name of the
Bloody Tower. So, too, I am afraid it is a true bill that Torture was in
the bad old days indiscriminately used towards both gentle and simple in
some gloomy underground places in this said Tower. I have heard of a
Sworn Tormentor and his assistants, whose fiendish task it was to
torture poor creatures' souls out of their miserable bodies, and of a
Chirurgeon who had to watch lest the agonies used upon 'em should be
too much for human endurance, and so, putting 'em out of their misery,
rob the headsman of his due, the scaffold of its prey, and the vile
mobile that congregate at public executions of their raree show. Of
"Scavenger's Daughters," Backs, Thumbscrews, iron boots, and wedges, and
other horrible engines of pain, I have heard many dismal tales told; but
all had long fallen into disuse before my time. The last persons
tortured within the Tower walls were, I believe, Colonel Faux (Guido)
and his confederates, for their most abominable Gunpowder Plot, which
was to put an end to the Protestant Religion and the illustrious House
of Stuart at one fell blow; but happily came to nothing, through the
prudence of my Lord Monteagle, and the well-nigh superhuman sagacity of
his Majesty King James the First. Guy and his accomplices they tortured
horribly; and did not even give 'em the honour of being beheaded on
Tower Hall,--they being sent away as common traitors to Old Palace Yard
(close to the scene of their desperately meditated but fortunately
abortive crime), and there half-hanged, cut down while yet warm,
disembowelled, their Hearts and Inwards taken out and burnt by Gregory
(that was hangman then, and that, as Gregory Brandon, had a coat-of-arms
given him as a gentleman, through a fraud practised upon Garter King),
and their mangled bodies--their heads severed--cut into quarters, well
coated with pitch, and stuck upon spikes over London Bridge, east
Portcullis, Ludgate, Temple Bar, and other places of public resort,
according to the then bloody-minded custom, and the statute in that case
made and provided. But after Colonel Guido Faux, Back, Thumbscrews,
boots, and wedges, and Scavenger's daughters fell into a decline, from
which, thank God, they have never, in this fair realm of England,
recovered. I question even if the Jesuit Garnett and his fellows, albeit
most barbarously executed, were tortured in prison; but it is certain
that when Felton killed the Duke of Bucks at Portsmouth, and was taken
red-ha