In 1442 Juliana Quick was arraigned upon a charge of high treason, for speaking contemptuously of the King, Henry VI. She refused to plead and it having been determined that her refusal was obstinate, rather than by an infirmity of nature, she was “pressed to death,” in a summary manner. The case of Margaret Clitherow, who was pressed to death at York, on Lady Day, March 25’, 1586, is most pathetic, as narrated by her spiritual adviser, the good John Mush, a friendly priest. Margaret’s husband was a Protestant, but she was accused of harboring Jesuit and Seminary priests, of hearing mass and other similar offenses and so she was committed to York Castle and later was regularly arraigned in the Common Hall. When plied with the usual question, “Culprit, how will you be tried?” instead of making the usual answer, “By God and my country,” the prisoner refused to make any other answer than that she would be tried “by God and your consciences.” After repeated entreaties by the court, and continued obstinacy of the prisoner, she was committed to prison and during the intercession of the court Parson Whigington, a puritan preacher, labored long and hard with her to convince her that she ought to forego her obduracy and enter her plea, but she refused to do so. On her second arraignment, when the court seemed about to condemn her to the _peine forte et dure_, Parson Whigington spoke in the interest of the prisoner, calling the court’s attention to the fact that “this woman’s case is touching life and death; you ought not, either by God’s law, or man’s, to judge her to die upon the slender witness of a boy.” Entreating her twice again to renounce her obdurate plea and to throw her case upon the country, on her refusal, the court ordered “the law to take its course”; she had her arms pinioned with a cord, by the Sheriff and as she was led through the crowd, the jeers and taunts, ever levelled at the unfortunate, in keeping with “man’s inhumanity to man,” gave the Sheriff the idea that he was to soon become a popular man, by the murder of this defenseless woman, so he proceeded to his work as if he were, in fact, a hero. She was urged to press the exemption of pregnancy, but refused, and the Lord Mayor of York, on his knees begged her to enter her formal plea to the charge against her and to submit to trial, as did her friend the good Parson Whigington. She stood firm, as if courting martyrdom, in an attempt to demonstrate the injustice of such a hideous punishment, and finally even the sympathetic Parson Whigington, after expressing his pity, left her and came again no more.