Pl. bilboes. Also 6 bilbows, 7 bilbowes, bylboes, 8 (comb.) bilboo-. [Of uncertain derivation. It is usually, like the prec., referred to Bilbao, on the alleged ground that many of these instruments were manufactured there, and shipped on board the Spanish Armada, for the confinement of English prisoners expected to be made; but the word occurs in English many years before 1588.] A long iron bar, furnished with sliding shackles to confine the ankles of prisoners, and a lock by which to fix one end of the bar to the floor or ground.
1557. in Hakluyt’s Voy., I. 295. I was also conueyed to their lodgings … where I saw a pair of bilbowes.
1591. J. Hortop, Narr., in Arb., Garner, V. 316. Whom he presently commanded to be set in the bilbows.
1602. Shaks., Ham., V. ii. 6. Me thought I lay Worse then the mutines in the Bilboes.
1723. Mrs. Centlivre, Basset-Table, I. i. 205. For every fault that she commits, he’ll condemn her to the Bilboes.
1879. Sala, in Daily Tel., 26 June, 5/6. The ragged, half-starved prisoner kneeling to show how the gyves and the bilboes and the neckstocks were put on him.
b. attrib.
1772–84. Cook, Voy. (1790), V. 1597. Carrying with him the shackle of the bilboo-bolt that had been put about his leg.
