Different types of punishment

Tudor punishments were very harsh. Hanging, burning to death, torture, whipping, being chained to stocks where people could pelt you with rubbish, dunking in a river or branding with a hot iron - these and other gruesome methods were accepted practice and according to many textbooks were commonly used.

Whipping was inflicted for serious offences such as robbery with violence, and from 1531 also for vagrancy. In Leominster a whipping post was erected in Corn Square in 1604. Civic accounts are often a good source for studying the Tudor period. We know of this particular whipping post because in 1604 Jon Patres was paid 20 pence for a piece of timber to make the whipping post, 23 pence went to John Wood for making the post, and 1 shilling to Haape to mend the bolts, unbolt the prisoner and make the irons for the whipping post (Gainsford Blacklock, The Suppressed Benedictine Minster and Other Ancient and Modern Institutions of the Borough of Leominster, 1897 (Leominster Folk Museum edition, published 1999, p. 204)).

Likewise the civic accounts attest to the existence of a pillory in Leominster, which was situated on the site of number 14 Church Street. A pillory usually consisted of two upright posts which were connected by two vertical flat boards. These boards had circular openings for the neck and wrists of the prisoner. In Leominster the pillory was covered with a roof, had open sides and was raised on a platform. The prisoner was forced to stand throughout his ordeal, being fully exposed to the public. This form of punishment was usually reserved for male offenders.

Stocks were used in the same way as the pillory, except that with stocks the feet were bound. The Herefordshire Historic Environment Record records four stocks and whipping posts, such as the ones seen attached to Fownhope Church. According to law each parish had to have and properly maintain a set of stocks. The stocks were generally used to punish people who offended against public order, committing offences such as drunken behaviour. Nevertheless, stocks could also be used to punish religious dissenters. One such case was a Quaker who went to a meeting organised at a house in Kings Caple in May 1657 (Pat Hughes and Heather Hurley, The Story of Ross, Logaston Press, 1999, p. 78).

The Corn Square in Leominster also housed a cage, the Cage House. Humiliation played a large part in Tudor punishment, and being locked in a cage in full view of passers-by must have been very degrading. In 1558 6 pence was paid for the mending of the lock of the cage. We know the cage was still in use in 1685 because 10 shillings 6 pence were paid to "ye Carpenter for mending ye Cage and other worke" (Gainsford Blacklock (see above), p. 205).

One popular method of punishment, which had already been popular in the Middle Ages and can be traced back to the Saxons, was the ducking stool, an example of which can still be seen in Leominster Priory. It seems that this form of punishment was usually reserved for women, primarily "scolds", and butchers, bakers, apothecaries and brewers who cheated on measures or sold inferior food. The person had to sit in the chair, which was wheeled through town and then submerged in the river, if there was enough water there, hence the name "ducking stool". In some places the stool was fixed to a swivel which in turn was fixed to a bridge, but the Leominster version was a mobile one with wheels.

It appears that the last recorded incident of a ducking in England was at Leominster in 1809. There was in fact another case in 1817, but this time the water level in the river was too low, so the woman, named Sarah Leeke, was merely wheeled round the town.

The Leominster Folk Museum has published a useful information sheet (#7) on the ducking stool.

[Original author: Toria Forsyth-Moser, 2003]