KING-STOOL FROM A CHAP-BOOK.]

Old municipal accounts and records contain many references to this
subject. Cole, a Cambridge antiquary, collected numerous curious items
connected with this theme. In some extracts made from the proceedings of
the Vice-Chancellor's Court, in the reign of Elizabeth, it is stated:
"Jane Johnson, adjudged to the ducking-stool for scolding, and commuted
her penance." The next person does not appear to have been so fortunate
as Jane Johnson, who avoided punishment by paying a fine of about five
shillings. It is recorded: "Katherine Saunders, accused by the
churchwardens of Saint Andrews for a common scold and slanderer of her
neighbours, was adjudged to the ducking-stool."

We find in one of Cole's manuscript volumes, preserved in the British
Museum, a graphic sketch of this ancient mode of punishment. He says:
"In my time, when I was a boy, I lived with my grandmother in the great
corner house at the foot, 'neath the Magdalen College, Cambridge, and
rebuilt since by my uncle, Joseph Cook. I remember to have seen a woman
ducked for scolding. The chair was hung by a pulley fastened to a beam
about the middle of the bridge, in which [he means the chair, of course,
not the bridge] the woman was confined, and let down three times, and
then taken out. The bridge was then of timber, before the present stone
bridge of one arch was built. The ducking-stool was constantly hanging
in its place, and on the back of it were engraved devils laying hold of
scolds, etc. Some time afterwards a new chair was erected in the place
of the old one, having the same devices carved upon it, and well painted
and ornamented. When the new bridge of stone was erected, in 1754, this
chair was taken away, and I lately saw the carved and gilt back of it
nailed up by the shop of one Mr. Jackson, a whitesmith, in the Butcher's
Row, behind the Town Hall, who offered it to me, but I did not know what
to do with it. In October, 1776, I saw in the old Town Hall a third
ducking-stool, of plain oak, with an iron bar in front of it, to confine
the person in the seat, but I made no inquiries about it. I mention
these things as the practice of ducking scolds in the river seems now to
be totally laid aside." Mr. Cole died in 1782, so did not long survive
the writing of the foregoing curious notes.

The Sandwich ducking-stool was embellished with men and women scolding.
On the cross-bar were carved the following words:

"Of member