nded, the Courtiers, Parasites, and other cruel persons that were
about the King, would fain have had him racked; but the public,--which
by this time had begun to inquire pretty sharply about Things of
State,--cried out that Felton should not be tormented (their not loving
the Duke of Bucks too much may have been one reason for their wishing
some degree of leniency to be shown to the assassin), and the opinion of
the Judges being taken, those learned Persons, in full court of King's
Bench assembled, decided that Torture was contrary to the Law of
England, and could not legally be used upon any of the King's subjects
howsoever guilty he might have been.

But I confess that when I first took up service as a Tower Warder, and
gazed upon those horrible implements of Man's cruelty and
hard-heartedness collected in the Armoury, I imagined with dismay that,
all rusty as they had grown, there might be occasions for them to be
used upon the persons of unfortunate captives. For I had lived much
abroad, and knew what devilish freaks were often indulged in by
arbitrary and unrestrained power. But my comrades soon put my mind at
ease, and pointed out to me that few, very few, of these instruments of
Anguish were of English use or origin at all; but that the great
majority of these wicked things were from among the spoils of the Great
Armada, when the proud Spaniards, designing to invade this free and
happy country with their monstrous Flotilla of Caravels and Galleons,
provided numerous tools of Torture for despitefully using the Heretics
(as they called them) who would not obey the unrighteous mandates of a
foreign despot, or submit to the domination (usurped) of the Bishop of
Rome. And so tender indeed of the bodies of the King's prisoners had the
Tower authorities become, that the underground dungeons were now never
used, commodious apartments being provided for the noblemen and
gentlemen in hold: and a pretty penny they had to pay for their
accommodation; five guineas a day, besides warder and gentlemen gaolers'
fees, being the ordinary charge for a nobleman, and half that sum for a
knight and private esquire. Besides this, the Lieutenant of the Tower
had a gratuity of thirty pounds from every peer that came into his
custody, and twenty pounds for every gentleman writing himself
_Armiger_, and in default could seize upon their cloaks: whence arose a
merry saying--"best go to the Tower like a peeled carrot than come forth
like on