The prisoners were all favorites with the crowd, who strewed flowers and nose-gays around them, at the place of execution. The sheriff commenced with Burton, who was an especial favorite with the by-standers and when he removed each ear the people wept and groaned and roared as if each one in the assembly had his own ears removed. Bastwick loaned his own knife to the officer and made use of his professional information to advise him just how to remove his ears, so as to injure him the least and asked him to lop them close, that it might not be necessary for him “to come there again.” Prynne had had his ears roughly cropped off three years before and when the officer again attempted to remove what remained, it gave him great pain, but the stern old Puritan endured it without a groan, such was the religious zeal with which they were all three sustained in this act of martyrdom. After the fearful ordeal was completed they were all three returned by the officer to the prison,[95] and thus ended another fearful example of misguided authority and religious bigotry, in thus pillorying and torturing three patriotic citizens who violated no law and who had committed no other offense than to speak plainly and then dared to refuse to bow the knee to an authority they did not recognize. _Branding with a hot iron_, was a punishment inflicted by the Persians, upon the class of criminals who were deported, in order that they could subsequently be identified and to furnish an example to others of the fact that they had paid the penalty of the law as a result of their misdeed.[96] In Biblical days, when burning was inflicted as a punishment for adultery or fornication, branding on the forehead was also used, as a mark of shame.[97] Slaves were sometimes branded on the hand, by the ancient Jews,[98] much as horses are branded by the owner, in the western country, to identify the animal, but this was not in accordance with the Mosaic law, for such disfigurement was forbidden by the code of the old Israelites.[99]