One cannot refrain from expressing a lingering sense of regret over the last of its kind, whether of the last of the Mohicans, or the last minstrel. The parish of Meldreth, I relieve, stands alone in the Cambridgeshire side of the Royston district as still possessing the visible framework of its old Parish Stocks, thanks to the commendable interest taken in the preservation of old time memorials by Mr. George Sandys, of Royston, by whom the Meldreth Stocks were some time ago "restored," or, rather, the original pieces were brought more securely together into one visible whole. The parish of Meldreth, too, affords, I believe, one of the latest, if not the latest, instances of placing a person in the stocks, when, some forty or fifty years ago, a man was "stocked" for brawling in Church or some such misbehaviour. These stocks, when they were renovated by Mr. Sandys, had lost the upper part which completed the process of fastening an offender in them, but such as they then were will be seen in the illustration on the opposite page, which is reproduced from an excellent photograph taken by Mr. F. R. Hinkins, of Royston. The original upper part has since been found and placed in position by Mr. A. Jarman, of Meldreth. [Illustration: THE OLD PARISH STOCKS AT MELDRETH.] Some other things deserve to be mentioned as old penalties besides actual punishment for crimes. One of these was the penalty for _felo de se_, so well described by Hood in his punning verses on Faithless Nelly Gray and Ben Battle, the soldier bold, who hung himself, and-- A dozen men sat on his corpse, To find out how he died; And they buried Ben at four cross-roads, With a stake in his inside. In 1779, John Stanford, who hung himself at the Red Lion, Kneesworth, was found to be a _felo de se_, and was "ordered to be buried in a cross-road." In 1765, the coroner's inquest who sat upon the body of one, Howard, a schoolmaster of Litlington, who, "after shooting Mr. Whedd, of Fowlmere, cut his own throat," found a verdict of _felo de se_, upon which he was ordered to be buried in the high cross-way, but whether a stake was placed through the body, either in this or the Kneesworth case, is not stated. The custom of burying a _felo de se_ at four cross-roads continued long after the barbarous and senseless indignity of driving a stake through the body was discontinued, and persons still living remember burials at such spots as the entrance to Melbourn, and at similar spots in other villages. Another penal order was for the body to be "anatomised" after execution, as in the case of a man named Stickwood for murdering Andrew Nunn, at Fowlmere, in 1775.