ng except a cloth round his middle; and that
as many weights shall be laid upon him as he can bear, _and more_; and
that he shall have no more sustenance but of the worst bread and water,
and that he shall not eat the same day on which he drinks, nor drink the
same day on which he eats; and he shall so continue till he die." At a
later period, the form of sentence was altered to the following: "That
the prisoner shall be remanded to the place from whence he came, and put
in some low, dark room; that he shall lie without any litter or anything
under him, and that one arm shall be drawn to one quarter of the room
with a cord, and the other to another, and that his feet shall be used
in the same manner, and that as many weights shall be laid on him as he
can bear, and more. That he shall have three morsels of barley bread a
day, and that he shall have the water next the prison, so that it be not
current, and that he shall not eat," etc. The object of this protracted
punishment was to allow the victim, at almost every stage of the
torture, to plead, and thus allow the law to take its ordinary course.
The object of the persons who have refused to plead was, that any person
who died under the _Peine forte et dure_ could transmit his estates to
his children, or will them as he desired; whereas, if he were found
guilty, they would be forfeited to the Crown. In connection with this,
it may be mentioned that when the practice of pressing to death had
become nearly extinct, prisoners who declined to plead were tortured, in
order to compel them to do so, by twisting and screwing their thumbs
with whipcord.

In 1721, a woman named Mary Andrews was subjected to this punishment.
After bearing with fortitude the first three whipcords, which broke from
the violence of the twisting, she submitted to plead at the fourth.

Baron Carter, at the Cambridge Assizes, in 1741, ordered a prisoner, who
refused to plead, to have his thumbs twisted with cords, and when that
was without avail, inflicted the higher penalty of pressing. Baron
Thompson, about the same time, at the Sussex Assizes, treated a prisoner
in a precisely similar manner.

A like method was pursued in 1721, with Nathaniel Hawes, a prisoner who
refused to plead; when the cord proved inefficacious, a weight of 250
pounds was laid upon him, after which he decided to plead. The same year
seems prolific of cases of this character, there being particulars of an
instance in the _Notti