It would be impossible, in any reasonable space, to recount all the most interesting cases where this inhuman punishment was inflicted, during the last half of the sixteenth and the early part of the seventeenth centuries, as a great many prisoners underwent this torture about this time. For the nine years between 1609 and 1618, for instance, there were thirty-two prisoners subjected to this punishment and among this number three were women, in Middlesex county alone. In the record of these cases the Clerk wrote the words: “_Mortuus en pen fort et dur_,” which furnished the sad epitaph for each of the beknighted sufferers who underwent this fearful punishment. The records show that many of these poor prisoners were totally destitute and suffered this punishment either through stupidity of the prisoner or of his counsel, or through obstinacy or indifference to his personal suffering and death.[23] In 1615 Sir Richard Weston, a prisoner of some note, was arraigned for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. He stood mute and obstinately refused to plead to the indictment, after being solemnly warned by the judges of the terrible consequences of his persisting in his defiance of the laws of his country. The proceedings were adjourned to give him time for reflection, but on his continued obstinacy, he was adjudged to suffer the _peine forte et dure_.[24] Major Strangeways was pressed to death, at Newgate, in 1657, for obstinately refusing to plead to an indictment charging him with the murder of his brother-in-law, Mr. Fussell. At the Coroner’s inquest he was made to take the corpse by the hands and touch the wounds, upon the supposition that if he had committed the murder, the wounds would bleed afresh. Although he was innocent, according to this test, it availed him nothing, however, and he was placed upon trial at the Old Bailey, where so many tragedies were enacted, in the olden time, in the name of the law, and refusing to plead and standing mute, in order to prevent the attainder of his blood and the forfeiture of his estate, resulting from his conviction, so certain to follow his trial, he was condemned to the _peine forte et dure_. The press was placed upon him angle-wise and although of sufficient weight to cause him much pain, it was not heavy enough to kill him, so the spectators, through pity, no doubt, for the sufferer, added the weight of their bodies to that of the press and soon he was out of his suffering and in keeping with the custom of the period his dead body was displayed to the vulgar gaze,[25] that the morbidly curious could advertise the details of the tragedy and thus deter other offenders from a similar offense.