PEINE FORTE ET DURE (French for " hard and severe punishment ")

This article appears in Volume V21, Page 58 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: PAS-PER

PEINE FORTE ET DURE (French for " hard and severe 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

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

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

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

QUICK

(1442) for high treason in speaking derisively of Henry VI.; Margaret Clitherow, " the

martyr

MARTYR (Gr. pimp or ľaprvs)

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.

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