Seeing that courts were formerly held in the church, it must have been expedient to have the stocks fixed near the place of trial, so that prisoners might quickly be placed where village life was busiest. One cannot go so far as to assert, with some writers, that the churchyard was the usual situation for these instruments. If the statement were amended so as to read, “in or near the churchyard,” it would command assent. In the majority of instances, the stocks which remain seem to be in the village street, or on the village green, though generally not a stone’s throw from the church. At Brading, Isle of Wight, they are housed in a building near the entrance to the churchyard. At Hessle and Kirk Ella, in Yorkshire, and at South Harting, in Sussex, they are placed by the church gate; in the Surrey villages of Alfold and Shalford, as well as at Brent Pelham, in Hertford[388], they occupy a like position. The weather-worn stocks of Shalford are shown in Fig. 40. The specimen at Kilham, Yorkshire, stands against the churchyard wall; while about 100 yards away, the old bull-ring may be seen[389]. Haveringatte-Bower, in Essex, has its stocks set up by the side of the green under an immense hollow elm, opposite to a whipping-post. In the following places the stocks are also adjacent to the churchyard: Abinger, Surrey (on the green); Walton-on-the-Hill, near Liverpool[390]; Waltham Abbey, Essex[391]; Weston-under-Redcastle, Salop[392]; and, formerly, Prestbury, Gloucestershire[393]. Within the churchyard itself we have examples at Burnsall, Yorkshire; Mottistone, Isle of Wight; and Crowle, in Lincolnshire. The stocks at Mottistone are very dilapidated; those at Crowle have been used within living memory[394]. Formerly stocks were kept in the Minster Yard at York, and there was a movable pair in the yard at Beverley Minster[395]. Lastly, to conclude this fragmentary list, we notice the stocks of Northorpe, Lincolnshire, which were kept in the church tower[396]. [Illustration: FIG. 40. Remains of stocks, outside Shalford churchyard, Surrey.]