ays Mr. Jewitt, the foregoing refers to
Rugby. In the old accounts of that town several items occur, as for
example:

1721. June 5. Paid for a lock for ye ducking-stool, and
spent in towne business 1s. 2d.

1739. Sept. 25. Ducking-stool repaired. And Dec. 21,
1741. A chain for ducking-stool 2s. 4d.

Mr. Petty, F.S.A., in a note to Mr. Jewitt, which is inserted in _The
Reliquary_ for January, 1861, states that the Rugby ducking-stool "was
placed on the west side of the horsepool, near the footpath leading from
the Clifton Road towards the new churchyard. Part of the posts to which
it was affixed were visible until very lately, and the National School
is now erected on its site. The last person who underwent the punishment
was a man for beating his wife about forty years since; but although the
ducking-stool has been long removed, the ceremony of immersion in the
horse-pond was recently inflicted on an inhabitant for brutality
towards his wife." The Rugby ducking-stool was of the trebuchet form,
somewhat similar to one which was in use at Broadwater, near Worthing,
and which has been frequently engraved. We reproduce an illustration of
the latter from the _Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine_, which represents
it as it appeared in the year 1776. It was in existence at a much later
period. Its construction was very simple, consisting of a short post let
into the ground at the edge of a pond, bearing on the top a transverse
beam, one end of which carried the stool, while the other end was
secured by a rude chair. We are told, in an old description of this
ducking-stool, that the beam could be moved horizontally, so as to bring
the seat to the edge of the pond, and that when the beam was moved back,
so as to place the seat and the person in it over the pond, the beam
was worked up and down like a see-saw, and so the person in the seat was
ducked. When the machine was not in use, the end of the beam which came
on land was secured to a stump in the ground by a padlock, to prevent
the village children from ducking each other.

[Illustration: DUCKING-STOOL, BROADWATER, NEAR WORTHING.]

Mr. T. Tindall Wildridge, author of several important local historical
works, says that the great profligacy of Hull frequently gave rise in
olden times to very stringent exercise of the magisterial authority. Not
infrequently this was at the direct instigation and sometimes comma