PEINE FORTE ET DURE (

See also:

• FRENCH
• FRENCH, DANIEL CHESTER (1850– )
• FRENCH, NICHOLAS (1604-1678)

French for " hard and severe

See also:

• PUNISHMENT (from Lat. punire, to punish, from poena, punishment, Gr. 7rocvil)

punishment ")  , the term for a barbarous torture inflicted on those who, arraigned of felony, refused to plead and stood silent, orchallenged more than twenty jurors, which was deemed a contumacy equivalent to a refusal to plead . By early English law a prisoner, before he could be tried, must plead " guilty " or " not guilty." Before the 13th century it was usual to imprison and starve till submission, but in Henry IV.'s reign the peine was employed . The prisoner was stretched on his back, and stone or iron weights were placed on him till he either submitted or was pressed to death . Pressing to death was abolished in 1772; " standing mute" on an arraignment of felony being then made equivalent to conviction . By an act of 1828 a plea of " not guilty " was to be entered against any prisoner refusing to plead, and that is the rule to-day . An alternative to the peine was the tying of the thumbs tightly together with whip-cord until pain forced the prisoner to speak . This was said to be a common practice at the Old Bailey up to the 19th century . Among recorded instances of the infliction of the peine are: Juliana Quick (1442) for high treason in speaking derisively of Henry VI.; Margaret Clitherow, " the martyr of York " (1586); Walter Calverly, of Calverly, Yorks, for the murder of his children (16o5) ; and Major Strangways at Newgate, charged with murder of his brother-in-law (1657) . In this last case it is said that upon the weights being placed in position several cavalier friends of Strang-ways sprang on his body and put him out of his pain . In 1721 one Nathaniel Hawes lay under a weight of 25o lb for seven minutes, finally submitting . The peine was last employed in 1741 at Cambridge assizes, when a prisoner was so put to death ; the penalty of thumb-tying having first been tried . In 1692 at Salem, Massachusetts, Giles Corey, accused of witchcraft, refusing to plead, was pressed to death .

This is believed to be the only instance of the infliction of the penalty in

America .