“That might serve. I don’t mind if you do.”
The law, in 1174, was much more dependent on the personal will of the sovereign than it is now. The lawyer looked a little doubtful when asked the question.
“Why,” said he, “if the prisoner had survived by apparent miracle, the chances are that he would be pardoned, as the probability would be that his innocence was thus proved by visitation of God. I once knew of such a case, where a woman was accused of murdering her husband; she held her mute of malice at her trial, and was adjudged to suffer peine forte et dure.”
When a prisoner refused to plead, he was held to be “mute of malice.” The peine forte et dure, which was the recognised punishment for this misdemeanour, was practically starvation to death. In earlier days it seems to have been pure starvation; but at a later period, the more refined torture was substituted of allowing the unhappy man on alternate days three mouthfuls of bread with no liquid, and three sips of water with no food, for a term which the sufferer could not be expected to survive. At a later time again, this was exchanged for heavyweights, under which he was pressed to death.
“Strange to say,” the lawyer went on, “the woman survived her sentence; and this being an undoubted miracle, she received pardon to the laud of God and the honour of His glorious mother, Dame Mary. (Such a case really happened at Nottingham in 1357.) But if you were supposing a case without any such miraculous intervention—”
“Oh, we weren’t thinking of miracles, any way,” answered Roscius.
“Then I should say the sentence would remain in force. There is of course a faint possibility that it might not be put in force; but if the man came to me for advice, I should not counsel him to build much upon that. Especially if he happened to have an enemy.”
“Well, it does not seem just, to my thinking, that a man should suffer a penalty twice over.”
“Just!” repeated the lawyer, with a laugh and a shrug of his shoulders. “Were you under the impression, Cousin Roscius, that law and justice were interchangeable terms?”
“I certainly was,” said Roscius.