, or market-cross. She thus suffered for telling her mind
to some petty tyrant in office, or speaking plainly to a wrong-doer, or
for taking to task a lazy, and perhaps a drunken husband.

[Illustration: BRANK IN LEEDS PHILOSOPHICAL MUSEUM.]

In Yorkshire, we have only seen two branks. We give a sketch of one
formerly in possession of the late Norrisson Scatcherd, F.S.A., the
historian of Morley. It is now in the Leeds Philosophical Museum, where
it attracts considerable attention. It is one of the most simple and
harmless examples that has come under our notice. Amongst the relics of
the olden time in the Museum of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society,
York, is another specimen, equally simple in its construction. It was
presented by Lady Thornton to the Society in 1880, and near it may be
seen thumb-screws from York Castle; leg bar, waist girdle, and wrist
shackles, worn by the notorious highwayman, Dick Turpin, executed April
17th, 1739; and a leg bar, worn by another notorious highwayman, named
Nevison, who suffered death on the gallows, May 4th, 1684.

The brank which has received the greatest attention is the one preserved
in the vestry of Walton-on-Thames Parish Church. It bears the date of
1632, and the following couplet:--

"Chester presents Walton with a bridle
To curb women's tongues that talk too idle."

It is traditionally said that this brank was given to Walton Parish by a
person named Chester, who had, through a gossiping and lying woman of
his acquaintance, lost an estate he expected to inherit from a rich
relative. We are enabled to give an illustration of the Walton brank.

[Illustration: BRANK AT WALTON-ON-THAMES.]

Dr. T. N. Brushfield described in an exhaustive manner all the Cheshire
branks, in an able paper read before the Architectural, Archaeological,
and Historic Society of Chester, and published in 1858. We are unable to
direct attention to all the branks noticed by Dr. Brushfield, but cannot
refrain from presenting the following account of the one at Congleton,
which is preserved in the Town Hall of that ancient borough. "It was,"
we are informed, "formerly in the hands of the town jailor, whose
services were not infrequently called into requisition. In the
old-fashioned, half-timbered houses in the borough, there was generally
fixed on one side of the large open fire-places a hook, so that, when a
man's wife indulged her scolding propensities, the husband sent for the
town jai