Most of the stocks which remain are perhaps not remarkably ancient. The institution, however, has a long history. Stocks are referred to in a priory charter, dated A.D. 1324, under the name of _cippi_. In the statute 25 Edward III. 1350, they appear as _coppes_; while by 7 Henry VI., c. 17, every village or town is to provide itself with a pair of stocks[397]. We can easily picture for ourselves the Mediaeval village with its institutions massed together as closely as possible around a central spot. Castle, church, court-house, tithe-barn, playing green and archery ground; the cross and the yew; the stocks and pillory; the pound and the maypole, were complementary to the usual group of farmsteads and cottages, and helped to relieve a landscape which in the pre-enclosure period was often quiet and bare. We may see baron and priest, representing the civil and the ecclesiastical powers, sitting side by side, to arrange feudal services, tolls, and holidays, to allocate tithes and settle disputes, to assess fines and declare sentences; while ever at hand waited the instruments of punishment. Here we may make reference to a very curious relic of the old courts. Chained to the wall of the vestry in Wateringbury church, in Kent, is an official mace known locally as the “Dumb borsholder” (_pr._ buzzelder) of Chart. This wooden staff, which is a little over three feet in length, is surmounted by an iron ring, while the lower end is tipped with a square iron spike. At the annual court leet, the head man of the tithing of Pizein Well, in the manor of Chart, appeared before the meeting bearing this staff. Thus armed, and provided with the necessary warrant, he might search for goods unlawfully concealed. The tradition runs that he was empowered to break in, by means of the iron spike, the doors of those who resisted his authority. The Wateringbury mace, which is probably the symbolical successor of the more warlike clubs employed in the old Saxon moots, was in use down to A.D. 1748[398].