Note 348 — Chapter III

Shields (A Hind let loose, p. 186) describes the boots, as ‘a cruel engine of iron, whereby, with wedges, the leg is tortured, until the marrow come out of the bone.’ Compare Naphtali, or the Wrestlings of the Church of Scotland, 1667, p. 268: ‘the extraordinary compression both of flesh, sinews, and bones, by the force of timber wedges and hammer.’