The cucking-stool in the early history of England must not be confounded with the ducking-stool. They were two distinct machines. It appears, from a record in the "Domesday Book," that as far back as the days of Edward the Confessor, any man or woman detected giving false measure in the city of Chester was fined four shillings; and for brewing bad ale, was placed in the _cathedra stercoris_. It was a degrading mode of chastisement, the culprits being seated in the chair at their own doors or in some public place. At Leicester, in 1467, the local authorities directed "scolds to be punished by the mayor on a cuck-stool before their own doors, and then carried to the four gates of the town." According to Borlase's "Natural History of Cornwall," in that part of the country the cucking-stool was used "as a seat of infamy, where strumpets and scolds, with bare feet and head, were condemned to abide the derision of those that passed by, for such time as the bailiffs of the manors, which had the privilege of such jurisdiction, did approve." Ale-wives in Scotland in bygone times who sold bad ale were placed in the cucking-stool. In the year 1555, we learn from Thomas Wright that "it was enacted by the queen-regent of Scotland that itinerant singing women should be put on the cuck-stoles of every burgh or town; and the first 'Homily against Contention,' part 3, published in 1562, sets forth that 'in all well-ordered cities common brawlers and scolders be punished with a notable kind of paine, as to be _set on_ the cucking-stole, pillory, or such-like.' By the statute of 3 Henry VIII., carders and spinners of wool who were convicted of fraudulent practices were to be _sett upon_ the pillory or the cukkyng-stole, man or woman, as the case shall require." We agree with Mr. Wright when he observes that the preceding passages are worded in such a manner as not to lead us to suppose that the offenders were ducked. In the course of time the terms cucking and ducking stools became synonymous, and implied the machines for the ducking of scolds in water. In some places the term thewe was used for a cucking-stool. This was the case at Hedon, and it occurs in pleadings at Chester before the itinerant justices and Henry VII., when George Grey, Earl of Kent, claims the right in his manor of Bushton and Ayton of punishing brawlers by the thewe.[42] Other instances of its use might be cited.