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and refused to make any other answer. It was sheer obstinacy: she was a married woman, and she could have lost nothing by going to trial. But she coveted martyrdom, which everybody concerned appears, at first at any rate, to have been anxious to deny her. It was plainly intimated that if she would let herself be tried she would escape:
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I think the country, said Clinch, the senior judge,
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The proceedings were adjourned, and the same night
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Parson Whigington, a Puritan preacher, came and argued with her, apparently in the hope of persuading her to plead; but he failed to change her purpose; the next day she was brought back to the Hall. Something of a wrangle ensued between herself and Clinch, and in the end the latter seemed on the point of pronouncing sentence. Then Whigington stood up and began to speak;
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but he would not be put off, and
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He made a passionate appeal to the Court (
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Did not perhaps God open the mouth of Balaam's ass? is the somewhat ungracious comment of Father Mush.)
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My lord, said he,
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with much more to the same effect. Clinch was at his wits' end, and went so far as to entreat the prisoner to plead in the proper form:
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Good woman, I pray you put yourself to the country. There is no evidence but a boy against you, and whatsoever they (the jury) do, yet we may show mercy afterwards. She was moved not a whit; and then Rhodes, the other judge, broke in:
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Why stand we all day about this naughty, wilful woman? Yet once again she was entreated, but as vainly as before; it was evident that the law must take its course; and
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She was carried back to prison through the crowd, of whom some said,
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She received comfort from the Holy Ghost; others,
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When her husband was told of her condemnation,
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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.
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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 (
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), begged her on his knees,
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to pronounce the words that had such strange efficacy. It was all in vain, so at last even Whigington abandoned his attempt, and
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I will procure, the woman said,
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She answered her that it must not be. At eight the sheriffs came for her, and
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The short street was crowded with people to whom she dealt forth alms. At the appointed place, one of the sheriffs,
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but the other, whose name was Fawcett, was of harder stuff. He
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whereupon she and the other woman
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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.
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Her hands she joined towards her face ; but Fawcett said they must be bound, and bound they were to two posts,
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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:
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Jesu! Jesu! Jesu! have mercy upon me! Then there was stillness; though the end was not yet.
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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.