stocks

1) An obsolete instrument of punishment which consisted of two adjustable planks of wood set one over the other, with holes at the junction to confine a seated prisoner’s ankles.

1619 That the inhabitants ... shall forthwith ... make a paire of Stockes for the punishing of rogues, Gunnerside

1653-4 for not making a sufficient pair of stocks, Theakston. In a violent, early sixteenth-century dispute, the stocks at Sutton in Craven were destroyed by one of the parties involved: c.1522 one Hugh Blakey ... with an axe dyd cut at peces the stokes made and ordined by the inhabitants of Sutton ... for the punishment of vacabondes and beggers ... and dyd cast great peces of them in to the fyre.

dates 1522 1619 1653-1654

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