"Here was taken a vagrant"--says this yellow page, stained with time and grotesque with crabbed writing and singular spelling--"one Mary Parker, Widow, with a Child; and she was wipped according to law, about the age of Thirty years, proper of personage; and she was to goo to the place of her birth, that is, in Grauesend in Kent, and she is limitted to iiij days, and to be caried from Tithing to Tything tell she comes to the end of the s{d} jerney." [Sidenote: _THE 'GOOD OLD TIMES'_] Oh, those "good old times"! Other singular entries occur at Kingston. In 1570, for instance, we read that, on October 9-- "Thursday at nyght rose a great winde and rayne that the Temps rosse so hye that they myght row w{t} bott{s} owte of the Temps a gret waye in to the market place and upon a sodayne." Two years later, a new cucking-stool was made at the expense of the parish. It cost £1 3_s._ 4_d._, and seems to have been freely used. The cucking-stool was a contrivance for the punishment of shrewish women who made such ill use of their tongues as to disturb their neighbours as well as their own families. Wherever there happened to be a pond or watercourse in a parish a post was set up in it; across this post was placed a transverse beam turning on a swivel, with a chair at one end of it, in which when the offender was comfortably placed, that end was turned to the water and let down into it as many times as the occasion was supposed to require. This new cucking-stool had not long been made when it was brought into use, for, as the registers say-- "1572, August. On Tewsday being the xix day of this monthe of August ---- Downing wyfe to ---- Downinge gravemaker of this parysshe she was sett on a new cukking stolle made of a grett hythe and so browght a bowte the markett place to Temes brydge and ther had iij Duckinges over hed and eres because she was a common scolde and fyghter." During the next month the registers give the information that, September 8-- "This day in this towne was kept the Sessions of gayle Delyverye and her was hangyd vj persons and seventeene taken for roges and vagabonds and whippid abowte the market place and brent in the ears."