, an intolerable fright, to
be detected ... next, to be compassed, like a good bilbo ...
hilt to point," etc.

_Brand._--The branding of criminals is indirectly alluded to in "2 Henry
VI." (v. 2), by Young Clifford, who calls the Duke of Richmond a "foul
stigmatick," which properly meant "a person who had been branded with a
hot iron for some crime, one notably defamed for naughtiness." The
practice was abolished by law in the year 1822.

The practice, too, of making persons convicted of perjury wear papers,
while undergoing punishment, descriptive of their offence, is spoken of
in "Love's Labour's Lost" (iv. 3), where Biron says of Longaville:

"Why, he comes in like a perjure, wearing papers."

Holinshed relates how Wolsey "so punished a perjure with open punishment
and open paper-wearing that in his time it was disused."

_Breech._ This old term to whip or punish as a school-boy is noticed in
the "Taming of the Shrew" (iii. 1):

"I am no breeching scholar in the schools;
I'll not be tied to hours nor 'pointed times"

--breeching being equivalent to "liable to be whipped."

In "Merry Wives of Windsor" (iv. 1), Sir Hugh Evans tells the boy page:
"If you forget your 'quies,' your 'quaes,' and your 'quods,' you must be
preeches" (breeched).

_Crown._ A burning crown, as the punishment of regicides or other
criminals, is probably alluded to by Anne in "Richard III." (iv. 1):

"O, would to God that the inclusive verge
Of golden metal, that must round my brow,
Were red-hot steel, to sear me to the brain!"

Mr. Singer,[847] in a note on this passage, quotes from Chettle's
"Tragedy of Hoffman" (1631), where this punishment is introduced:

"Fix on thy master's head my burning crown."

And again:

"Was adjudg'd
To have his head sear'd with a burning crown."

[847] "Shakespeare," vol. vi. p. 485; see "Boswell's Life of
Johnson," vol. ii. p. 6.

The Earl of Athol, who was executed for the murder of James I. of
Scotland, was, before his death, crowned with a hot iron. In some of the
monkish accounts of a place of future torments, a burning crown is
appropriated to those who deprived any lawful monarch of his kingdom.

_Pillory._ This old mode of punishment is referred to by Launce in the
"Two Gentlemen of Verona" (iv. 4), where he speaks of having "stood on
the pillory." In "Taming of the Shrew" (ii. 1), Hortensio, when he tells
Ba