For other uses, see Whipping boy (disambiguation).
"Edward VI and his Whipping Boy" by Walter Sydney Stacey [Wikidata] from his 1882 oil painting.[1]
A whipping boy was a boy educated alongside a prince (or boy monarch) in early modern Europe, who supposedly received corporal punishment for the prince's transgressions in his presence. The prince was not punished himself because his royal status exceeded that of his tutor; seeing a friend punished would provide an equivalent motivation not to repeat the offence. An archaic proverb which captures a similar idea is "to beat a dog before a lion."[2] Whipping was a common punishment administered by tutors at that time. There is little contemporary evidence for the existence of whipping boys, and evidence that some princes were indeed whipped by their tutors, although Nicholas Orme suggests that nobles might have been beaten less often than other pupils.[3] Some historians regard whipping boys as entirely mythical; others suggest they applied only in the case of a boy king, protected by divine right, and not to mere princes.[4]
In Renaissance humanism, Erasmus' treatises "The Education of a Christian Prince" (1516) and "Declamatio de pueris statim ac liberaliter instituendis" (1530) mention the inappropriateness of physical chastisement of princes, but do not mention proxy punishment.[5] Hartley Coleridge wrote in 1852, "to be flogged by proxy was the exclusive privilege of royal blood. ... It was much coveted for the children of the poorer gentry, as the first step in the ladder of preferment."[6] John Gough Nichols wrote in 1857, "the whole matter is somewhat legendary, and though certain vicarious or rather minatory punishments may have been occasionally adopted, it does not seem likely that any one individual among the King's schoolfellows should have been uniformly selected, whether he were in fault or not, as the victim or scape-goat of the royal misdemeanours".[7]
In current English, a "whipping boy" is a metaphor which may have a similar meaning to scapegoat, fall guy, or sacrificial lamb; alternatively it may mean a perennial loser, a victim of group bullying or someone who is unfairly blamed for the actions of others.
^The magazine of art vol.6 p.133
^Wesselski 1928, p.127 [German equivalent: "den Hund vor dem Löwen schlagen"]; Chaucer, Geoffrey (1990). Donald C. Baker (ed.). The Squire's Tale. Variorum Edition of the works of Chaucer. Vol. Part 2: The Canterbury Tales, Volume 12. University of Oklahoma Press. pp. 215–216, fn. 490–91. ISBN 9780806121543. Retrieved 14 January 2018.
^Orme 2017 pp.33–35
^Ridley, Jasper (2013-02-07). A Brief History of the Tudor Age. Little, Brown Book Group. p. 137. ISBN 9781472107954. Retrieved 5 January 2018.
^Bushnell 1996 p.50
^Coleridge, Hartley; Coleridge, Derwent; Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1852). Lives of northern worthies. Edward Moxon. p. 172, fn. Retrieved 9 January 2018.
^Nichols, John Gough (1857). "Biographical Memoir of King Edward the Sixth". Literary Remains of King Edward the Sixth: Edited from His Autograph Manuscripts, with Historical Notes and a Biographical Memoir. J. B. Nichols. pp. lxx–lxxiii. Retrieved 18 January 2018.
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