That flagellations were, in not very remote times, much in use in the Palaces of the Great, and were served in the Kitchen, are therefore assured facts. With respect to our being so imperfectly informed of the different ceremonies that usually accompanied such corrections, it is owing to different causes; and first, to a kind of carelessness with which, it must be confessed, the affair was commonly transacted. The great Personages who gave orders in that respect, were not sufficiently correct in their manner of giving them; nor did they take sufficient care to confine themselves to any settled forms of words for that purpose: whence it always proved an impossible thing for the Masters of the Ceremonies to collect and set down in writing any thing precise on that head. For here we are to observe, that the Princes who gave such orders, did not give them in their capacity of Trustees of the Executive, Legislative, Military, or Judicial Powers in the Nation. Neither did the Great Men about them, order corrections of the same kind in their own houses, in their capacity of Admirals, Generals, or Knights of the Garter, or of the _St. Esprit_. The flagellations in question, as hath been above observed, were corrections of quite a paternal kind: they were commonly ordered on a sudden, according as circumstances arose, _pro re natâ_, without much ceremony or solemnity; and they may extremely well be compared with those boxes on the ears which Queen Elizabeth would sometimes bestow upon her Maids of Honour, or with those marks of attention with which she honoured those who made their appearance in the neighbourhood of her Palaces with high ruffs and long swords, who had them immediately clipped or broken. When the above great Personages were desirous that a flagellation should be inflicted, a word from them, a gesture, an exclamation, commonly proved sufficient. The numerous Servants who surrounded them, through a zeal that cannot be too much praised, constantly saved them the trouble of expressing themselves more at length on the subject: they quickly laid hold of the person of the culprit; hurried him down into the Kitchen; and without loss of time proceeded to serve the prescribed flagellation, the conduct of which was now intirely left to their discretion: only they took care to regulate their actions upon what they had formerly seen practised on similar occasions, or in cases of a more serious nature: they, for instance, never forgot, when the flagellation was accomplished, to offer the sufferers the abovementioned _cup of wine_ and _manchet_; nor are we to think that the latter always refused to accept them.