Note 258 — Chapter III

Butler, 178. In Coke's famous speech in opening the case of the Powder-plot, he says that not more than thirty priests and five receivers had been executed in the whole of the queen's reign, and for religion not any one. State Trials, ii. 179.

Dr. Lingard says of those who were executed between 1588, and the queen's death, "The butchery, with a few exceptions, was performed on the victim while he was in full possession of his senses." Vol. viii. p. 356. I should be glad to think that the few exceptions were the other way. Much would depend on the humanity of the sheriff, which one might hope to be stronger in an English gentleman than his zeal against popery. But I cannot help acknowledging that there is reason to believe the disgusting cruelties of the legal sentence to have been frequently inflicted. In an anonymous memorial among Lord Burleigh's papers, written about 1586, it is recommended that priests persisting in their treasonable opinion should be hanged, "and the manner of drawing and quartering forborne." Strype, iii. 620. This seems to imply that it had been usually practised on the living. And Lord Bacon, in his observations on a libel written against Lord Burleigh in 1592, does not deny the "bowellings" of catholics; but makes a sort of apology for it, as "less cruel than the wheel or forcipation, or even simple burning." Bacon's Works, vol. i. p. 534.