for beating their wives, and if that custom were revived the
profession of cucking-stool maker would become busy and lucrative.
Penances of a graver sort are on record in the registers. Margaret
Sherioux, in Croydon (1597), was ordered to stand three market days
in the town, and three Sundays in the church, in a white sheet. The
sin imputed to her was a dreadful one. "She stood one Saturday, and
one Sunday, and died the next." Innocent or guilty, this world was
no longer a fit abiding-place for Margaret Sherioux. Occasionally
the keeper of the register entered any event which seemed out of the
common. Thus the register of St. Nicholas, Durham (1568), has this
contribution to natural history:-

"A certaine Italian brought into the cittie of Durham a very greate
strange and monstrous serpent, in length sixteen feet, in quantitie
and dimentions greater than a greate horse, which was taken and
killed by special policie, in Ethiopia within the Turkas dominions.
But before it was killed, it had devoured (as is credibly thought)
more than 1,000 persons, and destroyed a great country."

This must have been a descendant of the monster that would have
eaten Andromeda, and was slain by Perseus in the country of the
blameless Ethiopians. Collections of money are recorded
occasionally, as in 1680, when no less than one pound eight
shillings was contributed "for redemption of Christians (taken by ye
Turkish pyrates) out of Turkish slavery." Two hundred years ago the
Turk was pretty "unspeakable" still. Of all blundering Dogberries,
the most confused kept (in 1670) the parish register at Melton
Mowbray:-

"Here [he writes] is a bill of Burton Lazareth's people, which was