aid that he was selected on account of his being thus
enabled to dabble in poisons. The charge against him is very
indistinct. He was charged that he, 'in the Tower of London, in the
parish of Allhallows Barking, did obtain and get into his hand certain
poison of green and yellow colour, called rosalgar--knowing the same
to be deadly poison--and the same did maliciously and feloniously
mingle and compound in a kind of broth poured out into a certain
dish.' Weston long refused to plead to the indictment. Of old, a
person could not be put on trial unless he pleaded not guilty, and
demanded a trial. The law, however, provided for those who were
obstinate a more dreadful death than would be inflicted on the
scaffold. To frighten him into compliance, the court gave him a
description of it, telling him that he was 'to be extended, and then
to have weights laid upon him no more than he was able to bear, which
were by little and little to be increased; secondly, that he was to be
exposed in an open place near to the prison, in the open air, being
naked; and lastly, that he was to be preserved with the coarsest bread
that could be got, and water out of the next sink or puddle.' He was
told that 'oftentimes men lived in that extremity eight or nine days.'
People have sometimes endured the _peine forte et dure_, as it was
called, because, unless they pleaded and were convicted, their estates
were not forfeited; and they endured the death of protracted torture
for the sake of their families. Weston's object was supposed to be to
prevent a trial, the evidence in which would expose his great patrons
the Earl and Countess of Somerset. The motive was not, however, strong
enough to make him stand to his purpose. He pleaded to the indictment,
was found guilty, and executed at Tyburn.

The next person brought up was of a more interesting character--Anne
Turner, the widow of a physician. It is stated in the Report, that
when she appeared at the bar, the chief-justice Coke said to her:
'that women must be covered in the church, but not when they are
arraigned, and so caused her to put off her hat; which done, she
covered her hair with her handkerchief, being before dressed in her
hair with her handkerchief over it.' Although Mother Turner's pursuits
were of the questionable kind generally attributed to old hags--she
dealt in philters, soothsaying, and poisoning--she must have been a
young and beautiful woman. In some of the letters which we