The only fortunate circumstance that night was that the weather was still fine. I found shelter in a hollow guarded by heather, and lay down exhausted, my weakness leading me quickly into slumber.

Dawn found me somewhat recovered, though stiff and sore, especially in that part that had taken the worst of the previous evening's assault, but we women are so constructed as to survive such batterings, or how would mankind survive, and I set off to seek some habitation or shelter. Shortly, I came to a crossroads, where I turned off, either road looking as well or ill travelled, and thinking it would throw off any search that was made for me.

At mid-day I came to a large village, where I hoped to find something to eat and drink, for I had had nothing before my promised wedding breakfast the day before and, with that snatched so rudely from me, it was some thirty-six hours since food had passed my lips.

I asked a woman in the street if she knew if there was any work to be found there, but she glared at me and did not answer. In the bakers shop I entered, the woman that served was equally unfriendly. I told her I was looking for work, and had not eaten for two days. Could she spare me a bite to eat, and I would repay her later, but she turned me away, crying that I was a beggar and a vagrant, and should be taken up. When I could find no other help in the district, I remembered the embroidered handkerchief I had in my pocket and returned to the shop, offering to sell it to her in exchange for a piece of bread.

At this, she made a great outcry, until her neighbours came running, saying I was not only a vagrant and beggar, but a thief also, for where else had I obtained a lady's handkerchief. At once they all laid hands on me, despite my protests of my innocence, and hauled me off to the Beadle, to be put in the lockup for the night. There I slept on stone, shivering with cold, but, out of charity, someone pushed a piece of stale bread into my cage.

In the morning I was taken before a Magistrate, a fat red faced man, who would not listen to anything I might say, telling me not to make things worse for myself by denying what the good people of the village told.

"Has she been examined?" he asked and, being told not, "then send for the midwife at once. I will pass sentence later, when I know if she be honest."

In minutes came a large sour looking woman, who ordered me onto my back upon a bench. There, in that public courtroom, the generality of people standing around to watch, she lifted my skirts and pulled my knees apart, probing at my woman's parts with rough, unclean, fingers.

"Ha," she cried, "no drawers, and a cunt as well trodden as the road to perdition. Why, she's still swollen and wet from her last cockfight. We've a whore here, your honour, as well as a thief. Nothing honest about this trollop."

In vain did I try to explain how I had been basely assaulted and abandoned. None would listen, and the magistrate seemed incensed that I should try to excuse myself.

"An arrant whore," he declared, "one would tell by her tongue, even if her cunt did not denounce her. Have her whipped at the cart's tail and stood in the pillory, and see she is out of town by nightfall, or she shall suffer as much again tomorrow."

I begged for mercy, but was told my behaviour in denying my guilt deprived me of the right, and that I must be made an example for other young women who thought of leaving the protection of father, brother, husband, for all women should be ruled.

"If you be not ruled by a man," he said, "you shall be ruled by the rod."

I was dragged outside, my gown torn down the back, and left hanging at my hips, my stays taken from me and my shift torn like my gown, until I was naked to my waist, my bare breasts, to my shame, not only open to all eyes, but hardening, until their points stood out like a babe's thumbs. They tied my wrists together with coarse cord, and fastened them to the tail-gate of the noisesome cart that was used to remove the nightsoil from the better houses. As I walked behind this evil smelling conveyance, the length of the street, then round the church and back again to the magistrate's house, a slow half mile, the Beadle followed, lashing my poor bent back with a heavy whip, more suited to a dray horse than a woman's weak frame and tender skin.

Each vicious jolt sent agony through my shoulders, intensified when, as often as not, he directed the lash to wrap round my sides, clawing into the soft and tender spot under my arm or biting into the vulnerable side of my breast I writhed and flinched, as much as my wrists, bound to the cart would let me, but my movement was limited by the slow moving bulk of the stinking cart and I must needs stand under the blows from one end of my doleful promenade to the other.

I do not know how many blows they dealt me, I lost all count, or any other reckoning long before the end, but, when they took me from the cart, I was hoarse with screaming, and I could feel the blood at my waist from the cuts to my back and sides.