in other works.

Notes bearing on this subject sometimes find their way into the
newspapers, and a couple of paragraphs from the _Liverpool Mercury_ may
be quoted. On November 18th, 1876, it was stated that "in a church in
the Black Isle, Ross-shire, on a recent Sunday, a woman who had been
guilty of transgressing the seventh commandment was condemned to the
'cutty-stool,' and sat during the whole service with a black shawl
thrown over her head." A note in the issue for 22nd February, 1884, says
that "one of the ringleaders in the Sabbatarian riots at Strome Ferry,
in June last, was recently publicly rebuked and admonished on the
'cutty-stool,' in the Free Church, Lochcarron, for an offence against
the moral code, which, according to Free Church discipline in the
Highlands, could not be expiated in any other way."

The Ducking-Stool.

Scolding women in the olden times were treated as offenders against the
public peace, and for their transgressions were subjected to several
cruel modes of punishment. The Corporations of towns during the Middle
Ages made their own regulations for punishing persons guilty of crimes
which were not rendered penal by the law