exhibited, seems to have been akin to the pillory, just as the κυφων, or wooden collar, was the prototype of the French
carcan or iron circlet which was riveted around the culprit’s neck, and attached by a chain to the post or pillory. With us the pillory or “stretch neck” was at first applied only to fraudulent traders, perjurers, forgers, and so forth; but as years passed it came to be more exclusively the punishment of those guilty of infamous crimes, amongst whom were long included rash writers who dared to express their opinions too freely before the days of freedom of the press. Besides Prynne, Leighton, Burton, Warton, and Bastwick, intrepid John Lilburne so suffered, under the Star Chamber decree, which prohibited the printing of any book without a license from the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, or the authorities of the two universities. Daniel Defoe again, who was pilloried in 1703 for his pamphlet. ‘The Shortest Way with the Dissenters.’ Defoe gave himself up, and was pilloried first in Cheapside, and afterwards in the Temple. The mob so completely sympathized with him, that they covered him with flowers, drank his health, and sang his ‘Ode to the Pillory’ in chorus. Dr. Shebbeare was pilloried in 1759, for his ‘Letters to the People of England.’ But he found a friend in the under-sheriff, Mr. Beardmore, who took him to the place of penitence, in a state-coach, and allowed a footman in rich livery to hold an umbrella over the doctor’s head, as he stood in the pillory. Beardmore was afterwards arraigned for neglect of duty, found guilty, and sentenced to fine and imprisonment.
In 1765, Williams the publisher, who reprinted Wilkes’ ‘North Briton,’ stood in the pillory in Palace Yard for an hour. For the moment he became popular. He arrived in a hackney-coach numbered 45,[107] attended by a vast crowd. He was cheered vociferously as he mounted the pillory with a sprig of laurel in each hand; and a gentleman present made a collection of two hundred guineas for him in a purple purse adorned with orange ribbons. In front of the pillory the mob erected a gallows, and hung on it a boot, with other emblems, intended to gibbet the unpopular minister Lord Bute. Williams was conducted from the pillory amid renewed acclamations, and the excitement lasted for some days. Lampoons and caricatures were widely circulated. Several street ballads were also composed, one of which began:
