trograde tendency to revive it. Thus, even in severe
Commonwealth days, the alleged whipping with rods of a
servant-girl by her master, though with no serious physical
injury, produced a great public outcry, as we see by the case of
the Rev. Zachary Crofton, a distinguished London clergyman, who
was prosecuted in 1657 on the charge of whipping his
servant-girl, Mary Cadman, because she lay in bed late in the
morning and stole sugar. This incident led to several pamphlets.
In _The Presbyterian, Lash or Noctroff's Maid Whipt_ (1661), a
satire on Crofton, we read: "It is not only contrary to Gospel
but good manners to take up a wench's petticoats, smock and all";
and in the doggerel ballad of "Bo-Peep," which was also written
on the same subject, it is said that Crofton should have left his
wife to chastise the maid. Crofton published two pamphlets, one
under his own name and one under that of Alethes Noctroff (1657),
in which he elaborately dealt with the charge as both false and
frivolous. In one passage he offers a qualified defense of such
an act: "I cannot but bewail the exceeding rudeness of our times
to suffer such foolery to be prosecuted as of some high and
notorious crime. Suppose it were (as it is not) true, may not
some eminent congregational brother be found guilty of the same
act? Is it not much short of drinking an health naked on a
signpost? May it not be as theologically defended as the
husband's correction of his wife?" This passage, and the whole
episode, show that feeling in regard to this matter was at that
time in a state of transition.

Flagellation as a penance, whether inflicted by the penitent
himself or by another person, was also extremely common in
medieval and later days. According to Walsingham ("Master of the
Rolls' Collection," vol. i, p. 275), in England, in the middle of
the fourteenth century, penitents, sometimes men of noble birth,
would severely flagellate themselves, even to the shedding of
blood, weeping or singing as they did so; they used cords with
knots containing nails.

At a later time the custom of religious flagellation was more
especially preserved in Spain. The Countess d'Aulnoy, who visited
Spain in 1685, has described the flagellations practised in
public at Madrid. After giving an account of the dress worn by
these fl