During the reign of Edward I., in the year 1275, in the proceedings of the Parliament of Westminster, the first mention is made of this punishment for standing mute through obstinacy or wilfullness. It was enacted by this statute that felons refusing to plead through obstinacy should be confined in the prison, _forte et dure_. They were to go “barefooted and bareheaded, in their coat only, in prison, upon the bare ground continually, night and day, fastened down with irons,” only eating and drinking on alternate days, until the plea was entered.[6] But the courts could not wait for the obstinate prisoners to voluntarily renounce their obduracy and succumb to such mild treatment and the accumulation of cases where the prisoner stood mute and the growing popularity of this offense, seemed to threaten the speedy dispatch of the criminal business of the period. Starvation was then added to the punishment of confinement, but this did not accomplish the desired end, of forcing these obdurate offenders to consent to be tried, according to the custom then obtaining. As before seen, the first statute, touching upon this punishment, passed during the reign of Edward I., applied only to “notorious felons,” who were “openly of evil name,” for these alone, refusing to plead before the justices at the King’s suit, were to have the “strong and hard punishment,” that the act called for, and by express statutory exception prisoners “taken upon light suspicion” were not to suffer the punishment.[7] Some writers have taken the position that the punishment, _peine forte et dure_ owed its existence alone to this statute, but Sir Edward Coke states that the punishment was assessed at common law, before the enactment of this statute,[8] and the statute in merely providing for an imprisonment _forte et dure_, was declaratory of an existing punishment assessed by the common law, but not sufficiently described, or limited. This view is shared by Reeves, who states that this method of treating felons who stood mute was introduced sometime between the fifth year of the reign of King Henry III. or perhaps from the time of Bracton, and the third year of King Edward I. and the punishment did not owe its existence to this statute.[9]