The Legal Ducking of Quarrelsome Women

The Legal Ducking of Quarrelsome Women is a statutory punishment described in the novel as both a measure against women associated with the Comprachicos and a survival of an older English law. Its procedure turns a chair over water into an instrument of public discipline: the woman is lowered in and drawn out again, three times, supposedly to cool her anger.

Legal Setting

The rule appears as one provision of a statute directed against the Comprachicos during the reign of William and Mary. The statute prescribed severe penalties for members of the association who were convicted, while women found among them were assigned a separate punishment: the cucking-stool. The passage thus places the ducking within a broader campaign of legal repression, but distinguishes the penalty imposed on women from those directed at the men.

The Cucking-Stool

The account describes the cucking-stool as a tumbrel, with the name said to combine the French word coquine and the German stuhl. The chair was suspended above a river or pond, with the woman seated on it; it was then allowed to descend into the water and pulled back out. The process was repeated three times. The cited commentator, Chamberlayne, gives the stated purpose as cooling the woman’s anger, making the punishment’s corrective rationale explicit in the very description of its procedure.

Persistence and Significance

The narrator emphasizes that this punishment outlasted the statute’s immediate campaign against the Comprachicos, describing it as still present in English legislation. That claim marks the rule as an example of legal custom surviving through institutional continuity: an obsolete-seeming punishment could remain on the books even as manners and ideas changed. The passage records the rule and its prescribed form, but does not establish how often it was carried out.