stale

In Case your Cask is a Butt,...have ready boiling...Water, which put in, and, with a long Stale and a little Birch fastened to its End, scrub the Bottom.

Stales, the staves, or risings of a ladder, or the staves of a rack in a stable.

To begin then: not long before this paragraph was written, P fell into doze, and dreamt, he saw Jacob's ladder with one foot standing on the earth, the other reaching up into heaven. Dukes, Marquisses, and other Peers, fancy represented to him, as standing on the upper stales; on the middle ones, Knights and Baronets, and under them, a train of Esquires and Gentlemen, reaching to the bottom.

The Surgians cut of the stale of that shaft in suche wise, that they moued not the heade that was wythin the fleshe.