Other relics are grouped well in sight of one another. The battered village cross, for instance, with a little marble slab fixed on its shaft, bearing the arms of that Duchess of Buccleuch, who in 1810 restored it; and the village “cage,” or lock-up, under a spreading elm, with the stocks close adjoining, for the accommodation or discomfort of two. The lock-up was for the detention of such malefactors as might trouble Dunchurch—the stocks for misdemeanants only. An Act of 1606 imposed six hours of the stocks and a fine of five shillings for drunkenness; and from that time forward and until the opening years of the nineteenth century this peculiar form of punishment was common throughout England. His personal popularity, or the want of it, made all the difference between misery and comparative comfort to the misdemeanant undergoing six hours in the stocks. The jolly toper, overcome in his cups and sent to penance by some Puritan maw-worm of a justice, had both the moral and bodily support of his boon companions, and left durance probably more drunken than he had been on the occasion that led to his conviction: the sturdy vagrant, smiter, rapscallion, or casual rogue who happened to be in ill-odour with the village endured bitter things. Jibes, stones, cabbage-stalks, ancient eggs, and dead dogs and cats, deceased weeks before, were hurled at the wretch, who was lucky if he had not received severe personal injuries before his time was up, and the beadle or the parish constable came to release him. XXXIX