"Pillory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... George Bernard Shaw who placed in the pillory of letters what he was pleased to call ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... same porters were told, on pain of the pillory, that they must well and trustily observe and keep this Ordinance, ...
— The Leper in England: with some account of English lazar-houses • Robert Charles Hope
... a cruel exercise of power to compel this delicate and shrinking female to stand once more in the pillory of the law; or, to put "ELISHA'S" orthography to a second test by a crucial and censorious public. Whatever may be the result of all this indifference to the sanctity of private character and correct spelling, PUNCHINELLO wishes to put ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... seized it from Phaon's hands, and read it. "What is the ancient manner?" he asked, in a tone of great anxiety and terror. They told him that it was to be stripped naked, and then to be secured by having his head fastened in a pillory, and in that position to be whipped to death. At hearing this, Nero broke forth in fresh groans and lamentations. He could not endure such a death as that, he said, and he would kill himself, therefore, at once, if they would ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... as to his punishment. On the 16th of December it was carried but by ninety-six votes to eighty-two that it should not be death, and, after some faint farther argument on the side of mercy, this was the sentence: "That James Nayler be set on the pillory, with his head in the pillory, in the New Palace, Westminster, during the space of two hours, on Thursday next, and shall be whipped by the hangman through the streets from Westminster to the Old Exchange, London, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... which often accompanies a great dread. For Hetty looked out from her secret misery towards the possibility of their ever knowing what had happened, as the sick and weary prisoner might think of the possible pillory. They would think her conduct shameful, and shame was torture. That ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... when modern vice was strange, Could leathern money current pass on 'change, His reptile soul, whose reasoning powers are pent Within the logic bounds of cent per cent, Would sooner coin his ears than stocks should fall, And cheat the pillory, than ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... instrument, according to their ideas, of outrage, disgrace, and utter loss of caste,) was led through the country; and as it advanced, the country fled before it. When any Brahmin was seized, he was threatened with this pillory, and for the most part he submitted in a moment to whatever was ordered. What it was may be thence judged. But when no possibility existed of complying with the demand, the people by their cries sometimes prevailed on the tyrants to have it commuted for cruel scourging, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... cast them back in your teeth. Your purpose in coming hither is to redress some private wrong. How is it you have such a rout with you? How is it I behold two notorious bravos by your side—men who have stood in the pillory, and undergone other ignominious punishment for their offences? You cannot answer, and their oaths and threats go for nothing. I now tell you, Sir Thomas, if you do not instantly withdraw your men, and quit these premises, grievous consequences ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and rave at home, thou art so base a fool I cannot laugh at thee: Sirrah, this comes of couzening, home and spare, eat Reddish till you raise your sums again. If you stir far in this, I'le have you whipt, your ears nail'd for intelligencing o'the Pillory, and your goods forfeit: you are a stale couzener, leave ...
— The Scornful Lady • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... ready-made from D'Israeli. If I had been ill-natured, I should have shown up the little great man, who had once belabored me in his feeble way. But one can generally tell these wholesale thieves easily enough, and they are not worth the trouble of putting them in the pillory. I doubt the entire novelty of my remarks just made on telling unpleasant truths, yet I am not conscious ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... punished with death; a woman was publicly scourged because she sang common songs to a psalm-tune; and another because she dressed herself, in a frolic, in man's attire. Brides were not allowed to wear wreaths in their bonnets; gamblers were set in the pillory, and card-playing and nine-pins were denounced as gambling. Heresy was punished with death; and in sixty years one hundred and fifty people were burned to death, in Geneva, for witchcraft. Legislation extended to dress and private habits; many innocent amusements ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... obstacles, and to contend against many and powerful foes. In 1637, Archbishop Laud procured the passing of an ordinance limiting the number of master printers to twenty, and punishing with whipping and the pillory all such as should print without a license. Butler's name does not occur in this list; so we may conclude that he was particularly obnoxious to the haughty prelate and his party. But this persevering journalist, whose name had for a long time appeared alone as the printer of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... most cruel death penalty; nobody bothered about the unconscionable seducer himself. Perchance he even sat on the Judge's bench, which decreed the sentence of death upon the poor victim. The same happens to-day.[46] Likewise was adultery by the wife punished most severely; she was certain of the pillory, at least; but over the adultery of the husband the mantle of Christian charity ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... springs, to become soft and mild, when freely exposed to the open day. Who can recognise in the decent and industrious quakers, and ana-baptists the wild and ferocious tenets which distinguished their sects, while they were yet honoured with the distinction of the scourge and the pillory? Had the system of coercion against the presbyterians been continued until our day, Blair and Robertson would have preached in the wilderness, and only discovered their powers of eloquence and composition, by rolling along a ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... like proportions He paid his compliments to Nigel with that air of predetermined effrontery, which announces that it will not be repelled by any coldness of reception, asked Trapbois how he did, by the familiar title of old Peter Pillory, and then, seizing upon the black- jack, emptied it off at a draught, to the health of the last and youngest freeman of Alsatia, the noble and loving master ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... and he should administer his affairs in their interests under supervision; he should still carry on his business, signing always 'So-and-so, insolvent,' until the whole debt is paid off. If bankrupt, he should be condemned, as formerly, to the pillory on the Place de la Bourse, and exposed for two hours, wearing a green cap. His property and that of his wife, and all his rights of every kind should be handed over to his creditors, and he himself banished from ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... not sufficient to deter Men who make it their Glory to despise it, but if every one that fought a Duel were to stand in the Pillory, it would quickly lessen the Number of these imaginary Men of Honour, and put an end ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... scandalous and seditious pamphlet" Defoe was condemned to pay a large fine, to stand three times in the pillory, and to be imprisoned during the Queen's pleasure. Thus quickly did Fortune's wheel turn round. "I have seen the rough side of the world as well as the smooth," he said long after. "I have, in less than half a year, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... at him, ye blessed, let him receive a perfect intelligence, let him shine like the god of mysteries, deliver him from the gods of the pillory who fasten to their posts. May they never bind Osiris to their posts, may they never put him in the place of destruction, for he is the descendant of Osiris who permits him to receive ...
— Egyptian Literature
... Scotland not long before. The list of lesser offenders among the alien writers was long. As President Adams asked: "How many presses, how many newspapers have been directed by vagabonds, fugitives from a bailiff, a pillory, or a ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... home at night from the opera, amid the flare of the footmen's torches, must have heard the distant cries of some imprudent person struggling in the hands of marauders; or, again, on Sundays and holidays have been stopped by the crowd gathered round the pillory where some too easy-going husband sat crowned with a paper-cap in a hail-storm of mud and egg-shells and fruit-peelings, round the scaffold where some petty offender was being flogged by the hangman, until the fortunate appearance ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... visited with the extreme of arbitrary severity. Two merchants of London, for words injurious to the queen, but principally for having affirmed that Wyat at his death had cleared the lady Elizabeth and the earl of Devonshire, were set in the pillory, to which their ears were ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... the casual crowd? Either way lies fame, if one does it well. Your uninvited men find themselves talking to the uninvited crowd. Before they know it they are famous too. They are fashioning another manner of speech. Defoe is there, with his saucy ballads selling triumphantly under his very pillory; with his True-Born Englishman puncturing forever the fiction of the honorable ancestry of the English aristocracy; with his Crusoe and Moll Flanders, written, as Lamb said long afterwards, for the servant-maid and the sailor. ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... years ago it may be said that there were two kinds of law in England, the one was the law of the land, the other was the law of the Church. The law of the land was hideously cruel and merciless, and the gallows and the pillory, never far from any man's door, were seldom allowed to remain long out of use. The ghastly frequency of the punishment by death tended to make people savage and bloodthirsty. [Footnote: In 1293 a case is recorded of three men, one of them a goldsmith, ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... brethren, especially the godly burgesses of the towns; indeed, as early as June 10, 1560, the Provost, Bailies, and Town Council of Edinburgh proclaimed that idolaters must instantly and publicly profess their conversion before the Ministers and Elders on the penalty of the pillory for the first offence, banishment from the town for the second, and ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... so we did, and on the fourth day made Marseilles; and who should be first to meet Eli on the quay but a Frenchwoman he had married five years before, and left. And the jade had him clapp'd in the pillory, alongside of a cheating fishmonger with a collar of stinking smelts, that turn'd poor Eli's stomach completely. Now there's somewhat to set against the story of Whittington next time 'tis ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... hours at her street-door, as if she were a public show. There was time to fetch a mob of Jesuits' followers, of honest Church artizans, to hoot and hiss, while children might help by throwing stones. For these four hours she was in the pillory. Some, however, of the more dispassionate passers-by asked if the Ursulines had gotten orders to let them kill the girl. We may guess what tender jailers their sick prisoner would ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... this silly talk of apothecaries. I have no need of surgeons, I. My good fellow," she continued, addressing Jock with an air of condescension that dumfounded her sister, "is not yonder the Southwark pillory?" ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... of the unsuccessful artist. The actor, the dancer, and the singer must appear like her in person, and drain publicly the cup of failure. But though the rest of us escape this crowning bitterness of the pillory, we all court in essence the same humiliation. We all profess to be able to delight. And how few of us are! We all pledge ourselves to be able to continue to delight. And the day will come to each, and even to the most admired, when the ardour shall have declined and the cunning shall be lost, ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... himself seemed at this moment freed from the last danger of revolt at home, for after some helpless wanderings Henry the Sixth was betrayed into the hands of his enemies and brought in triumph to London. His feet were tied to the stirrups, he was led thrice round the pillory, and then sent as a prisoner to the Tower. But Edward had little time to enjoy his good luck at home and abroad. No sooner had the army of the League broken up than its work was undone. The restless genius of ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... who grudged my good fortune, of having sold both ship and wine-vessel to the Samians. As they could not convict me of the crime, and had yet determined on my ruin, I was sentenced to two days' and nights' exposure on the pillory. My foot was chained to it during the night; but before the morning of disgrace dawned, my brother brought me secretly a sword, that my honor might be saved, though at the expense of my life. But I could not die before revenging myself on the men who had worked ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... ease like great nobles, to cram themselves with luxurious meals, to increase their property by degrees, to put everything up for sale, and to get rid of those who, later on, could have called for accounts, and have nailed them to the pillory by their ears. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... to the market place, As fast as he could hie; There a pair of new gallows he set up Beside the pillory. ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown
... English pickpockets and coiners is, as we may see in Colquhoun's View of the Metropolis, free from all seducing mixture of wit and humour. What Englishman would ever have thought of calling persons in the pillory the babes in the wood? This is a common cant phrase amongst Dublin reprobates. Undoubtedly such phrases tend to lessen the power of shame and the effect of punishment, and a witty rogue will lead numbers to the gallows. English morality ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... will disappear the Republican party, frees, not from reproaches nor from maledictions, those Republicans who, by their selfishness and faithlessness, obstructed its progress, and polluted the party. Their names remain nailed to the pillory. ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... hundred or six hundred pounds to Knight. But the clerk either would not or could not pay a farthing, and on him and his, sentence was now passed. "The father," to quote once more from the meager account in The Annual Register, "was ordered to be set in the pillory three times in one month, once at the end of Cock Lane, and after that to be imprisoned two years; Elizabeth his wife, one year; and Mary Frazer, six months to Bridewell, and to be kept there to hard labor." ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... was the s. of Alexander L., physician, and writer on theology, who, on account of his anti-prelatic books, was put in the pillory, fined, and had his nose slit and his ears cut off. Robert was ed. at Edin., after which he resided for some time at Douay. Returning to Scotland he received Presbyterian ordination, and was admitted minister of Newbattle, near Edin. In 1653 he was appointed Principal and Prof. of Divinity ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... "Pioneer Boy." A statesman whose reputation for integrity has been worth millions to the land, and whose patriotism should have won him a better fate, is stigmatized in duodecimo as the "Ferry Boy." An innocent and popular Governor is fastened in the pillory under the thin disguise of the "Bobbin Boy." Every victorious advance of our grand army is followed by a long procession of biographical statistics. A brave man leading his troops to victory may escape ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... standing face to face with the "Commandor." I get devil-may-care—brazen. I take yet a step farther from the wall in order to make him notice me. I do not do it to awake his compassion, but to mortify myself, place myself, as it were, on the pillory. I could have flung myself down in the street and begged him to walk over me, tread on my face. I don't even ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... before, that Protestants and Papists had complimented each other's religion by burning those who were the weakest, and long after Hobbes's death, Protestants murdered, ruined, disgraced, and placed in the pillory Dissenters and Catholics alike, and Thomas Hobbes had positive proof that it was the intention of the Church of England to burn him alive, on the stake, a martyr for his opinions. This, then, is a sufficient justification for Hobbes feeling afraid, and instead of it being thrown as ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... twisted his physiognomy, which in character partook of that of the dog and the serpent, into a thoughtful expression, and regretted that, according to the Swedish laws, the offence of which Miss Rudenskjoeld was found guilty, could not be punished by the lash. The pillory, and imprisonment in the Zuchthaus, the place of confinement for the most guilty and abandoned of her sex, formed the scarce milder sentence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... admitting there is anything good in Canada, but the office of Governor-General, the military commands, and other pieces of patronage, which they keep to themselves, and then say they have nothing left. Ah me! times is altered, as Elgin knows. The pillory and the peerage have changed places. Once, a man who did wrong was first elevated, and then pelted. A peer is now assailed with eggs, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... For example, in a statute passed fifty-one years after Magna Carta, it was said that a baker, for default in the weight of his bread, " debeat amerciari vel subire judicium pillorie;" that is, ought to be amerced, or suffer the punishment, or judgment, of the pillory. Also that a brewer, for "selling ale contrary to the assize," "debeat amerciari, vel pati judicium tumbrelli "; that is, ought to be amerced, or suffer the punishment, or judgment, of the tumbrel. 51 Henry 3, St. 6. ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... trodden down here and there into bare patches, thanks to the games of the London 'prentices and gambols of children—in company with Edmund Curll, the most scurrilous and audacious of writers and booksellers who looked upon standing on the pillory, which he had had to do more than once, more as a splendid form of advertisement than ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... gaol," Said Chapman quietly, tossing a phial across To Camden. "And he meant to take it, too, Before the hangman touched him. Half an hour And you'd have been too late to save big Ben. He has lived too much in ancient Rome to love A slit nose and the pillory. He'd have wrapped His purple round him like an emperor. I think she had another for herself." "There's Roman blood in both of them," said Dekker, "Don't look. She is weeping now," And, while Ben held That gaunt old body sobbing against ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... abused, and their houses demolished, but even the Court and Parliament have been influenced or awed by them. But there is now seldom seen a multitude of people assembled, unless it be to attend some malefactor to his execution, or to pelt a villain in the pillory, the last of which being an outrage that the Government has ever seemed to wink at; and it is observed by some that the mob are pretty just upon these occasions; they seldom falling upon any but notorious rascals, such as are guilty of perjury, forgery, scandalous practices, or keeping ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... bow'd her hand to teach her fingering; When, with a most impatient devilish spirit, 'Frets, call you these?' quoth she 'I'll fume with them'; And with that word she struck me on the head, And through the instrument my pate made way; And there I stood amazed for a while, As on a pillory, looking through the lute; While she did call me rascal fiddler, And twangling Jack, with twenty such vile terms, As she had studied to ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... intelligence, and interrupt the security of life; harrass the delicate with shame, and perplex the timorous with alarms; might very properly be awakened to a sense of their crimes, by denunciations of a whipping-post or a pillory: since many are so insensible of right and wrong, that they have no standard of action but the law; nor feel guilt, but as they ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... Crusoe," was written by Daniel Defoe; and he, too, knew what it was to be in jail. He was not imprisoned for preaching, but for his political writings. Once when he had written a pamphlet that did not please the authorities, he was condemned to stand in the pillory. The people took his part, and, instead of throwing stones at him, they dropped roses about him and bought thousands of copies of a poem that he ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... he remained, as we went our way,—a modern Spartan slave in a kind of marine pillory,—conveying to the red-legged children of Gotham, as they toddled ashore, a useful lesson on the doubtful relations existing between whiskey ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... all its brightness when exposed to the air. But with proper mordants and with careful dyeing this dye can produce fast and good colours. Queen Elizabeth's government issued an enactment entirely forbidding the use of logwood. The person so offending was liable to imprisonment and the pillory. The principal use for logwood is in making blacks. The logwood chips should be put in a bag and boiled for 20 minutes to 1/2 an hour, ...
— Vegetable Dyes - Being a Book of Recipes and Other Information Useful to the Dyer • Ethel M. Mairet
... 25th Fructidor, at seven o'clock in the evening, it was read out by the Public Prosecutor, and listened to by the accused —so the Bulletin tells us—with complete calm and apparent indifference. She stood up in that same pillory where once stood poor, guilty Charlotte Corday, where presently would stand proud, guiltless ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... with children,' he used to say. 'Many a fine character has been ruined by the stupid brutality of pedagogues. The parts of speech are a boy's pillory. I was myself flogged fifteen times in one forenoon over the conjugation of a verb. Punish if you will, but be kind too, and let the sugar-plum go with the rod.' This is not the language of a demagogue or a fanatic; it is the wise thought of ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... greater self-sufficiency, among bad-hearted and wrong-headed religionists, than among any other order of human beings. I have known more malignity and slander conveyed in the form of a prayer than should have consigned any ordinary libeller to the pillory. I have known a person who made evening prayer a means of infuriating and stabbing the servants, under the pretext of confessing their sins. "Thou knowest, Lord, how my servants have been occupied this day": with these words did the blasphemous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... and licentious men. On the occasion of a first offence, culprits of either sex were subjected to the ignominy of having their hair cropt for future identification, and then conducted with rough music through the public thoroughfares, the men to the pillory and the women to the "thewe." After a third conviction, they were made to abjure the City altogether.(646) It was during Northampton's first year of the mayoralty that the citizens succeeded in breaking down the monopoly of the free fish-mongers. ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... the common penalties of a crime: Collins relates that a witness convicted of perjury, was condemned to the pillory: his ears nailed to the ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... wretch!" cried the High Churchman in the pillory, unable longer to restrain himself, "thou hast rejected the ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan
... even as he shall say unto thee." At the same time he enjoined him to use pitiless cruelty toward the rest of the people. But the prophet desired to share the fate of his suffering brethren, and when he saw a company of youths in the pillory, he put his own head into it. Nebuzaradan would always withdraw him again. Thereafter if Jeremiah saw a company of old men clapped in chains, he would join them and share their ignominy, until Nebuzaradan released him. Finally, Nebuzaradan said to Jeremiah: "Lo, ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... them to be unmistakably men of my own sex, manly men, and clean; not little misshapen troglodytes with foul minds and perverted passions, or self-advertising little mountebanks with enlarged and diseased vanities; creatures who would stand in a pillory sooner than not be stared at ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... late—turned slowly with her nose in the air. And meantime his look was not removed, but continued to play upon her like a battery of cannon constantly aimed, and now seemed to isolate her alone with him, and now seemed to uplift her, as on a pillory, before the congregation. For Archie continued to drink her in with his eyes, even as a wayfarer comes to a well-head on a mountain, and stoops his face, and drinks with thirst unassuageable. In the cleft of her little breasts the fiery eye of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were music to his ear; but what were they compared to the ravishing smile with which she flooded his whole system? When she bowed her adieu and turned away, he was no longer suffering torture in the pillory where she had had him trussed up during so many distressing moments, but he belonged to the list of her conquests and was a flattered and happy thrall, with the dawn-light of love breaking over the eastern ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... goes to work to paint his pictures. Some think he mixes a few colours on his canvas instead of on his palette, and sends the result to be exhibited. Another ingenious theory is that he puts a canvas in a sort of pillory, and pelts it with eggs and other missiles, when appending to the mess some outrageous title, he has it hung in a good position at the Academy. Our own idea is, that he chooses four or five good places in which he hangs up some regularly framed squares of blank canvas; a ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... the lower depths of the soul, jealousy, secret hate, lewd curiosity, the malicious instincts inherent in the social animal, would burst forth with all the vehemence and joy of revenge. Every man had the right to go out into the streets, and, prudently masked, to nail to the pillory, in full view of the public gaze, the object of his detestation, to lay before all and sundry all that he had found out by a year of patient industry, his whole hoard of scandalous secrets gathered drop by drop. One man would display them ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... who snarl at the carpenter and shoemaker if the fitness of things be not observed; we, the shrewd critics, who pillory the luckless painter who dresses a gentleman of the Restoration in the ruff of James First's court, gaze calmly on the most ridiculous anachronisms and impossibilities, and smite our perfumed gloves in approbation. It is ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... all, let me speak of undeniable excess. At one time perhaps it was punished by exposure in the pillory or stocks; but for a long time past, the penalty (when not aggravated by other offences) has been at most a pecuniary fine: five shillings used often to be inflicted. A "gentleman" who could pay, was let off: a more destitute ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... dawned through the obscuration of the Tories' intellect, they were naturally enraged. They had influence enough to have Defoe arrested, and confined in Newgate for some eighteen months. He was also compelled to stand in the pillory for three days; but it is not true that his ears were cropped, as Pope ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... Backhouse, Gadbury; men who gained a livelihood by practising on the credulity of even men of learning so late as in 1650, nor were they much out of date in the eighteenth century. In Ashmole's Life an account of these artful impostors may be found. Most of them had taken the air in the pillory, and others had conjured themselves up to the gallows. This seems a true statement of facts. But Lilly informs us, that in his various conferences with angels, their voices resembled that ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... enchantment, so Lancelot, in order sooner to overtake the queen, rode on in a cart. This was considered a disgraceful mode of progress for a knight, as a nobleman in those days was condemned to ride in a cart in punishment for crimes for which common people were sentenced to the pillory. ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... the flat insipid production which called it forth, and noted with what a diabolical art the latent absurdities in poor Maupertuis' reveries have been detected, dragged forth into the light of day, and nailed to the pillory of an immortal ridicule. The Diatribe, however, is not all mere laughter; there is a real criticism in it, too. For instance, it was not simply a farcical exaggeration to say that Maupertuis had set out to prove the existence of God by 'A plus B divided by Z'; in substance, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... But Pory succeeded in securing copies from the acting secretary, Edward Sharpless.[226] The Council, upon learning of this betrayal, were so incensed against the secretary that they sentenced him to "stand in the Pillory and there to have his Ears nailed to it, and cut off".[227] His punishment was modified, however, so that when he was "sett in the Pillorie", he "lost but a part of one of his eares".[228] The King, upon learning of this incident, which was represented ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... our poetic libertine sets up for a law-giver and judge, or an apprehender of vagrants in the regions either of taste or opinion. Our motley gentleman deserves the strait-waistcoat, if he is for setting others in the stocks of servility, or condemning them to the pillory for a new mode of rhyme or reason. Or if a composer of sacred Dramas on classic models, or a translator of an old Latin author (that will hardly bear translation) or a vamper-up of vapid cantos and Odes set to music, were to turn pander to prescription ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... seriously entertained the luminous idea of hustling the poor man into an asylum for the unsound before he had a chance to fire up the boiler of his tiny steamboat on the Hudson river. In olden times the pillory and the whipping-post were among the gentler forms of encouragement awaiting the inventor. If a man devised an especially practical apple-peeler he was in imminent danger of being peeled with it ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... scattered body of meek, lowly men, did the Lord's work. Enthroned at Rome, it thundered its edicts against human thought. The Press is in danger of following precisely the same history. When it wrote in fear of the pillory and of the jail, it fought for Liberty. Now it has become the Fourth Estate, it fawns—as Jack Swinton said of it—at the feet of Mammon. My Proprietor, good fellow, allows me to cultivate my plot amid the wilderness for other purposes than those of quick returns. If he were to become a competitor ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... Bruce tried hard to make her see one of his vile grimaces, but, feeling as if every nerve in her body were being stung with eyes, she never dared to look away from the book which she held upside down before her own sightless eyes.—This pillory was the punishment due to falling asleep, as hell was the punishment for forgetting God; and there she had to stand for ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... impossible to prevent the man from being cut from the nape of the neck to his hams. You will there find a description of a neat contrivance, used at Gibraltar, which was compounded of the stocks and the pillory. The soldier's legs were held firm in two apertures of a thick plank, while his body and head were bent down to a plank placed in a perpendicular direction, to receive the man's head, and two more apertures ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... the evidence of the kindly and well-informed Sir Walter Scott. 'We should do great injustice to the present day by comparing our manners with those of the reign of George I. The writings even of the most esteemed poets of that period contain passages which now would be accounted to deserve the pillory. Nor was the tone of conversation more pure than that of composition; for the taint of Charles II.'s reign continued to infect society until the present reign [George III.], when, if not more moral, we are at least more decent.'[687] What was the ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... in New Netherland, they had issued attractive maps to promote their colonization projects. Among those who had been lured to America by these enticing advertisements was an ancestor of Edward Mauville. Incurring the displeasure of the governor for his godless views, this Frenchman was sent to the pillory, or whipping post, and his neighbors were about to cast out the devil of irreverence in good old-fashioned manner, when one of Mynheer's daughters interceded, carried off the handsome miscreant, and—such was her imperious ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... them that fire could be made by rubbing bits of wood together. They recalled to us what the Gray Mahatma had said about Galileo trying to make the Pope believe that the earth moved around the sun. The Pope threatened to burn Galileo for heresy; they only offered to pillory us with public ridicule; so the world has gone ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... I was taken to the market-place, where the pillory was set up, and I, in face of the jeering crowd, was tied to a pole. Then on the top of this pole, about six feet from the platform on which I stood, a stout piece of board was placed, which had three ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... We can expose it as we have exposed the Politicians. It is very powerful but very vulnerable—as are all human things that repose on a lie. We may expect, in a delay perhaps as brief as that which was required to pillory, and, therefore, to hamstring the miserable falsehood and ineptitude called the Party System (that is, in some ten years or less), to reduce the Official Press to the same plight. In some ways the danger of failure is less, for our opponent is ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... his head doubtfully. The teaching was seditious, and made a man liable to stocks and pillory; but it tickled the ears of the common folk and 'twas ill to quarrel with the Mendicants. Help came to him in his perplexity: a loud knocking on the barred door made ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... of the priesthood; who mock at things divine, Who rail against the pulpit, and holy bread and wine; Sore from their cart-tail scourgings, and from the pillory lame, Rejoicing in their wretchedness, and glorying in ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... standing between 1100 and 1135, for the king would scarcely have visited the place unless he had had proper quarters for himself and his suite, and the castle alone could have afforded this. A record of 1347 mentions the pillory at Pickering, and suggests a lively scene that took place in the august presence of the Earl of Lancaster. "William de Kirkby and others conspired amongst themselves to indict John de Buckton, Hugh de Neville, John de Barton, and others for that they on Monday, 25th June 1347, took six harts ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... (1701), which had a remarkable success. In 1702 appeared The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, written in a strain of grave irony which was, unfortunately for the author, misunderstood, and led to his being fined, imprisoned, and put in the pillory, which suggested his Hymns to the Pillory (1704). Notwithstanding the disfavour with the government which these disasters implied, D.'s knowledge of commercial affairs and practical ability were recognised by his being sent in 1706 to Scotland to aid in the Union negotiations. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... or her body, or members, or whereby any goods, or chattels, shall be destroyed, wasted, or impaired, shall, with their counsellors, and aiders, suffer for the first offence one year's imprisonment and the pillory, and for the second the punishment of felony without the clergy." . . . "If any person shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed, or reward any evil or wicked spirit, or take up any dead man, woman, ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... he said with a sudden change of tone. "Writing always does give me the blues. I think the man who invented the art should have been put in a pillory for the rest of his natural life. Blow your whistle for Sam to bring the horses and we will go for a ride along ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... kitchen fur no good, nor a-insultin' of the Judge's t'other visitor, Milburn of the steeple-top: it was a-huggin' the whippin'-post on the public green of Georgetown, State of Delaware, an' the sheriff a-layin' of it over your back; an' after he sot you up in the pillory I took the rottenest egg I could git, an' I bust it right on the eye where that nigger bruised ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... bargained with a seller of lace in London for as much as would reach from one of his ears to the other. When they had agreed, it appeared that one of his ears was nailed at the pillory ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... time," nor beat his wife (as he could to his heart's content in old England); he could not even use "hard words" to her. Nor could she raise her hand or use "a curst and shrewish tongue" to him without fear of public punishment in the stocks or pillory. ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... and received the following punishment: "To be committed to the Fleet Prison for life, and to pay a fine of ten thousand pounds to the king's use; to be degraded from the ministry; to be brought to the pillory at Westminster, while the court was sitting, and be whipped, and after the whipping to have one of his ears cut, one side of his nose slit, and be branded in the face with the letters S.S., signifying Sower of Sedition: ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... The very reverse was the case. The punishment for sodomy, when completely effected, was death, and it was frequently inflicted. Homosexual intercourse, without evidence of penetration, was regarded as "attempt" and was usually punished by the pillory and a heavy fine, followed by two years' imprisonment. Moreover, it would appear that more activity was shown by the police in prosecution than is nowadays the case; this is, for instance, suggested by the evidence of the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... punishment for theft and many other crimes. The public whipping of both men and women through the streets was frequent. Debtors were shut up in prison, and left to beg from passers-by or starve; and ordinary offenders were fastened in a wooden frame called the "pillory" and exposed on a high platform, where they were pelted by the mob with mud, rotten eggs, and other unsavory missiles. In some cases their bones were broken with clubs and brickbats. The pillory continued in use until the accession of Victoria ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... Dreep-dailys to unwitting and unfortunate purchasers, and has become the coveted possessor of every Powhead scrip then negotiable in the London market. If there is any caricature in this sketch I shall submit to do penance in the pillory. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... distributing political pamphlets, were to be brought before a special tribunal of nine judges holding office at the king's pleasure; and, if condemned, were liable to be sentenced to exposure in the pillory, deprivation of civic rights, branding, imprisonment, and fines varying from 100 to 10,000 francs. This harsh measure was possibly justifiable in an extreme emergency upon the plea that it was necessary for the safety of the State. ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... seats himself in the pillory with crossed arms, his feet protruding. He whistles Don Giovanni, a cenar teco. Artane orphans, joining hands, caper round him. Girls of the Prison Gate Mission, joining hands, caper ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... license! Nonsense. What if he preaches and publishes without it, will the Legislature dungeon him or not? If not, what use is either the granting or the withholding? And this too from a Socinian, who by this very book has, I believe, made himself obnoxious to imprisonment and the pillory—and against men, whose opinions are authorized by the most solemn acts of Parliament, and recorded in a Book, of which there must be one, by law, in every parish, and of which there is in fact one in almost every ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... suspected persons. An order was issued to all innkeepers and postmasters to refuse horses to such as endeavoured to seek safety in flight; and all persons were forbidden, under heavy fines, to harbour them or favour their evasion. Some were condemned to the pillory, others to the galleys, and the least guilty to fine and imprisonment. One only, Samuel Bernard, a rich banker and farmer-general of a province remote from the capital, was sentenced to death. So great had been ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... epidemical distemper, many were persuaded, and those who scourged him became his first disciples. Being set at liberty, he ran up and down the country with a dozen proselytes at his heels, still declaiming against the clergy, and was whipped from time to time. Being one day set in the pillory, he harangued the crowd in so strong and moving a manner, that fifty of the auditors became his converts, and he won the rest so much in his favour that, his head being freed tumultuously from the hole ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... by the press, who spare no falsehoods to disparage his character, but whose contradictions have no effect in his great successes. Cadurcis, gifted as he is with an extreme sensibility, and accustomed to live in an atmosphere of praise, finds himself suddenly nailed to the pillory of public indignation, sees his writings, his habits, his character, and his person, equally censured, ridiculed, and blemished; in fact, he finds himself the victim of reaction, and yet all this does not affect his mind; his true agony is ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... the safety of all the Hellenes was a matter which concerned themselves—apart from this belief, it could not have mattered to them whether any one bought or corrupted men in the Peloponnese; and whenever they detected such offenders, they carried their punishment and their vengeance so far as to pillory their names for ever. As the natural consequence, the Hellenes were a terror to the foreigner, not the foreigner to the Hellenes. It is not so now. Such is not your attitude in these or in other matters. {46} But what is it? [You know it yourselves; for why should I accuse you explicitly on every ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... double claim on public attention both then and still; for he had been so formidable an antagonist of the Laudean Prelacy, as to have been marked out by Laud as a special victim,—had been condemned to the pillory, and suffered the loss of both his ears by the sentence of that cruel prelate,—and had been rescued from his sufferings, and restored to political life and influence, by the Long Parliament. He was, moreover, both a learned man, an acute lawyer, and an able and subtle ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... whether I stood ashamed, sullen, indifferent or indignant under my accuser's blows. Anger possessed me altogether, and if I thought of my new gaoler at all it was to suppose him seeing in me a subject, common in his experience, whose degrading punishment of stocks, whip or pillory was to be stuccoed over with a mockery of religion. Judge, therefore, of my surprise when, having bowed the inquisitor out of the door, Father Carnesecchi returned to the room, and putting his hand upon my shoulder, said in excellent English, and the ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... What was their mode of action may be partly judged from the spectacles which now pass before your eyes. Joshua Buffum is standing in the pillory. Cassandra Southwick is led to prison. And there a woman, it is Ann Coleman,—naked from the waist upward, and bound to the tail of a cart, is dragged through the Main Street at the pace of a brisk walk, while the constable follows with ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... departments had been directly chosen by the Senate. The censorship had been re-established, and its favorable decrees did not always suffice to save works and their authors. The "Germany" of Madame de Stael had received the authorization of the censors, when the edition was seized and placed in the pillory. Madame de Stael was compelled to quit France in twenty-four hours. The rigors of Savary with regard to the press surpassed the traditions left by Fouche; the greater number of the journals were subjected to permanent fines, under the form of pensions to literary men. The erection of eight state ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... the persecuted author in the heart of a great city. All the world, and particularly his literary brethren, had been against Defoe. Pope had put him into the "Dunciad," Swift had spoken of him as "the fellow who was pilloried, I forget his name," He had known oppression and poverty, the pillory and the prison. He has left us his own view of the aim of "Robinson Crusoe."[160] "Here is invincible patience recommended under the worst of misery; indefatigable application and undaunted resolution under the greatest and most discouraging circumstances." ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... you be suspected of injustice, malignity, perfidy, lying, etc., all the parts and knowledge in the world will never procure you esteem, friendship, or respect. A strange concurrence of circumstances has sometimes raised very bad men to high stations, but they have been raised like criminals to a pillory, where their persons and their crimes, by being more conspicuous, are only the more known, the more detested, and the more pelted and insulted. If, in any case whatsoever, affectation and ostentation are pardonable, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... somewhat thoughtlessly ridiculed the institution of the jubilee; in order to convince him of its utility, he was sent as a recruit to the Italian army, an act that was highly praised by the newspapers." On the 22d of July, 1795, a Baron von Riedel was placed in the pillory at Vienna for some political crime, and was afterward consigned to the oblivion of a dungeon; the same fate, some days later, befell Brand-Btetter, Fellesneck, Billeck, Ruschitiski (Ephemeridae of 1796). A Baron Taufner was hanged ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... dramatist, George Bernard Shaw, has placed in the pillory of letters what he is pleased to ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... course to Fouque, who, like yourself, is rooted in my soul—but to him as a friend alone, and not as a poet. You can easily imagine, how unpleasant it would be to me, if the secret reposed by an honourable man, confiding in my esteem and sincerity, should be exposed in the pillory of an epopee, or in any way distorted, as if some miserable witling had engendered unnatural and impossible things. Indeed, I must frankly own it is a very shame that a history, which another and cleverer hand might have exhibited in all its comic ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... in his common labour with delight, And not a village-Maiden's kiss But was for this More sweet, And not a sorrow but did lightlier sigh, And for its private self less greet, The whilst that other so majestic self stood by! Integrity so vast could well afford To wear in working many a stain, To pillory the cobbler vain And license madness in a lord. On that were all men well agreed; And, if they did a thing, Their strength was with them in their deed, And from amongst them came the shout of a king! But, once let traitor coward meet, ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... Saddleback mounting ain't big nuff pillory to hold em, nuther," were some of the ejaculations which at once expressed the delight and astonishment of the men, and at the same time betrayed the nature of their previous misgivings, as to the possible consequences of this day's doings. Estimates of the number ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... persuade the working-people—as they are called, because they have to use their hands more—that people like my father look down upon them, and treat them like dogs, and all those wicked stories—all I can say is, any man who does it deserves to be put in the stocks, or the pillory, or even to be transported as an enemy ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... tracks, for the sacking that covered the window-holes was burst outwards, beef-bones lay on the road before the door, and, within, the widow, black, begrimed and very drunk, lay inverted on the clay of the floor, her head beneath the three legs of the chopping block, so that she was as if in a pillory, but too fuddled to do more than wave her legs. A prentice who crouched, with a broken head, in a corner of the filthy room, said that a man from Lincolnshire, all in Lincoln green, with a red beard, had wrought this ruin of beef-bones that he had cast through the windows, ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... self-evident. But in the seventeenth century there was no country in the world where it was safe to declare them. For doing so in some parts of Europe, a man would most certainly have been burned at the stake. For doing so in England, he would have been put in the pillory, or had his ears cut off, or been sent to jail. That Williams's teachings should seem rank heresy in New England was quite natural. But, to make matters worse, he wrote a pamphlet in ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... Posture Master all together, His Reverence, having his Majesty's ear, moves the Most Christian King to Clemency, and a Royal warrant comes down to the Madelonettes, and I was sent about my business with strict injunctions not to show myself again in Paris, under penalty of the Pillory, branding on the cheek with a red-hot iron, and the galleys ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... the notice of the House of Commons, and ordered to be burnt by the common hangman. His trial came on in July. He was found guilty of a seditious libel, and sentenced to pay a fine of 200 marks to the Queen, stand three times in the pillory, be imprisoned during the Queen's pleasure, and find sureties for his good ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... less tranquil situation. I assure you, though you are ungrateful on your side of the water, he is in high repute here—his works are translated— all the Jacobins who can read quote, and all who can't, admire him; and possibly, at the very moment you are sentencing him to an installment in the pillory, we may be awarding him a triumph.—Perhaps we are both right. He deserves the pillory, from you for having endeavoured to destroy a good constitution—and the French may with equal reason grant him a triumph, as their constitution ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady |
