Her execution having been set for Friday, as if in commemoration of the day when the gentle Saviour took his departure upon the cross of Calvary, this innocent woman, on Lady Day, in 1586, also suffered martyrdom and died her death, that the horrible example of this hideous punishment could be made the more detestable. She refused the offer of friends to add sufficient weight to dispatch her immediately, but subjected herself to the torture, as deliberately as any martyr ever took the rack. She was led bare legged and bare-footed through the street, with a loose gown to hide her nakedness and distributed alms to the idle spectators as she passed along. The inhuman wretch who acted as Sheriff was named Fawcett and with no instinct of decency or chivalry, he bade her “put off her apparel,” whereupon she pleaded on her knees, that she might be allowed to die in her “smock” and that “for the honor of womankind, they would not see her naked.” Fawcett refused this becoming plea, but finally, on the entreaty of her friends, she was allowed to die in a long loose linen robe she had made for the occasion. She was placed flat upon the ground on her back, with a handkerchief on her face; a door was laid upon her body and her hands were bound by Fawcett to two posts, so that her arms and body made a perfect cross; even as the Holy One of Galilee was taunted by the mob who followed Him to Calvary, so this innocent soul was crossed by the taunts and gibes of the vulgar mob, until finally the weights were placed upon the door. A large, sharp stone had been placed under her back, and seven or eight hundred pound weight was placed on the door and this weight broke her ribs and caused them to burst through the flesh on her sides. She gave but a single cry and exclaimed: “Jesu, Jesu, Jesu, have mercy upon me.”[20] Let us hope that with the wail of this lost soul the weeping Christ made room for the misguided martyr, in a realm where such Satanic tyranny and intolerable cruelty are unknown. Strange, is it not, that the death knell of this hideous and cruel procedure did not follow immediately, as a result of the aroused and outraged public feeling, after the death of this good woman, in this cruel manner? But when it is considered that such Satanic cruelty could have lasted for sixteen hundred years after the crucifixion of the Saviour—and that all traces of his presence are not entirely eliminated from the earth, as yet—it is quite evident that the ideals of holiness and righteousness are slow to permeate the hearts of all the human family. Anthony Arrowsmith stood mute and refused to plead to the charge of felony, in 1598, and was accordingly pressed to death, in the usual manner.[21] Walter Calverly, of Calverly in Yorkshire, was arraigned at the York assizes in 1605, for murdering his two children and stabbing his wife, and on refusing to enter his plea he was pressed to death, in the castle, by a large iron weight, placed on his breast.[22]