The Pillars of the Earth vocabulary

I was beginning to understand the instinct that made condemned prisoners seek shriving on the eve of execution.

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He had watched her weaken, he had seen her eyes close, he had heard her breathing stop, and he had let her die unshriven. [...] Ever since Friday night her soul had been in Hell, suffering the torments that she had described to him so graphically many times, with no proyers to relieve her!

Ken Follett. The Pillars of the Earth, p.796 (1990)

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Manfred, who hoped by the confessor’s means to come at the youth’s history, readily granted his request; and being convinced that Father Jerome was now in his interest, he ordered him to be called and shrive the prisoner.

Horace Walpole. The Castle of Otranto (1764)

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He was an easy man to give penance,

There as he wist to have a good pittance:

For unto a poor order for to give,

Is signe that a man is well y-shrive.