There is but one rational way to discuss an institution of this sort. Let us trace out its history, for thus only can we explain how it came to have an existence at all. For the prisoner himself there was usually a very strong reason why _he_ should stand mute. If he were convicted of felony his goods were forfeited; while in case of capital felony, the result of attainder was corruption of blood so that he could neither inherit nor transmit landed property. Often he must have known that conviction was certain. Had he fondness enough for his heirs--children or other--to make him choose this hideous torture instead of milder methods whereby the law despatched the ordinary convict from this world? Well, very many underwent the punishment. Between 1609-1618 the number was thirty-two (three of them women) in rural Middlesex alone. "_Mortuus en pen' fort' et dur'_," so the clerk wrote for epitaph against each name, and something still stranger than the penalty itself is revealed to us by an examination of the original records. Many of the culprits were evidently totally destitute, and these underwent the _peine forte et dure_ from stupidity, obstinacy, or sheer indifference to mortal suffering and death. The custom of pressing did not obtain its full development at once, and there is some difficulty as to how it began. A plausible explanation is given in Pike's "History of Crime," and is supported by the authority of the late Mr Justice Stephen. At one time a man charged with a serious offence was tried by ordeal; but by paying money to the king, it was possible to get the exceptional privilege of a trial by jury. Thus, when the accused was asked how he would be tried, his answer originally ran, "by God" (equal to by ordeal), or "by my country" (equal to by jury), since to put yourself on the country meant to submit yourself to this last. But trial by ordeal was abolished about 1215, and the alternative was a privilege to be claimed, not a necessity to be endured. Offenders soon discovered that by standing mute and declining to claim this privilege, they put the Court in a difficulty. The ideas of those distant days were simple exceedingly, and a legal form had strange force and efficacy. To put a prisoner before a jury without his consent was not to be thought of; but how to get his consent? At first the knot was rather cut than loosened. Thus, in some cases, the accused were put to death right off for not consenting to be tried "according to the law and custom of the realm." Then this was held too severe, and under Edward I., in the proceedings of the Parliament of Westminster, occurs the earliest definite mention of the punishment. It was enacted that notorious felons refusing to plead should be confined in the _prison forte et dure_. Here they went "barefooted and bareheaded, in their coat only in prison, upon the bare ground continually night and day, fastened down with irons," and only