Note 52 — HISTORY

“A Declaration of the favourable Dealing of her Majesties Commissioners appointed for the Examination of certaine Traytours, and of Tortures unjustly reported to be done upon them for Matters of Religion, 1583.” Reprinted in “Harleian Miscellanies,” iii. 565-8, and in “Somers’s Tracts,” i. 209-12. In the latter the tract is ascribed to Burghley. I think that the only non-official defence of torture published in England is contained in a pamphlet published in 1656, under the Commonwealth, by Sir R. Wiseman (the title belongs to the Restoration). He writes: “So that to bring men to the rack in such cases [where there was only one witness] for trials sake is not to be censured for cruelty.… This rigour of the Law (if it be any) is recompensed with advantage to the whole Commonwealth; for by the terror hereof it is free from the machinations of wicked and lewd men.” (“The Law of Laws,” 1656.) It was written when Cromwell’s power and life were the object of numerous plots, but there is nothing in the book to connect this defence of torture with current affairs. The last recorded case of torture in England, and the last that a careful inquirer could discover, was on May 21, 1640, Jardine, David, “A Reading on the Use of Torture in England,” 1837, pp. 57, 58, 108, 109.