Holy Ghost;" others, "that she was possessed of a merry devil." When her husband was told of her condemnation, "he fared like a man out of his wits, and wept so vehemently that the blood gushed out of his nose in great quantity." Some of the Council suggested that she was with child. There seems to have been some foundation for the remark, at any rate, Clinch caught eagerly at the idea. "God defend she should die if she be with child," said he several times, when the sheriff asked for directions, and others of sterner mould were pressing for her despatch. Kind-hearted Whigington tried again and again to persuade her; and the Lord Mayor of York, who had married her mother ("a rich widow which died before this tragedy the summer last"), begged her on his knees, "with great show of sorrow and affection," to pronounce the words that had such strange efficacy. It was all in vain, so at last even Whigington abandoned his attempt, and "after he had pitied her case awhile, he departed and came no more." Her execution was fixed for Friday, and the fact was notified to her the night before. In the early morning of her last day on earth she quietly talked the matter over with another woman. "I will procure," the woman said, "some friends to lay weight on you, that you may be quickly despatched from your pain." She answered her that it must not be. At eight the sheriffs came for her, and "she went barefoot and barelegged, her gown loose about her." The short street was crowded with people to whom she dealt forth alms. At the appointed place, one of the sheriffs, "abhorring the cruel fact, stood weeping at the door;" but the other, whose name was Fawcett, was of harder stuff. He "commanded her to put off her apparel," whereupon she and the other woman "requested him, on their knees, that she might die in her smock, and that for the honour of womankind they would not see her naked." That could not be granted, but they were allowed to clothe her in a long habit of linen she had herself prepared for the occasion. She now lay down on the ground. On her face was a handkerchief. A door was laid upon her. "Her hands she joined towards her face"; but Fawcett said they must be bound, and bound they were to two posts, "so that her body and her arms made a perfect cross." They continued to vex the passing soul with vain words, but at last they put the weights on the door. In her intolerable anguish she gave but a single cry: "Jesu! Jesu! Jesu! have mercy upon me!" Then there was stillness; though the end was not yet. "She was in dying one quarter of an hour. A sharp stone as much as a man's fist put under her back, upon her was laid a quantity of seven or eight hundredweight to the least, which, breaking her ribs, caused them, to burst forth of the skin." It was now nine in the morning, but not till three of the afternoon were the braised remains taken from the press.