http://www.northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/176/entry

“A common custom” in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, writes historian B. Howard Cunnington, was a skimmington. According to Glossary of Wiltshire Words, a skimmington was a “serenade of rough music got up to express disapproval in cases of great scandal and immorality.” Cunnington explains the reasons for a skimmington and defines it as follows: “When it became known in a village that a man was ‘henpecked,’ or a husband and wife had been unfaithful, the inhabitants would form a procession in which were carried effigies of the person or persons objected to, accompanied with an improvised band of youths making ‘rough music’ by beating tin kettles, pans, or other domestic utensil that would make a noise.” He continues, “The whole party [then] would assemble outside the house of the offender, and, in some cases, capture the man or woman . . . and duck him or her in the village pond.” Simply put, a skimmington served as a reminder for spouses to perform certain societal roles and behave within social boundaries and thereby secure social order.

William Hogarth's engraving "Hudibras Encounters the Skimmington", 1822, depicts the knight's discovery of a skimmington. The meaning behind the engraving is explained here, in a quote from Hudibras, canto ii, line 685: Skimmington Riding.

Though feminists blame "Patriarchy," period art and literature remind us that even during eras in which feminists portray women as powerless, women were a part of enforcement and perpetuation of gender roles upon both sexes.