medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
> Margaret Cltherow:
>
> I'm pretty sure that being pressed to death was the sentence not for
someone
> who had pleaded guilty or not and been found guilty but for someone who
> refused to plead - and so could not, strictly speaking, be 'found guilty'.
> By refusing to plead I think you ensured that your family inherited your
> goods, whereas if you had properly been found guilty they were
confiscated.
> So she went to heaven knowing she had saved the family fortune as well.
Not only that, no plea meant no trial at all. She was also saving her
children, her step-children and her neighbour's children from being haled
into the witness box and being bullied into giving the evidence to condemn
her. (There was no minimum age for giving evidence and no protection for
minors) Also this evidence would have fingered other Catholics in York. I
also believe that by keeping silent she sabotaged the entire anti-Catholic
clampdown and gained the moral high ground in popular opinion - even among
the extreme Protestants in the neighbourhood. This was of course not only at
the price of her own life but the life of her unborn - and unbaptised -
child. Has she pleaded (guilty or not guilty would have made no odds) and
been found guilty then her execution would have been deferred until after
the child's birth. It was an even harder choice that it looked at first.
BMC
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