Chapter XXI: Appendix: K. (p. 173)

_The Use of Torture._

THERE can be no doubt that torture was freely employed to extract evidence from the conspirators and others who fell into the hands of the government.

The Earl of Salisbury, in his letter to Favat, of December 4th, 1605, clearly intimates that this was the case, when he complains "most of the prisoners have wilfully forsworn that the priests knew anything in particular, and obstinately refuse to be accusers of them, _yea, what torture soever they be put to_."

About the middle of November, Lord Dunfermline wrote to Salisbury [_Dom. James I._ xvi. 81] recommending that the prisoners should be confined apart and in darkness, that they should be examined by torchlight, and that the tortures should be slow and at intervals, as being thus most effectual.

There is every reason to believe that the Jesuit lay-brother, Nicholas Owen, _alias_ Littlejohn, actually died upon the rack. [_Vide_ Father Gerard's _Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot_, p. 189.]

Finally we have the king's instructions as to Faukes [_Gunpowder Plot Book_, No. 17]. "The gentler tortours are to be first usid unto him, _et sic per gradus ad ima tenditur_,[458] and so God speede your goode worke."[459] Guy's signature of November 9th is sufficient evidence that it was none of the "gentler tortours" which he had endured.

In the violently Protestant account of the execution of the traitors,[460] we read: "Last of all came the great Devil of all Faukes, who should have put fire to the powder. His body being weak with torture and sickness, he was scarce able to go up the ladder, but with much ado, by the help of the hangman, went high enough to brake his neck with the fall."