"Thomas Dexter shal be sett in the bilbowes, disfranchized, and fyned L15 for speking rpchfull and seditious words agt the government here established." He also suffered in the bilboes for cursing, for "prophane saying dam ye come." Thomas Morton of Mare-Mount, that amusing old debauchee and roysterer, was sentenced to be "clapt into the bilbowes." And he says "the harmeles salvages" stared at him in wonder "like poore silly lambes" as he endured his punishment, and doubtless some of "the Indesses, gay lasses in beaver coats" who had danced with him around his merry Maypole and had partaken of his cask of "claret sparkling neat" sympathized with him and cheered him in his indignity. The next year another Newe-towne man, being penitent, Henry Bright, was set in the bilboes for "swearynge." Another had "sleited the magistrates in speaches." In 1635, on April 7, Griffin Montagne "shal be sett in ye bilbowes for stealing boards and clapboards and enjoyned to move his habitacon." Within a year we find offenders being punished in two places for the same offence, thus degrading them far and wide; and when in Salem they were "sett in the stockes," we find always in Boston that the bilboes claimed its own. Women suffered this punishment as well as men. Francis Weston's wife and others were set in the bilboes. It is high noon in Boston in the year 1638. The hot June sun beats down on the little town, the narrow paths, the wharfs; and the sweet-fern and cedars on the common give forth a pungent dry hot scent that is wafted down to the square where stands the Governor's house, the market, the church, the homes of the gentlefolk. A crowd is gathered there around some interesting object in the middle of the square; visitors from Newe-towne and Salem, Puritan women and children, tawny Indian braves in wampum and war-paint, gaily dressed sailors from two great ships lying at anchor in the bay--all staring and whispering, or jeering and biting the thumb. They are gathered around a Puritan soldier, garbed in trappings of military bravery, yet in but sorry plight. For it is training day in the Bay colony, and in spite of the long prayer with which the day's review began, or perhaps before that pious opening prayer, Serjeant John Evins has drunken too freely of old Sack or Alicant, and the hot sun and the sweet wine have sent him reeling from the ranks in disgrace. There he sits, sweltering in his great coat "basted with cotton-wool and thus made defensive ag't Indian arrowes;" weighed down with his tin armor, a heavy corselet covering his body, a stiff gorget guarding his throat, clumsy tasses protecting his thighs, all these "neatly varnished black," and costing twenty-four shillings apiece of the town's money. Over his shoulder hangs another weight, his bandelier, a strong "neat's leather" belt, carrying twelve boxes of solid cartridges and a well-filled bullet-bag; and over all and heavier than all hangs from his neck--as of lead--the great letter D.