"1562, Shrove Monday, at Charing Cross, was a man carried of four men, and before him a bagpipe playing,
a shawm, and a drum beating, and twenty links burning about him. The cause was, his next neighbour's wife
beat her husband; it being so ordered that the next should ride about the place to expose her."

"Riding Skimmington" and "Riding the Stang". By C. R. B. BARRETT, Esq., 1895

1565 London, report on a stang ride:

“one mane rode on two staves borne on iiij (4) mens showldars at S. Katheryns for that his next neybor
sofferyd his wyffe to beat hym. There went with hym ny iijc. (300) men with handgunes and pikes well
armyd in cowrslytts.”

one man rode on two staves borne on four men’s shoulders at St. Katherines for that his next neighbour
suffered his wife to beat him. There went with him nigh 300 men with handguns and pikes, well
armed in corslets

‘Historical Memoranda of John Stowe: General, 1564-7’

1580 play 'Sivqila or Too Good to be True' by Thomas Lupton:
"Aliquis, In some places, with us, if a woman beat her husband, the man that dwelleth next unto hir shall ride
on a cowlstaffe, and there is al the punishment she is like to have.
Tears, I heard since 'twas seen whole o' th' other side the downs, upon a cole-staff, between two huntsmen."
Arden of Feversham,"I and my company have taken the constable from his watch, and carried him about the
field on a colt-staff."

"Riding Skimmington" and "Riding the Stang". By C. R. B. BARRETT, Esq., 1895

1601 22nd May, Carlton cum Willingham, Cambridgeshire, Court record:

“That Robert Barker & Ieffrye Marshe did bringe Iohn Lawrence vpon a  cowlestaffe into the Charchyard,
& set him Downe at the Chauncells end, Mathew Iermey, Peter Iobson, Iohn Seth, & Reekwood a fidler 
were in the companye of them that caryed him, this was done vpon Easter Munday in the morninge an
hower before morninge prayer”

* cowlestaffe  - a staff or pole used by two people to carry a vessel
* 6 men and a musician – were they morris men? And the fidler a pipe and tabor player?

Diocesan Court Proceedings CUL: EDR B/2/1

1602 15th October, Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire, Court record:

“Lord & Capteyn of the disordered Cumpany riding & triumphing vpon a greate cowlestaffe borne
vpon mens shoulders.  On which day he appeared and alleged (and all others agreed to the allegation
through him) that there is a custom in their towne that if a woman beate her husband, the next neighbour
towardes the Church must ride vpon a cowlestaffe, and they offered themselves promptly and personally
to prove that master Paynes wief vicar of waterbeach did beate her husband …
Lord pronounced them all disobedient and reserved their punishment in the near future.”

Diocesan Court Proceedings CUL: EDR B/2/18

1604 Wetherden, Suffolk: a riding against Nicholas Rosyer and his wife, after she beat him when he came home
drunk one night. It was decided that the next-door neighbour “towards the church should according to an old
country ceremony … ryde about the towne upon a cowlestaff wherby not onely the woman wh[i]ch had
offended might be shamed for her misdemeanor towardes her husband but other women also by her shame
might be admonished [not] to offend in like sort”.

'Popular Responses to Crime and Deviant Behaviour in Early Modern England'

1637 Appleton super Wiske, Yorkshire North Riding, trial record:

“The duty of the master against Robertum Buttrie and Johannem Brunten for carrying William Hobson
 into the Church of Apleton upon a bar or stange…

 “The duty of the master against Willelmum Steward a piper for playing upon his pipes before them”

"All the parties before mentioned did fetch William Hodshone from his owne house & did carrye him
upon a stang to the Church and about the Church & the Mab danced before him & soon carried him
into the Church & about the fountain & set him in his stall with the piper playing before him all that time.
& it was done the Sunday before named in the tyme of divine servise And Robert Taler a Churchwarden
did not onely goe himselfe but lent a stang to carry the said hodshon on, & being asked why he did soe
he answered in great derision that he would doe the like againe…”

Visitation Court Book of Archbishop Richard Neile, Borthwick Institute: V.1636/CB, part 2

The Stang Ride, or Skimmington Rides, were well-known in London.
Samuel Pepys in his diary entry of 10th June 1667

"in the afternoon took boat and down to Greenwich, where I find the stairs full of people,
there being a great riding there to-day for a man, the constable of the town, whose wife beat him"

Andrew Marvell included a description in a poem in 1667 as the local people:

"knew by shame, Better than law, domestic crimes to tame"

At the Durham Assizes, 1793, seven men were tried for violently assaulting one Nicholas Lowes of Bishop Wearmouth,
and carrying him on a stang; the sentence being two years' imprisonment in Durham Gaol, and to find sureties for three years. 

"Riding Skimmington" and "Riding the Stang". By C. R. B. BARRETT, Esq., 1895

1662 “An Oration against a Foolish Custom:
Worthy Citizens,
HEre is an Unjust and Unhandsome Custom in this City, and therefore ought to be Abolished, which is,
that whensoever a Wife Beats her Husband, the next Neighbour Rides through the City Disgracefully,
not only Sitting upon a Horse with his Face towards the Tail, or Sitting astride upon a Staff…”

‘ORATIONS OF DIVERS SORTS, Accommodated to DIVERS PLACES. Written by the thrice Noble, Illustrious and excellent
Princess, the Lady Marchioness OF NEWCASTLE.’  page 221

1382 London: the riding of a quack physician:

"He was paraded through the city on a horse, facing backwards, with two urinals hung around his neck”

recorded by Thomas Walsingham in  ‘Historia anglicana’ ed. Henry Thomas Riley, 2 volumes, Roll Series 28 (London, 1864),
volume 2, p. 63.  quoted in ‘Popular Responses to Crime and Deviant Behaviour in Early Modern England’

1559 London: a man was punished with a riding for cheating on the number of billets of firewood that he had sold
he was forced to ride draped in firewood.

‘Popular Responses to Crime and Deviant Behaviour in Early Modern England’

1703 satirical poem:
"A punishment invented first to awe
Masculine wives transgressing Nature's law,
Where, when the brawny female disobeys,
And beats her husband 'til for peace he prays,
No concern'd jury damage for him finds,
Nor partial justice her behaviour binds,
But the just street does the next house invade,
Mounting the neighbour couple on lean jade.
The distaff knocks, the grains from kettle fly..."

'Poems on affairs of state, from the reign of K. James the First,
to this present year 1703. Written by the greatest wits of the age, vol. I '

1830's Doncaster, South Yorkshire

“The procession emerged from the Volunteer yard. Men, women, and children were there with all kinds of articles,
cows’ horns, frying pans, warming pans, and tea kettles drummed on with a large key; iron pot lids used as cymbals;
fire shovels and tongs rattled together; tin and wooden pails drummed on with iron pokers or marrow bones; in fact,
every implement with which a loud, discordant sound could be produced.”

The History and Archaeology of the Doncaster region

Hunmanby Stang

“Common throughout the agricultural villages of East Yorkshire, this practice was carried out up to 1900.
Hunmanby ceased to indulge the Riding of the Stang after 1860 – upon the orders of the Lord of the Manor”

‘HUNMANBY – A STORY OF TEN CENTURIES’ by Miss L.M.Owston, 1948

1877 Boldron, a village near Bowes, County Durham: the case of riding the stang went to court. The Darlington
 & Stockton Times’ headline writer described it as a “matrimonial scandal near Barnard Castle"

Thomas Hardy, in his novel 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' 1884, indicates that two women watch from a balcony
when the Skimmington ride passes.
"the conversation about the skimmington was continued in the sitting-room, and reached his ears.

"What do they mean by a 'skimmity-ride'?" he asked.

"O, sir!" said the landlady, swinging her long earrings with deprecating modesty; "'tis a' old foolish thing they do in these parts
when a man's wife is—well, not too particularly his own. But as a respectable householder I don't encourage it."

Other mentions:

Cradley, Herefordshire, 26 Feb. 1586/87
Lindridge, Worcestershire, 6 Mar. 1572/73 (date of hearing)
Upper Mitton, Worcestershire, 20 Oct. 1613

‘Robert Ill's 'Rough Music':Charivari and Diplomacy in a Medieval Scottish Court’
The Scottish Historical Review, Volume LXXIV, 2: No. 198: October 1995, 144-158 by JOHN J. McGAVIN

“curat of Mitton, and by violence putt him vppon a cowlestaffe and caried him vp and downe the towne
and caused fidlers beinge then in …” ,
“by violence put him upon a cowlstaff and carried him up and down the town and caused fidlers
then being in company to play by them, and one rang upon a frying pan, another blew a horn and
the rest followed making a great disorderly noise”

Mentions in Somerset:

1616 skimmington ride against John Hall of Temple, Cameley, blacksmith and his wife Mary
1708 Stoke St Michael, alleged skimmington ride
1790 'Skimeton' or Skimmington held at Bradford

Quarter Sessions Records

1889 one of the last instances of Riding the Stang took place in Hedon, Holderness, East Riding of Yorkshire

1898 Wensleydale

“A very old custom, but which has now been pretty nigh stamped out by the county policeman, is that of ‘Riding the Stang.’
It is not dead yet, though; I witnessed the stang being ridden as recently as 1891 in Guisborough, and in many of the villages
in Wensleydale it is to this day resorted to when considered needful. The stang is held in wholesome dread by a certain
class of evil-doers. Wife-beaters and immoral characters chiefly had and have the benefit of the stang. ... The stang was
ridden at Thoralby, Wensleydale, as recently as October, 1896.”

‘Wit, Character, Folklore and Customs of the North Riding of Yorkshire   With a Glossary of over 4,000 Words and Idioms Now in Use’
  by Richard Blakeborough

1901 Coverdale, near Leyburn. Yorkshire Dales, North Yorkshire, newspaper report:
“The ancient custom of ‘riding the stang’ has been revived in the North Riding of Yorkshire. In the three townships
of Carlton, West Scrafton and Caldbergh, in Coverdale, three unfaithful husbands have just undergone the salutary
punishment of being forcibly seated on a stang (or pole) hoisted on men’s shoulders, and so carried in procession
through the villages of the accompaniment of hooting and jeering.”
Lincolnshire Echo January 21, 1901

Similar customs took place in France:

1718 France

“For several years, in the town of Saint-Mihiel, a practice has been introduced of having people walk and drive
through the streets, the Mardy-gras of each year by the Boys or Bourgeois of the City, an ox on which they seat
one or more bourgeois of the same city, charged, as they claim, with having allowed his neighbour to be beaten
by his wife, and as punishment for this negligence; as testimony to which signs are placed on his shoulders in front
and behind designating this punishment and the fact which gave rise to it.
21 March 1718 French court testament:
“Anne Colin… said and deposed (...) that, on last Mardi Gras, she saw an ox pass in front of her house ridden
by François Vermandé, who had his back to the head of this same ox, who held its tail to serve as a bridle,
supported by different inhabitants of this place that she did not known, with pitchforks under their arms, followed
by a large number of people and children, several of whom carried oak bark which served as torches, and Marie
Picard, daughter of the shepherd of this place, who accompanied them with a horn in which she blows to warn
the public of this scene:

And as for Ash Wednesday, the deponent also saw another ox passing by belonging to François Simonin, plowman
of this place; who led him mounted by Collignon, who also had his back turned to the head, holding the tail of this ox
to serve as a bridle, accompanied by a large number of people and children;"

1775 northeast France

“In 1775, the Sovereign Court was forced to place a ban on the donkey ride in Saint-Dié.  Nevertheless, this custom
had become too deeply established to perish under the decisions of justice;  it even survived the Revolution, which
erased so many traditions of another era, and people of a certain age could still, in the 19th century, remember
having attended, some forty years ago, spectacles of this kind which, more than once, degenerated into bloody brawls.”