to be taken to the pillory, before noon on one day and after noon on the next, and there exposed with the whetstone as before. A few years later one Robert Stafferstone for slandering an alderman was adjudged to be imprisoned in Newgate for the next forty days, “unless he should find increased favour.” This favour he did subsequently find, and “upon his humiliation he was committed to prison until the morrow, namely, Palm Sunday, and on the same Sunday should be taken from the prison to his house, and from thence proceed between the eighth and ninth hour, before dinner, with his head uncovered, and attended by an officer of the city, carrying a lighted wax candle weighing two pounds through Walbrook Bokelersbury, and so by Conduit and Chepe to St. Lawrence Lane in the Old Jewry, and on to the chapel of the Guildhall, where he was to make offering of the candle. That done, all further imprisonment was to be remitted and forgiven.” A sharper sentence was meted out about the same date to William Hughlot, who for a murderous assault upon an alderman was sentenced to lose his hand, and precept was given to the sheriffs of London to do execution of the judgment aforesaid. Upon this an axe was brought into court by an officer of sheriffs, and the hand of the said William was laid upon the block there to be cut off. Whereupon John Rove (the alderman aggrieved), in reverence of our lord the king, and at the request of divers lords, who entreated for the said William, begged of the Mayor and aldermen that the judgment might be remitted, which was granted accordingly. The culprit was, however, punished by imprisonment, with exposure on the pillory, wearing a whetstone, and he was also ordered to carry a lighted wax candle weighing three pounds through Chepe and Fleet Streets to St. Dunstan’s church, where he was to make offering of the same. But, however sensitive of their good name, the Mayor and aldermen of those times seem to have been fairly upright in their administration of the law. The following case shows this. A man named Hugh De Beone, arraigned before the city coroner and sheriff for the death of his wife, stood mute, and refused to plead, so as to save his goods after sentence. For thus “refusing his law of England,” the justiciary of our lord the king for the delivery of the gaol of Newgate, committed him back to prison, “there in penance to remain until he should be dead.”[14]