Note 121 — Chapter V · CONDITION OF MARRIED WOMEN.

Athen. xiii. 43. where the word is κύβδα.—The Turkish practice of drowning female delinquents in sacks, is merely an imitation of what was performed by a tyrant of old, who disposed of wicked old women in this manner.—Idem. x. 60. In France likewise formerly it was customary to avoid the scandal of a public trial, for noblemen and gentlemen to be examined privately by the king who, when he could satisfy his conscience that they were guilty, ordered them to be “without any fashion of judgment put in a sack and in the night season, by the Marshall’s servants, hurled into a river and so drowned.” Fortescue, Laud, Legg. Angl. chap. 35. p. 82. b.