One of the earliest of these degrading engines of confinement for public exposure, to be used in punishment in this country, was the bilboes. Though this instrument to "punyssche transgressours ageynste ye Kinges Maiesties lawes" came from old England, it was by tradition derived from Bilboa. It is alleged that bilboes were manufactured there and shipped on board the Spanish Armada in large numbers to shackle the English prisoners so confidently expected to be captured. This occasion may have given them their wide popularity and employment; but this happened in 1588, and in the first volume of _Hakluyt's Voyages_, page 295, dating some years earlier, reference is made to bilbous. They were a simple but effective restraint; a long heavy bolt or bar of iron having two sliding shackles, something like handcuffs, and a lock. In these shackles were thrust the legs of offenders or criminals, who were then locked in with a padlock. Sometimes a chain at one end of the bilboes attached both bilboes and prisoner to the floor or wall; but this was superfluous, as the iron bar prevented locomotion. Whether the Spanish Armada story is true or not, bilboes were certainly much used on board ship. Shakespeare says in _Hamlet_: "Methought I lay worse than the mutines in the bilboes." In _Cook's Voyages_ and other sea-tales we read of "bilboo-bolts" on sailors. The Massachusetts magistrates brought bilboes from England as a means of punishing refractory or sinning colonists, and they were soon in constant use. In the very oldest court records, which are still preserved, of the settlement of Boston--the Bay colony--appear the frequent sentences of offenders to be placed in the bilboes. The earliest entry is in the authorized record of the Court held at Boston on the 7th of August, 1632. It reads thus: "Jams Woodward shall be sett in the bilbowes for being drunk at the Newe-towne." "Newe-towne" was the old name of Cambridge. Soon another colonist felt the bilboes for "selling peeces and powder and shott to the Indians," ever a bitterly-abhorred and fiercely-punished crime. And another, the same year, for threatening--were he punished--he would carry the case to England, was summarily and fearlessly thrust into the bilboes. Then troublesome Thomas Dexter, with his ever-ready tongue, was hauled up and tried on March 4, 1633. Here is his sentence: