Note 16 — Front matter

"The press" was administered to prisoners who refused to plead in answer to a charge. The sentence was as follows: "That you be taken back to the prison whence you came, to a low dungeon, into which no light can enter; that you be laid on your back on the bare floor with a cloth round your loins, but elsewhere naked; that there be set upon your body a weight of iron as great as you can bear—and greater; that you have no substance, save on the first day three morsels of the coarsest bread, on the second day three draughts of stagnant water from the pool nearest to the prison door, on the third day again three morsels of bread as before, and such bread and such water alternately from day to day until you die." This barbarous law remained in force until 1772.