History is constantly showing us that in matters touching the imperfections of our own system of law we are colour blind to the cruelties we commit ourselves and easily moved to indignation by the horrors and wickednesses committed by foreigners, especially if they are foreigners who have never known the blessings of the particular religion we profess. When Fynes Moryson was travelling in Turkey at the end of the sixteenth century, he set down with reasonable detestation some of the gruesome things he observed. "Touching their Corporal and Capital Judgments," he writes: "For small offences they are beaten with cudgels on the soles of the feet, the bellies and backs, the strokes being many and painful according to the offence or the anger of him that inflicts them. Myself did see some hanging and rotting in chains upon the gallows." Yet in England he might have seen many of his fellow countrymen hanging and rotting in chains, for there was at that date and for many years afterwards no country with a more evil record than England for the practice of capital punishment for minor offences. As to mere corporal punishment, there was not a village in England without its whipping post, and a common sight in the streets of the city was to see a poor wretch being whipped at the cart's tail. In ordinary cases the journey was from Newgate to Ludgate, or from Charing Cross to Westminster, but for really bad cases it was extended from Newgate to Charing Cross. And not only did these punishments exist in England, but the populace enjoyed them. One of the sights of London was to see the women whipped in the Bridewell. The Court of Governors held their board meeting, presided over by a magistrate, and the sentence was executed in their presence and continued until the President struck the table in front of him with a hammer. The cry, "O good Sir Robert, knock! Pray, good Sir Robert, knock!" which the victims screamed out whilst under the lash, became a common slang cry among the lower orders in the streets of London in the seventeenth century.