On September 16’ “just as the Autumn leaves were beginning to glorify the earth,” he was laid upon the ground, bound hand and foot; stones were piled upon him, till the tongue was pressed out of his mouth. The Sheriff with his cane, forced it in again, when he was dying.[33] And he was the first and last to die for this offense in New England. In his account of this trial, in the “New England Tragedies,” the gentle Longfellow, has made Cory thus explain to Richard Gardner, why he refused to plead: “I will not plead. If I deny, I am condemned already, In Courts where ghosts appear as witnesses, And swear men’s lives away—If I confess, Then I confess a lie, to buy a life, Which is not life, but only death in life. I will not bear false witness against any, Nor even against myself, whom I count least.” The Sheriff then calls him to his punishment and Cory answers him: “I come. Here is my body. Ye may torture it, But the immortal soul, ye cannot crush.” Gloyd wonders if “The old man will die and will not plead,” and while thus wondering, arrives too late to view the test of martyrdom. In Scene IV. of this tragedy, based upon this sad miscarriage of justice in this New England case, the field near the graveyard is presented, with Cory lying dead, with a great stone upon his breast. Hathorn and Mather are introduced to the spectators and make a vain attempt to explain and justify the deed and the former points to the dead body of Cory as a horrible example of “Those who deal in witchcraft and when questioned, Refuse to plead their guilt or innocence And stubbornly drag death upon themselves.” But Mather, not satisfied with the proceeding, is thus made to deliver himself: “In a land like this, Spangled with churches, Evangelical, Inwrapped in our salvation, must we seek, In mouldering statute-books of English courts, Some old, forgotten Law, to do such deeds? Those who lie buried in the Potter’s field, Will rise again, as surely as ourselves That sleep in honored graves, with epitaphs, And this poor man, whom we have made a victim, Hereafter will be counted as a martyr.”[34] The _peine forte et dure_, as an institution of the English courts, continued in effect, as a part of the criminal procedure of the kingdom, until the year 1772, when the statute 12 George III., c. 20, virtually abolished the punishment of pressing prisoners to death for standing mute, when called upon to plead. This statute declared that any person who should stand mute and refuse to plead, when arraigned for felony or piracy, should be convicted, and suffer judgment and sentence to be rendered against him, the same as if he had been regularly convicted, by verdict or confession.