per

These directions delivered, and, alas! too accessary to me in the formance, my room was made a dark-drawn dungeon, my belly the anatomy of merciless hunger, my comfortless hearing the receptacle of sounding bells, my eyes wanting light, a loathsome languishing in despair, and my ground lying body, the woeful mirror of misfortunes, every hour wishing another's coming, every day the night, and every night the morning.

And now, being every second or third day attended with the twinkling of an eye, and my sustenance agreeable to my attendance, my body grew exceeding debile and infirm, insomuch that the governor (after his answers received from Madrid) made haste to put in execution his bloody and merciless purpose before Christmas holydays, lest the expiring of the twelfth day I should be utterly famished, and unable to undergo my trial, without present perishing, yet unknown to me, save only in this knowledge, that I was confined to die a fearful and unacquainted death; for it is a current custom with the Spaniard, that if a stranger be apprehended upon any suspicion, he is never brought to open trial and common jail, but clapped up in a dungeon, and there tortured, imprisoned, or starved to death. Such meritorious deeds accompany these only titular Christians.

In end, by God's permission, the scourge of my fiery trial approaching; upon the forty-seventh day after my first imprisonment, and five days before Christmas, about two of clock in the morning I heard the noise of a coach in the fore street, marvelling much what it might

mean.

Within a pretty while I heard the locks of my prison door in opening; whereupon, bequeathing my soul to God, I humbly implored his gracious mercy and pardon for my sins; for neither in the former night, nor this, could I get any sleep, such was the force of gnawing hunger, and the portending heaviness of my presaging soul.

Meanwhile the former nine sergeants, accompanied with the scrivan, entered the room without word speaking, and carrying me thence, with irons and all, on their arms through the house to the street, they laid me on my back in the coach, where two of them sat up beside me, the rest, using great silence, went softly along by the coach-side.

Then Baptista, the coachman, an Indian negro, driving out at the sea gate, the way of the shore side, I was brought westward almost a league from the town, to a vine-press house, standing alone amongst

vineyards, where they inclosed me in a room till daylight, for hither was the rack brought the night before, and privily placed in the end of a trance.

And all this secresy was used, that neither English, French, or Flemings, should see or get any knowledge of my trial, my grievous tortures, and dreadful dispatch, because of their treacherous and cruel proceedings.

At the break of day, the governor Don Francisco, and the alcade, came forth in another coach; where when arrived, and I invited to their presence, I pleaded for a trench-man, being against their law to accuse or condemn a stranger without a sufficient interpreter. The which they absolutely refused, neither would they suffer or grant me an appellation to Madrid.

And now, after long and new examinations from morning to dark night, they finding my first and second confession so run in one, that the governor swore I had learned the art of memory; saying, further, is it possible he can in such distress, and so long a time, observe so strictly, in every manner, the points of his first confession, and I so often shifting him to and fro?

Well, the governor's interrogation and my confession being mutually subscribed, he and Don Francisco besought me earnestly to acknowledge and confess my guiltiness in time; if not, he would deliver me in the alcade's hands there present; saying, moreover, thou art as yet in my power, and I may spare or pardon thee, providing thou wilt confess thyself a spy and a traitor against our nation.

But, finding me stand fast to the mark of my spotless innocency, he, invective, and malicious he, after many tremendous threatenings, commanded the scrivan to draw up a warrant for the chief justice, and, done, he set his hand to it, and taking me by the hand, delivered me and the warrant in the alcade major's hands to cause me to be tortured, broken, and cruelly tormented.

Whence, being carried along on the sergeant's arms, to the end of a trance, or stone gallery, where the pottaro, or rack, was placed, the encarnador, or tormentor, began to disburden me of my irons, which being very hard inbolted, he could not ramverse the wedges for a long time; whereat the chief justice being offended, the malicious villain, with the hammer which he had in his hand, stroke away above an inch of my left heel with the bolt. Whereupon I grievously groaning,

being exceeding faint, and without my three ounces of bread, and a little water for three days together, the alcade said, O traitor, all this is nothing but the earnest of a greater bargain you have in hand. Now the irons being dissolved, and my torments approaching, I fell prostrate on my knees crying to the heavens:

O great and gracious God, it is truly known to thy all-seeing eye that I am innocent of these false and fearful accusations, and since, therefore, it is thy good will and pleasure that I must suffer now by the scelerate hands of merciless men, Lord, furnish me with courage, strength, and patience, least, by an impatient mind, and feeble spirit, I become my own murderer, in confessing myself guilty of death, to shun present punishment. And according to the multitude of thy mercies, O Lord, be merciful to my sinful soul, and that for Jesus thy Son and my Redeemer his sake.'

After this, the alcade and scrivan being both chair-set, the one to examining, the other to write down my confession and tortures, I was by the executioner stripped to the skin, brought to the rack, and then mounted by him on the top of it; where eftsoons I was hung by the bare shoulders with two small cords which went under both my arms, running on two rings of iron that were fixed in the wall above my head.

Thus being hoised to the appointed height, the tormentor descended below, and drawing down my legs through the two sides of the three planked rack, he tied a cord about each of my ancles, and then ascending upon the rack, he drew the cords upward, and bending forward with main force my two knees against the two planks; the sinews of my hams burst asunder, and the lids of my knees being crushed, and the cords made fast, I hung so demained for a large hour.

At last, the encarnador informing the governor that I had the mark of Jerusalem on my right arm, joined with the name and crown of King James, and done upon the holy grave, the corridigor came out of his adjoining stance, and gave direction to tear asunder the name and crown (as he said) of that heretic king, an arch enemy to the holy Catholic church: then the tormentor, laying the right arm above the left, and the crown upmost, did cast a cord over both arms seven distant times; and then lying down upon his back, and setting both his feet on my hollow pinched belly, he charged and drew violently, with his hands, making my womb support the force of his feet till the

VOL. II.

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seven several cords combined in one place of my arm (and cutting the crown, sinews and flesh to the bare bones) did pull in my fingers close to the palm of my hands; the left hand of which is lame so still, and will be for ever.

Now mine eyes began to startle, my mouth to foam and froth, and my eyes to chatter like to the doubling of drummer's sticks. O strange inhumanity of men, monster manglers! I surpassing the limits of their national law; three score tortures being the trial of treason, which I had and was to endure; yet thus to inflict a seven-fold surplusage of more intolerable cruelties; and, notwithstanding of my shivering lips in this fiery passion, my vehement groaning, and blood springing fonts, from arms, broken sinews, hams, and knees: yea, and my depending weight on flesh-cutting cords, yet they stroke me on the face with cudgels to abate and cease the thundering noise of my wrestling voice.

At last, being loosed from these pinnacles of pain, I was hand-fast set on the floor, with this their incessant imploration: confess, confess, confess in time, for thine inevitable torments ensue; when finding nothing from me but still innocent, O I am innocent, O Jesus! the Lamb of God have mercy upon me, and strengthen me with patience to undergo this barbarous murder.

Then by command of the justice was my trembling body laid above and along upon the face of the rack, with my head downward, inclosed within a circled hole; my belly upmost, and my heels upward toward the top of the rack, my legs and arms being drawn asunder, were fastened with pins and cords to both sides of the outward planks, for now was I to receive my main torments.

Now what a pottaro, or rack, is (for it stood by the wall of timber), the upmost end whereof is larger than a full stride, the lower end being narrow, and the three planks joining together are made conformable to man's shoulders; in the downmost end of the middle plank there was a hole wherein my head was laid; in length it is longer than a man, being interlaced with small cords from plank to plank which divided my supported thighs from the middle plank, through the sides of which extensive planks there were three distant holes in every one of them, the use whereof you shall presently hear.

Now the alcade giving commission, the executioner laid first a cord over the calf of my leg, then another on the middle of my thigh, and the

third cord over the great of my arm, which was severally done on both sides of my body, receiving the ends of the cords from these six several places through the holes made in the outward planks, which were fastened to pins, and the pins made fast with a device, for he was to charge on the outside of the planks with as many pins as there were holes and cords, the cords being first laid next to my skin, and on every one of these six parts of my body I was to receive seven several tortures, each torture consisting of three winding throes of every pin, which amounted to twenty-one throes in every one of these five parts.

Then the tormentor having charged the first passage above my body (making fast by a device each torture as they were multiplied) he went to an earthern jar standing full of water a little beneath my head, from whence carrying a pot full of water, in the bottom whereof there was an incised hole, which being stopped by his thumb, till it came to my mouth, he did outpour it in my belly, the measure being a Spanish sombre, which is an English pottle: the first and second services I gladly received, such was the scorching drought of my tormenting pain, and likewise I had drunk none for three days before.

But afterward, at the third charge, perceiving these measures of water to be inflicted upon me as tortures, oh, strangling tortures! I closed my lips again-standing that eager credulity.

Whereat the alcalde, enraged, set my teeth asunder with a pair of iron cages, detaining me there, at every several turn, both mainly and manually, whereupon my hunger-charged belly waxing great, grew drum-like imbolstered, for it being a suffocating pain, in regard of my head hanging downward, and the water re-ingorging itself, in my throat, with a struggling force, it strangled and swallowed up my breath from yowling and groaning.

And now to prevent my renewing grief, (for presently my heart faileth and forsaketh me,) I will only briefly avouch, that between each one of these seven circular charges I was aye re-examined, each examination continuing half an hour, each half hour a hell of infernal. pain; and between each torment, a long distance of life-quelling time.

Thus lay I five hours upon the rack, between four o'clock afternoon, and ten o'clock at night, having had inflicted upon me sixty several torments; nevertheless, they continued me a large half hour (after all my torments) at the full bending, where my body being all begored with blood, and cut through in every part, to the crushed and bruised