From the reign
of Edward II. the penalty of the hurdle was no longer imposed for the
first offence, the pillory being employed instead.
Exposure in the pillory was a favourite prescription, a kind of judicial
panacea, to which all sorts of the morally infirm were introduced in
turn. Mr. Riley has compiled a list of the sins atoned for by such
involuntary penance, which, if we were guided by that alone, would
testify to a shocking state of depravity in the Metropolis. Culling from
this catalogue, we find that the pillory was considered a fitting reward
for various impostures: pretending to be a holy hermit; pretending to be
the son of the Earl of Ormond; pretending to be a physician; pretending
to be the summoner of the Archbishop of Canterbury and so summoning the
Prioress of Clerkenwell; pretending to be one of the Sheriff's sergeants
and meeting the bakers of Stratford and arresting them with a view to
fradulently extorting a fine, etc., etc. _Scandalum magnatum_ also
merited the pillory--a fact brought home to an idle gossip who occupied
that uneasy elevation for "telling lies" about the famous Mayor, William
Walworth. "Telling lies" of John Tremayne the Recorder was, in the same
way, held to justify a public exhibition of the impudent and imprudent
person. So, too, anti-social forestalling.
There were cases, however, in which this common method of advertising
paltry offences was thought not to involve an adequate degree of
notoriety and reprobation.
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