MAIDEN, an instrument anciently used for beheading criminals. Of the use and form of this instrument an account has been given by Pennant. “It seems to have been confined to the limits of the forest of Hardwick, or the eighteen towns and hamlets within its precincts. The time when this custom took place is unknown; whether Earl Warren, lord of this forest, might have established it among the sanguinary laws then in use against the invaders of the hunting rights, or whether it might not take place after the woollen manufactures at Halifax began to gain strength, is uncertain. The last is very probable; for the wild country around the town was inhabited by a lawless set, whose depredations on the cloth-tenters might soon stifle the efforts of infant industry. For the protection of trade, and for the greater terror of offenders by speedy execution, this custom seems to have been established, so as at last to receive the force of law, which was, ‘ That if a felon be taken within the liberty of the forest of Hardwick, with goods stolen out or within the said precincts, either hand habend, back-berand, or confession’d, to the value of thirteen pence halfpenny, he shall, after three market-days or meeting-days within the town of Halifax, next after such his apprehension, and being condemned, be taken to the gibbet, and there have his head cut from his body.’ The offender had always a fair trial; for as soon as he was taken, he was brought to the lord’s bailiff at Halifax; he was then exposed on the three markets, placed in a stocks, with the goods stolen on his back; or, if the theft was of the cattle kind, they were placed by him; and this was done both to strike terror into others, and to produce new informations against him. The bailiff then summoned four freeholders of each town within the forest to form a jury. The felon and prosecutors were brought face to face; and the goods, the cow or horse, or whatsoever was stolen, produced. If he was found guilty, he was remanded to prison, had a week’s time allowed for preparation, and then was conveyed to this spot, where his head was struck off by this machine. I should have premised, that if the criminal, either after apprehension, or in the way to execution, should escape out of the limits of the forest (part being close to the town), the bailiff had no farther power over him; but if he should be caught within the precincts at any time after, he was immediately executed on his former sentence. This privilege was very freely used during the reign of Elizabeth: the records before that time were lost. Twenty-five suffered in her reign, and at least twelve from 1623 to 1650; after which, I believe, the privilege was no more exerted. This machine of death is now destroyed; but I saw one of the same kind in a room under the Parliament House at Edinburgh, where it was introduced by the Regent Morton, who took a model of it as he passed through Halifax, and at length suffered by it himself. It is in the form of a painter’s easel, and about ten feet high; at four feet from the bottom is a cross bar on which the felon lays his head, which is kept down by another placed above. In the inner edges of the frame are grooves; in these is placed a sharp axe, with a vast weight of lead, supported at the very summit with a peg; to that peg is fastened a cord, which the executioner cutting, the axe falls, and does the affair effectually, without suffering the unhappy criminal to undergo a repetition of strokes, as has been the case in the common method. I must add, that if the sufferer is condemned for stealing a horse or a cow, the string is tied to the beast, which, on being whipped, pulls out this peg, and becomes the executioner.” This apparatus is now in possession of the Society of Scottish Antiquaries.

Maiden is also the name of a machine first used in Yorkshire, and afterwards introduced into other places, for washing linen. It consists of a tub nineteen inches high, and twenty-seven in diameter at the top, in which the linen is put, with hot water and soap, to which is adapted a cover, fitting it very closely, and fastened to the tub by two wedges; through a hole in the middle of the cover passes an upright piece of wood, kept at a proper height by a peg-above, and furnished with two handles, by which it is turned backward and forward; and to the lower end of this upright piece is fastened a round piece of wood, in which are fixed several pieces, like cogs of a wheel. The operation of this machine is to make the linen pass and repass quickly through the water.
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Maiden -Rents, in our old writers, a noble paid by the tenants of some manors on their marriage. This is said to have been given to the lord for his omitting the custom of marcheta, by which he was to have the first night’s lodging with his tenant’s wife; but it rather seems to have been a fine for a license to marry a daughter.