Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. the penis; thus burning pestle, the penis when suffering from venereal disease.

1598		Florio Worlde of Wordes n.p.: Pestello, a pestle ... Also ... a mans toole.
c.1607		Beaumont & Fletcher [title] Knight of the Burning Pestle.
1647		Case for the City-Spectacles 10: The Knight of the burning Pestle, Sir Henry Martin, that Cony-catching Senator.
1662		M.W. Marriage Broaker in Gratiae Theatrales 81: This Pestle shall ne’re pound i’th widows mortar.
1662		Jack Adams, his perpetual almanack 42: He is very Lascivious and inclined to many vices. he beareth Gules a burning pestle in bend, Or.
1676		Behn Town-Fop I ii: Thou Knight of the Burning Pestle thou.
1697		Art of Cuckoldom in C.C. Mish Restoration Prose Fiction (1970) 195: If I understand a Spindle from a Wheel, or a Pestle from a Mortar [...] I tell you once more, this impudent She Cozen of yours, is a downright he Rogue, Madam.
1719		in D’Urfey Pills to Purge Melancholy II 237: A Vision too I had of old, / That thou a Mortar wert of Gold! / Then cou’d I but the Pestle be, / [...] / Oh! how I wou’d pound my Spice in thee.
c.1750		‘The Proud Pedlar’ in Ebsworth Roxburghe Ballads (1893) VII:1 54: The mortar was your own Lady’s, but the pestle was my own.
1790		‘Bumper Allnight. Esquire’ Honest Fellow [as 1719].
1835		‘The Ladies Doctor’ in Secret Songster 28: When I only get into their mortar, / With my pestle I hammer away.
1856		Life in Boston & N.Y. (Boston, MA) 11 Oct. n.p.: Our sporting druggist, the Doctor, is considered a pretty man by the slewers. Take care, old pestle.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1896		Farmer Vocabula Amatoria (1966) 212: Pilon, m. The penis; ‘the pestle’.

2. a constable’s staff.

1611

Chapman May-Day IV:i: To trie whether this chopping knife or their pestels were the better weapons.