Five of them were admitted king’s evidence, the rest were put to their plea. Now, in the old law, the prisoner’s plea of guilty or not guilty was necessary before the trial could proceed. Nowadays if the accused refuses to make either plea, but stands mute, as the expression is, the judge directs that a plea of not guilty be entered for him and the proceedings go on. This simple means of meeting the difficulty did not occur to our forefathers, so they decreed that if the prisoner stood mute he was to be put under the press until he either pled or died. In the latter event, he was not considered to have been tried, and not having been tried, any estate which he might leave could not be forfeited. History records some cases where extraordinary persons have endured this dreadful torment to the end, and so saved their property to their heirs, who, one would suppose, could certainly never be sufficiently grateful. John Gow now chose to take the ordeal rather than be convicted as a felon, for he had relatives whom he wished to inherit his ill-earned gains rather than King George. The preparations for his pressing daunted him. The process was that the person sentenced to be pressed was stretched, or spread-eagled, upon his back, and a succession of weights was gradually lowered upon his chest until he either squeaked his plea or perished. The Press Yard of old Newgate jail indicates the place of such pressings. Gow’s nerve gave way and he begged to be allowed to plead, which was clemently allowed him. He and six others--presumably including old Paterson--were convicted and received sentence of death, but the rest, showing that their actions had been under a sort of compulsion, were acquitted. “They suffered,” says the old historian, “at Execution-Dock, August 11, 1729. Gow’s friends, anxious to put him out of pain, pulled his legs so forcibly that the rope broke, and he fell, on which he was again taken up to the gibbet, and when he was dead, was hung in chains on the banks of the Thames.” As the ordinary, or prison chaplain, rode back to Newgate in the empty cart from Execution Dock, a line from the ninety-second psalm persisted in his mind. “All the workers of wickedness shall be destroyed.” Transcriber’s Notes Perceived typographical errors have been silently corrected. Colloquial spelling in dialog has been retained as in the original. Inconsistencies in hyphenation and compound words have been retained as printed.