Today’s Weighty Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Peine forte et dure (French for “hard and forceful punishment”) was a method of torture formerly used in the common law legal system, in which a defendant who refused to plead (“stood mute”) would be subjected to having heavier and heavier stones placed upon his or her chest until a plea was entered, or he/she died.
In March 1586 Margaret Clitheroe, or Clitherow, the ‘Martyr of York’, was accused of harboring and helping a Roman Catholic priest. At her trial she knew that the jury would find her guilty in order to please the judge, and she wanted to spare their consciences. Accordingly she remained mute, and the Judgment of Penance was announced. Lingard’s History of England conjures up the horrific spectacle:
After she had prayed, Fawcett (one of the sheriffs) commanded them to put off her apparel, when she, with four women, requested him on their knees that, for the honour of womanhood, this might be dispensed with, but they would not grant it. Then she requested that the women might unparrel her, and that they would turn their faces from her during that time. The women took off her clothes and put on her long linen habit. Then very quietly she laid her down upon the ground, her face covered with a handkerchief, and most part of her body with the habit. The dore was laied upon her, her hands she joined upon her face.
Then the sheriff said ‘Naie ye must have your hands bound’. Then two sergeants parted her hands and bound them to two posts in the same manner as the feet had previously been fixed. After this they laied weight upon her, which, when she first felt, she said ‘Jesu, Jesu, Jesu, have mercye upon mee’ which were the last words she was heard to speake.
She was in dying about one quarter of an hower. A sharp stone as big as a man’s fist had been put under her back. Upon her was laied to the quantity of seven or eight hundredweight (nearly 900 pounds), which breaking her ribs, caused them to burst forth of the skinne.
Culled from: Rack, Rope and Red-Hot Pincers