Note 112 — CHAP. XXII.
Reading edition
The abovementioned Lord Munson had sat as one of the Judges at the King’s Trial: he lived at St. Edmundsbury, when his Wife, with the assistance of her Maids, served him with a flagellation. An allusion to the same fact is also made in a song which is to be found in the Collection of Loyal Songs. The thanks her Ladyship received from the Sessions Court, were owing to its being generally suspected the Noble Lord had altered his political principles; for which his Wife had chastised him.
It really seems that a kind of flagellating fanaticism had taken place, in those days, in this Country, similar in many respects to that which arose in the times of Cardinal Damian and Dominic the Cuirassed: there was this difference however, that it had for its object to flagellate, not one’s-self, but others; which was the wiser folly of the two. The thanks publicly decreed to Lady Munson (not to mention several puritanical publications of those days) are proofs of that flagellating spirit we mention; as well as the correction inflicted by Zachary Crofton upon his servant maid (see p. 238), and the pamphlet he wrote in defence of it; which was very likely grounded on certain religious tenets concerning the mortification of the flesh, &c. that were current in those times.