Note 349 — Chapter III

In 1684, Carstairs was subjected to this torture. See his own account, in a letter printed in Wodrow's History of the Church of Scotland, vol. iv. pp. 96–100. He writes (p. 99): ‘After this communing, the king's smith was called in, to bring in a new instrument to torture by the thumbkins, that had never been used before. For whereas the former was only to screw on two pieces of iron above and below with finger and thumb, these were made to turn about the screw with the whole hand. And under this torture, I continued near an hour and a half.’ See also the case of Spence, in the same year, in Burnet's History of his own Time, vol. ii. p. 418. ‘Little screws of steel were made use of, that screwed the thumbs with so exquisite a torment, that he sunk under this; for Lord Perth told him, they would screw every joint of his whole body, one after another, till he took the oath.’ Laing (History of Scotland, vol. iv. p. 143) says, ‘the thumbikins; small screws of steel that compressed the thumb and the whole hand with an exquisite torture;’ an invention brought by Drummond and Dalziel from Russia. For other notices, see Fountainhall's Notes of Scottish Affairs from 1680 till 1701, Edinburgh, 4to, 1822, pp. 41, 97, 101; Bower's History of the University of Edinburgh, vol. ii. p. 30; Crookshank's History of the Church of Scotland, vol. ii. p. 192; A Cloud of Witnesses for the Royal Prerogatives of Jesus Christ, edit. Glasgow, 1779, p. 371; and Life of Walter Smith, p. 85, in the second volume of Walker's Biographia Presbyteriana, Edinburgh, 1827.