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73
excess to which the House of Commons was carried, an
instance which must have been within the knowledge of, if
not actually witnessed by many of the inhabitants of
Westminster, since the pillory maintained by the Churchwardens
in the Old Palace Yard was brought into requisition.
He names a Roman Catholic gentleman who had been overheard
to make some slighting observation concerning certain
persons in high estate, and says that "Nothing could
"exceed the fury into which the Commons were thrown by
"this very insignificant story. A flippant expression below
"the cognisance of an ordinary court grew at once into a
"portentous offence which they ransacked their invention
"to chastise." Regardless of a remonstrance from the
King, in which he reminded the house that they were seeking
to sentence a man who had made no breach of its
privileges, who had denied the accusation, and had not been
convicted by evidence on oath, and overcoming objections
raised by the upper house to the Commons' jurisdiction, the
offender was adjudged to be "degraded from his gentility,
"and to be held an infamous person; his testimony not to
"be received; to ride from the Fleet to Cheapside on horse"back
without a saddle, with his face to the horse's tail
"and the tail in his hand, and there to stand two hours in
"the pillory, and to be branded in the forehead with the
"letter 'K'; to ride four days afterwards in the same man"ner
to Westminster, and there to stand two hours more in
"the pillory with words in a paper in his hat showing his
"offence; to be whipped at the cart's tail from the Fleet to
"Westminster Hall; to pay a fine of £5000, and to be a
"prisoner in Newgate during his life." The infliction of
the whipping was a few days afterwards remitted on the
motion of Prince Charles, but the unfortunate culprit seems
to have undergone the rest of his sentence.
It may here be mentioned that the stocks and whipping
post were in the Old Palace Yard, where they remained
down to, and probably later than 1765. On the 26th May,