These days our crooked MPs are either promoted to the Cabinet or serve half of their paltry sentences. Back in the day the punishments were a little more fitting for the crimes. According to Chris Bryant’s new book Parliament: The Biography, Giles Mompesson the MP for Great Bedwyn ‘was fined, expelled from parliament and told to parade up the Strand “with his face in a horse’s anus” for extortionately abusing his royal monopoly for the licensing of inns and manufacture of gold thread in 1621.’

Guido would settle on just bringing back the stocks.