IX
PUBLIC PENANCE
The custom of performing penance in public by humiliation in church either through significant action, position or confession has often been held to be peculiar to the Presbyterian and Puritan churches. It is, in fact, as old as the Church of Rome, and was a custom of the Church of England long before it became part of the Dissenters’ discipline. All ranks and conditions of men shared in this humiliation. An English king, Henry II, a German emperor, Henry IV, the famous Duchess of Gloucester, and Jane Shore are noted examples; humbler victims for minor sins or offenses against religious usages suffered in like manner. In Scotland the ordeals of sitting on the repentance-stool or cutty-stool were most frequent. In economic and social histories of Scotland, and especially in Edgar’s Old Church Life in Scotland, many instances are enumerated. Sometimes the offender wore a repentance-gown of sackcloth; more frequently he stood or sat barefoot and barelegged.
In our own day penance has been done in the Scottish Church. In 1876 a woman in Ross-shire sat on the cutty-stool through the whole service with a black shawl over her head; while in February, 1884, one of the ringleaders in the Sabbatarian riots was set on the cutty-stool in Lochcarron church and rebuked for a moral offense which could not, according to the discipline of the Free Church in the Highlands, be fully punished in any other way.
In English churches similar penance was done. In the History of Wakefield Cathedral are given the old church-wardens’ accounts. In them are many items of the loan of sheets for men and women “to do penance in.” About sixpence was the usual charge. For immorality, cheating, defamation of character, disregard of the Sabbath and other transgressions penance was performed. In 1766 penance was thus rendered in Stokesby Church for three Sundays by James Beadwell:
“In the time of Divine service, between the hours of ten and eleven in the forenoon of the same day, in the presence of the whole congregation there assembled, being barehead, barefoot and barelegged, having a white sheet wrapped about him from the shoulder to the feet and a white wand in his hand, where immediately after the reading of the Gospel, he shall stand upon some form or seat before the pulpit or place where the minister readeth prayers and say after him as forthwith, etc.”
Clergymen even, if offenders against the established church, were not spared public humiliation. In the year 1534 the vicar of a church in Hull, England, preached a sermon in Holy Trinity church advocating the teaching of the Reformers in Antwerp. He was promptly tried for heresy and convicted. He recanted; and in penance walked around the church on Sunday clad only in his shirt, barefooted and carrying a large faggot in his hand. On the market day he walked around the market-place clad in a similar manner. This really solemn act is robbed of its dignity because of the apparel of the penitent. A man’s shirt is an absurd garment; had the offender been wrapped in a sheet, or robed in sackcloth and ashes, he would been a noble figure, but you cannot grace or dignify a shirt.
With a mingling of barbarity and Christianity unrivalled by any other code of laws issued in America, the Articles, Lawes, and Orders Divine, Politique and Martiall for the colony of Virginea, as issued by Sir Thomas Dale, punished offenders against the church and God’s word equally by physical and moral penance.
“Noe man shall vnworthilie demeane himselfe vnto any Preacher, or Minister of God’s Holy Word, but generally hold them in all reverent regard and dutiful intreatie, otherwise he the offender shall openly be whipt three times, and ask publick forgiveness in the assembly of the congregation three several Saboth daies.”
“There is no one man or woman in this Colonie now present, or hereafter to arrive, but shall give vp an account of his and their faith and religion, and repaire vnto the Minister, that by his conference with them, hee may vnderstand, and gather, whether heretofore they have been sufficiently instructed and catechised in the principles and grounds on Religion, whose weaknesse and ignorance herein, the Minister, finding, and advising them in all love and charitie to repaire often unto him to receive therein a greater measure of knowledge, if they shal refuse so to repaire unto him, and he the Minister give notice thereof unto the Governour, he shall cause the offender first time of refusall to be whipt, for the second time to be whipt twice, and to acknowledge his fault vpon the Saboth day, in the assembly, and for the third time to be whipt every day vntil he hath made the same acknowledgement, and asked forgivenesse for the same, and shall repaire vnto the Minister, to be further instructed as aforesaid; and vpon the Saboth when the Minister shall catechize and of him demaund any question concerning his faith and knowledge, he shall not refuse to make answer vpon the same perill.”
Those who were found to “calumniate, detract, slander, murmur, mutinie, resist, disobey, or neglect” the officers’ commands also were to be whipped and ask forgiveness at the Sabbath service. The Puritans were said dreadfully to seek God; far greater must have been the dread of Virginia church folk; and in view of this severity it is not to be wondered that this law had to be issued as a pendant:
“No man or woman, vpon paine of death, shall rune away from the Colonie, to Powhathan or any savage Weroance else whatever.”
Bishop Meade, in his history of the Virginia church, tells of offenders who stood in church wrapped in white sheets with white wands in their hands; and other examples of public penance in the Southern colonies are known.
In 1639 Robert Sweet of Jamestown – “a gentleman” – appeared, wrapped in a white sheet, and did penance in church. In Lower Norfolk County, a white man and a black woman stood up together, dressed in white sheets and holding white wands in their hands.
The custom of public confession of sin prevailed in the first Salem church, and thereafter lasted in New England, in modified form for two centuries. Biblical authority for this custom was claimed to rest in certain verses of the eighteenth chapter of the gospel by St. Matthew.
Mr. Charles Francis Adams, in his paper entitled Some Phases of Morality and Church Discipline in New England, gives many examples of public confession of sin and public reprimand in the Braintree meeting-house. Manuscript church records which I have examined afford scores, almost hundreds of other examples.
In earliest times, in New England as in Virginia a white robe or white sheet was worn by the offender.
In 1681 two Salem women, wrapped in white, were set on stools “in the middle alley” of the meeting-house through the long service; having on their heads a paper bearing the name of their crime. In 1659 William Trotter of Newbury, Massachusetts, for his slanderous speeches was enjoined to make “publick acknowledgement” in the church on a lecture-day. On the 20th of September, 1667, Ellinor Bonythorne of York, Maine, was sentenced “to stand 3 Sabbath dayes in a white sheet in the meeting-house.” Another Maine woman, Ruth, the wife of John Gouch, being found guilty of a hateful crime was ordered “to stand in a white sheet publickly in the Congregation at Agamenticus two several Sabbath days, and likewise one day in the General Court.”
These scenes were not always productive of true penitence. This affair happened in the Braintree church in 1697, and many others might be cited.
“Isaac Theer was called forth in public, moved pathetically to acknowledge his sin and publish his repentance, who came down and stood against the lower end of the fore seat after he had been prevented by our shutting the east door from going out. Stood impudently and said indeed he owned the sin of stealing and was heartily sorry for it, begged pardon of God and men, and hoped he should do so no more, which was all he would be brought unto, saying his sin was already known; all with a remisse voice so few could hear him. The Church gave their judgment against him that he was a notorious scandalous sinner, and obstinately impenitent. And when I was proceeding to spread before him his sin and wickedness, he, as tis probable, guessing what was like to follow, turned about to goe out, and being desired and charged to tarry and know what the church had to say, he flung out of doors with an insolent manner though silent.”
A most graphic description of one of these scenes of public abasement and abnegation is given by Governor John Winthrop in his History of New England. The offender, Captain John Underhill, was a brave though blustering soldier, a man of influence throughout New England, a so-called gentleman. And I doubt not that Boston folk tried hard to overlook his transgressions because, “soldiers has their ways.” Winthrop wrote thus:
“Captain Underbill being brought by the blessing of God in this church’s censure of excommunication to remorse for his foul sins, obtained by means of the elders and others of the church of Boston, a safe conduct under the hand of the governor and one of the council to repair to the church. He came at the time of the court of assistants, and upon the lecture day, after sermon, the pastor called him forth and declared the occasion, and then gave him leave to speak; and, indeed, it was a spectacle which caused many weeping eyes, though it afforded matter of much rejoicing to behold the power of the Lord Jesus in his ordinances, when they are dispensed in his own way, holding forth the authority of his regal sceptre in the simplicity of the gospel. He came in his worst clothes, being accustomed to take great pride in his bravery and neatness, without a band, in a foul linen cap pulled close to his eyes, and standing upon a form, he did, with many deep sighs and abundance of tears, lay open his wicked course, his adultery, his hypocrisy, his persecution of God’s people here, and especially his pride, as the root of all which caused God to give him over to his sinful courses, and contempt of magistrates. * * * * * He spake well, save that his blubbering, etc., interrupted him, and all along he discovered a broken and melting heart and gave good exhortations to take heed of such vanities and beginnings of evil as had occasioned his fall. And in the end he earnestly and humbly besought the church to have compassion on him and to deliver him out of the hands of Satan.”
In truth, the Captain “did protest too much.” This well-acted and well-costumed piece of vainglorious repentance was not his first appearance in the Boston meeting-house in this role. Twice before had he been the chief actor in a similar scene, and twice had he been forgiven by the church and by individuals specially injured. He was not alone in his “blubbering,” as Winthrop plainly puts it. The minister at Jedburgh, Scotland, for similar offenses, “prostrated himself on the floor of the Assembly, and with weeping and howling, entreated for pardon.” He was thus sentenced:
“That in Edinburgh as the capital, in Dundee as his native town, in Jedburgh as the scene of his ministration, he should stand in sack-cloth at the church door, also on the repentance-stool, and for two Sundays in each place.”
The most striking and noble figure to suffer public penance in American history was Judge Samuel Sewall. He was one of the board of magistrates who sat in judgment at the famous witchcraft trials in Salem and Boston in the first century of New England life. Through his superstition and by his sentence, many innocent lives were sacrificed. Judge Sewall was a steadfast Christian, a man deeply introspective, absolutely upright, and painfully conscientious. As years passed by, and all superstitious excitement was dead, many of the so-called victims confessed their fraud, and in the light of these confessions, and with calmer judgment, and years of unshrinking thought, Judge Sewall became convinced that his decisions had been unjust, his condemnation cruel, and his sentences appallingly awful. Though his public confession and recantation was bitterly opposed by his fellow judge, Stoughton, he sent to his minister a written confession of his misjudgment, his remorse, his sorrow. It was read aloud at the Sabbath service in the Boston church while the white-haired Judge stood in the face of the whole congregation with bowed head and aching heart. For his self-abnegation he has been honored in story and verse; honored more in his time of penance than in the many positions of trust and dignity bestowed on him by his fellow-citizens.
X
MILITARY PUNISHMENTS
An English writer of the seventeenth century, one Gittins, says with a burst of noble and eloquent sentiment: “A soldier should fear only God and Dishonour.” Writing with candor he might have added, “but the English soldier fears only his officers.” The shocking and frequent cruelty practiced in the English army is now a thing of the past, though it lasted to our own day in the form of bitter and protracted floggings. It is useless to describe one of these military floggings, and superfluous as well, when an absolutely classic description, such as Somerville’s, in his Autobiography of a Workingman, can be read by all. He writes with stinging, burning words of the punishment of a hundred lashes which he received during his service in the British army, and his graphic sentences cut like the “cat” – we seem to see in lurid outlines the silent, motionless, glittering regiment drawn up in a square four rows deep; the unmoved and indifferent officers, all men of gentle birth and liberal education, but brutalized and inhuman, standing within these lines and near the cruel stake; the impassive quartermaster marking with leisurely and unmoved exactness every powerful, agonizing lash of the bloody whip as it descended on the bare back of a brave British soldier, without one sign of protest or scarce of interest from any of the hundreds who viewed the scene, save on the part of the surgeon, who stood perfunctorily near with basin and drugs to revive the sufferer if he fainted, or stop the punishment if it seemed to foretell a fatal result. We read that raw recruits sometimes cried out or dropped down in the ranks from fright at the first horrifying sight of an army-flogging, but they soon grew scarcely to heed the ever-frequent and brutalizing sight. These floggings were never of any value as a restraint or warning in the army; the whipped and flayed soldiers were ruined in temper and character just as they were often ruined in health. Deaths from exhaustion and mortification from the wounds of the lash were far from infrequent. The story of the inquiry in army circles that led to the disuse of the whip in the British army (as for instance, the Evidence on Military Punishment contains some of the most revolting pages ever put in print.
English army-laws of course ruled the royal troops in the American provinces, and the local train bands, and were continued among the volunteer American soldiers of the Revolution. I have read scores of order-books and seen hundreds of sentences to flogging, both during the French and Indian wars, and in the Revolutionary war. A few instances may be given. Edward Munro, of Lexington, Mass., was a Lieutenant in a company of Rangers in 1758, and in 1762 he was Lieutenant in Saltonstall’s regiment at Crown Point, and he acted as adjutant for four regiments. His order-book still exists. On October 19, 1762, a court-martial found several soldiers guilty of neglect of duty, and he records that they were sentenced to receive punishment in the following manner:
“Robert McKnight to receive 800 lashes on his naked back with cat-o’-nine-tails. John Cobby to receive 600 lashes in the same manner; and Peter McAllister 300 lashes in the same maner. The adjutant will see the sentences put in execution by the Drum of the line at 5 o’clock this evening; the Surgeon to attend the execution.”
As Peter McAlister was very young his lashes were remitted. He was led in disgrace to watch the others as they were whipped, two hundred lashes at a time, at the head of the four regiments, if the surgeon found they could endure it.
These sentences were horribly severe. Thirty-nine lashes were deemed a cruel punishment. Ten was the more frequent number. Dr. Rea, in his diary, kept before “Ticonderogue,” tells of a thousand lashes being given in one case. Another journal tells of fifteen hundred lashes. He also states that he never witnessed a military flogging, as he “found the shreaks and crys satisfactory without the sight.” Occasionally a faint gleam of humanity seems dawning, as when we find Colonel Crafts in camp before Boston in 1779 sending out this regimental order:
“The Colonel is extreamly sorry and it gives him pain to think he is at last Obliged to Consent to the Corporal Punishment of one of his regiment. Punishments are extreamly erksome and disagreeable to him but he finds they are unfortunately necessary.”
After that date the “cat” was seldom idle in his regiment, as in others in the Continental army. Lashes on the naked back with the cat-o’-nine-tails was the usual sentence, diversified by an occasional order for whipping “with a Burch Rodd on the Naked Breech,” or “over such Parts as the commanding officer may apoint.” There was, says one diary writer of Revolutionary times, “no spairing of the whip” in the Continental army; and floggings were given for comparatively trivial offenses such as “wearing a hat uncockt,” “malingering,” swearing, having a dirty gun, uttering “scurulous” words, being short of ammunition, etc.
A New York soldier in 1676 was accused of pilfering. This was the sentence decreed to him:
“The Court Marshall doth adjudge that the said Melchoir Classen shall run the Gantlope once, the length of the fort: where according to the custom of that punishment, the souldiers shall have switches delivered to them, with which they shall strike him as he passes between them stript to the waist, and at the Fort-gate the Marshall is to receive him, and there to kick him out of the garrison as a cashiered person, when he is no more to returne, and if any pay is due him it is to be forfeited.”
All of which would seem to tend to the complete annihilation of Melchoir Classen.
Gantlope was the earlier and more correct form of the word now commonly called gantlet. Running the gantlope was a military punishment in universal use in the seventeenth century in England and on the continent. It was the German Gassenlaufen and it is said was the invention of that military genius, the Emperor Gustavus Adolphus.
The method of punishing by running the gantlope was very exactly defined in English martial law. The entire regiment was drawn up six deep. The ranks then were opened and faced inward; thus an open passage way was formed with three rows of soldiers on either side. Each soldier was given a lash or a switch and ordered to strike with force. The offender, stripped naked to the waist, was made to run between the lines, and he was preceded by a sergeant who pressed the point of his reversed halbert against the breast of the unfortunate culprit to prevent his running too swiftly between the strokes. Thus every soldier was made a public executioner of a cowardly and degrading punishment.
Several cases are on record of running the gantlope in Virginia; and an interesting case was that of Captain Walter Gendal of Yarmouth, Maine, a brave soldier, who for the slightest evidence of a not very serious crime was sentenced to “run the gauntelope” through all the military companies in Boston with a rope around his neck. This sentence was never executed.
It is certainly curious to note that the first two parsons who came to Plymouth, named Oldham and Lyford, came in honor and affection, but had to run the gantlope at their leaving. They were most “unsavorie salt,” as poor, worried Bradford calls them in his narrative of their misbehaviors (one of the shrewdest, most humorous and sententious pieces of seventeenth century writing extant), and after various “skandales, aggravations, and great malignancies” they were “clapt up for a while.” He then writes of Oldham:
“They comited him till he was tamer, and then apointed a guard of musketiers, wch he was to pass thorow, and every man was ordered to give him a thump on ye breech wth ye end of his musket, then they bid him goe and mende his manners.”
Morton of Merry-mount tells in equally forcible language in his New England Canaan of the similar punishment of Lyford.
A Dutch sailor, for drawing a knife on a companion, was dropped three times from the yard-arm and received a kick from every sailor on the ship – a form of running the gantlope. And we read of a woman who enlisted as a seaman, and whose sex was detected, being dropped three times from the yard-arm, running the gantlope, and being tarred and feathered, and that she nearly died from the rough and cruel treatment she received.
Similar in nature to running the gantlope, and equally cowardly and cruel, was “passing the pikes.”
In the fierce Summarie of Marshall Lawes for the colony of Virginia under Dale, I find constantly appointed the penalty of “passing the pikes:” it was ordered for disobedience, for persistence in quarrelling, for waylaying to wound, etc.
“That Souldier that having a quarrell with an other, shall gather other of his acquaintances, and associates, to make parties, to bandie, brave second, and assist him therein, he and those braves, seconds and assistants shall pass the pikes.”
This was not an idle threat, for duelling was discouraged and forbidden by Virginia rulers. In 1652 one Denham of Virginia carried a challenge from his father-in-law to a Mr. Fox. He was tried for complicity in promoting duelling and thus sentenced:
“For bringinge and acknowledgeinge it to be a chalenge, for deliveringe it to a member of ye court during ye court’s siting, for his slytinge and lessinge ye offense together with his premptory answers to ye court ye sd Denham to receave six stripes on his bare shoulder with a whip.”
Another common punishment for soldiers (usually for rioting or drinking) was the riding the wooden horse. In New Amsterdam the wooden horse stood between Paerel street and the Fort, and was a straight, narrow, horizontal pole, standing twelve feet high. Sometimes the upper edge of the board or pole was acutely sharpened to intensify the cruelty. The soldier was set astride this board, with his hands tied behind his back. Often a heavy weight was tied to each foot, as was jocularly said, “to keep his horse from throwing him.” Garret Segersen, a Dutch soldier, for stealing chickens, rode the wooden horse for three days, from two o’clock to close of parade, with a fifty-pound weight tied to each foot, which was a severe punishment. In other cases in New Amsterdam a musket was tied to each foot of the disgraced man. One culprit rode with an empty scabbard in one hand and a pitcher in the other to show his inordinate love for John Barleycorn. Jan Alleman, a Dutch officer, valorously challenged Jan de Fries, who was bedridden; for this cruel and meaningless insult he, too, was sentenced to ride the wooden horse, and was cashiered.
Dutch regiments in New Netherland were frequently drilled and commanded by English officers, and riding the wooden horse was a favorite punishment in the English army; hence perhaps its prevalence in the Dutch regiments.
Grose, in his Military History of England, gives a picture of the wooden horse. It shows a narrow-edged board mounted on four legs on rollers and bearing a rudely-shaped head and tail. The ruins of one was still standing in Portsmouth, England, in 1765. He says that its use was abandoned in the English army on account of the permanent injury to the health of the culprit who endured it. At least one death is known in America, in colonial times, on Long Island, from riding the wooden horse. It was, of course, meted out as a punishment in the American provinces both in the royal troops and in the local train bands.
A Maine soldier, one Richard Gibson, in 1670, was “complayned of for his dangerous and churtonous caridge to his commander and mallplying of oaths.” He was sentenced to be laid neck and heels together at the head of his company for two hours, or to ride the “Wooden-Hourse” at the head of the company the next training-day at Kittery.
In 1661, a Salem soldier, for some military misdemeanor, was sentenced to “ride the wooden horse,” and in Revolutionary days it was a favorite punishment in the Continental army. In the order-book kept by Rev. John Pitman during his military service on the Hudson, are frequent entries of sentences both for soldiers and suspected spies, to “ride the woodin horse,” or, as it was sometimes called, “the timber mare.” It was probably from the many hours of each sentence a modification of the cruel punishment of the seventeenth century.
It was most interesting to me to find, under the firm signature of our familiar Revolutionary hero, Paul Revere, as “Preseding Officer,” the report of a Court-martial upon two Continental soldiers for playing cards on the Sabbath day in September, 1776; and to know that, as expressed by Paul Revere, “the Court are of the Oppinion that Thomas Cleverly ride the Wooden Horse for a Quarter of an hower with a muskett on each foot, and that Caleb Southward Cleans the Streets of the Camp,” which shows that the patriot, could temper justice with both tender mercy and tidy prudence.
The wooden horse was employed some times as a civil punishment. Horse thieves were thus fitly punished. In New Haven, in January, 1787, a case happened:
“Last Tuesday one James Brown, a transient person, was brought to the bar of the County Court on a complaint for horse-stealing – being put to plead – plead guilty, and on Thursday received the sentence of the Court, that he shall be confined to the Goal in this County 8 weeks, to be whipped the first Day 15 stripes on the naked Body, and set an hour on the wooden horse, and on the first Monday each following Month be whipped ten stripes and set one hour each time on the wooden horse.”
The cruel punishment of “picketing,” which was ever the close companion of “riding the wooden horse” in the English army is recorded by Dr. Rea as constantly employed in the colonial forces. In “picketing” the culprit was strung up to a hook by one wrist while the opposite bare heel rested upon a stake or picket, rounded at the point just enough not to pierce the skin. The agony caused by this punishment was great. It could seldom be endured longer than a quarter of an hour at a time. It so frequently disabled soldiers for marching that it was finally abandoned as “inexpedient.”
The high honor of inventing and employing the whirlgig as a means of punishment in the army has often been assigned to our Revolutionary hero, General Henry Dearborn, but the fame or infamy is not his. For years it was used in the English army for the petty offenses of soldiers, and especially of camp-followers. It was a cage which was made to revolve at great speed, and the nausea and agony it caused to its unhappy occupant were unspeakable. In the American army it is said lunacy and imbecility often followed excessive punishment in the whirlgig.
Various tiresome or grotesque punishments were employed. Delinquent soldiers in Winthrop’s day were sentenced to carry a large number of turfs to the Fort; others were chained to a wheelbarrow. In 1778 among the Continental soldiers as in our Civil War, culprits were chained to a log or clog of wood; this weight often was worn four days. One soldier for stealing cordage was sentenced to “wear a clogg for four days and wear his coat rong side turn’d out.” A deserter from the battle of Bunker Hill was tied to a horse’s tail, lead around the camp and whipped. Other deserters were set on a horse with face to the horse’s tail, and thus led around the camp in derision.