Note 1832 — Chapter IX · ENGLAND AND THE NORTHERN RACES.
Reading edition
Jardine, pp. 53, 57-8.
It is rather remarkable to find torture legalized at this period, even in qualified form of the question définitive in the Colony of Massachusetts. The Body of Liberties, enacted in 1641, declares:—
“45. No man shall be forced by Torture to confesse any crime against himselfe nor any other, unlesse it be in some Capitall case where he is first fully convicted by cleare and suffitient evidence to be guilty, After which if the case be of that nature, That it is very apparent there be other conspiritours or confederates with him, Then he may be tortured, yet not with such Tortures as be Barbarous and inhumane.”—Whitmore’s Colonial Laws of Massachusetts, Boston, 1889 (N. Y. Nation, No. 1268, p. 318).
From this it would appear safe to conclude that this is a limitation on a pre-existing, more general use of torture.