Gunpowder, Peine forte et dure, and Medieval Penance

During much of October, newspapers and twitter feeds across the UK were abuzz with news of the miniseries Gunpowder’s graphic depiction of death by peine forte et dure (“strong and hard punishment”). Reactions ranged from the suitably horrified to utter revulsion, with The Sun gleefully reporting that queasy viewers were vomiting in response to watching an elderly woman crushed to death on screen.[1] Historical consultants for the television show, Hannah Greig and John Cooper, drew on the death of Saint Margaret Clitherow of York (executed 25 March 1586), described in copious detail by her confessor John Mush in his “True Report,” in order to capture appropriately the minutiae of the experience. Despite their impassioned plea that the show’s violence was necessary in order to highlight the gritty reality of early modern England’s brutal treatment of Catholics, many would agree that the directorial decision strains the limits of good taste.[2]  Of course, for those of us in North America, myself included, we will have to wait until December to draw our own conclusions, when the miniseries will be aired on HBO. At the very least, the UK’s reaction has added to the hype surrounding what appears to be a Game of Thrones-esque version of the Guy Fawkes’ story, starring John Snow (ahem, that is, Kit Harrington) as Robert Catesby. Catesby was the brains behind the plot to blow up Parliament, removing the already paranoid King James I and VI and his heir, the Houses of Lords and Commons all in one fell swoop, a plot that thankfully went horribly awry.

Gunpowder’s gory portrayal of peine forte et dure provides me with the perfect opportunity to write a blog post exploring the origins of the medieval practice, the subject of my current book project. As we will discover, its medieval origins were much less shocking, and surprisingly, given its use to persecute Catholics in the early modern era, also very Catholic.

Peine forte et dure began its life as prison forte et dure (“strong and hard prison”), materializing for the first time in a 1275 statute recommended for “notorious felons … of openly evil name” who refused to submit a plea before the court.[3] England stood out as the one kingdom across medieval Europe that insisted defendants consent to being put on trial. Consent came in the form of a plea: if the defendant refused to plead — described in the record as “standing mute,” although many defendants were in fact quite loud about their refusal to plead — the court was incapacitated. It could not move forward with the case. Prison forte et dure, then, was a coercive measure, emphatically not a punishment, intended to persuade a defendant of the value of consenting to trial by a jury of his peers. Unfortunately for the historian, the statute fails to offer any enlightenment about what prison forte et dure may have consisted. Prison experiences came in a variety of flavors. For the wealthy, prison provided quality writing time, with the benefits of a drawing room and manservants for meal service and dressing. Because prisons expected their inmates to pay for the amenities supplied (bedding, meals, light, as well as fees for entrance and exit), for the less fortunate, prison meant sleeping on cold, damp floors, food only when charitable donations were provided, and leg irons if payment of the removal fee (le sewet) was beyond reach.[4] It is not too hard to imagine that prison forte et dure leaned towards the latter. Prison morphed into peine forte et dure later in the thirteenth century, although it is not entirely clear that the change in vocabulary signaled an accompanying change in practice. Trial records use a different language altogether when referencing the practice. They habitually describe the defendant being sent to prison to submit to the punishment of the statute (ad penam statuti), the diet (ad dietam), or simply penance (ad penitentiam).

That “the diet” refers also to peine forte et dure is made explicit by the earliest account of the practice, from the late thirteenth-century legal treatise Britton. In a dialogue on forgers “who will not put themselves upon their acquittal,” Britton advises they be “put to their penance until they pray to do it.” He explains penance accordingly:

And let their penance be this, that [they] be bare footed, ungirt and bareheaded, in the worst place in the prison, upon the bare ground continually night and day, that they eat only bread made of barley or bran, and that they drink not the day they eat; nor eat the day they drink, nor drink anything but water, and that they be put in irons.