ys to be such as
despise death, and yet abhor to be tormented, choosing rather frankly to
open our minds than to yield our bodies unto such servile haulings and
tearings as are used in other countries. And this is one cause wherefore
our condemned persons do go so cheerfully to their deaths; for our nation
is free, stout, haughty, prodigal of life and blood, as Sir Thomas Smith
saith, lib. 2, cap. 25, _De Republica_,[220] and therefore cannot in any
wise digest to be used as villains and slaves, in suffering continually
beating, servitude, and servile torments.[221] No, our gaolers are guilty
of felony, by an old law of the land, if they torment any prisoner
committed to their custody for the revealing of his accomplices.

The greatest and most grievous punishment used in England for such as
offend against the State is drawing from the prison to the place of
execution upon an hurdle or sled, where they are hanged till they be half
dead, and then taken down, and quartered alive; after that, their members
and bowels are cut from their bodies, and thrown into a fire,[222]
provided near hand and within their own sight, even for the same purpose.

Sometimes, if the trespass be not the more heinous, they are suffered to
hang till they be quite dead. And whensoever any of the nobility are
convicted of high treason by their peers, that is to say, equals (for an
inquest of yeomen passeth not upon them, but only of the lords of
parliament), this manner of their death is converted into the loss of
their heads only, notwithstanding that the sentence do run after the
former order. In trial of cases concerning treason, felony, or any other
grievous crime not confessed, the party accused doth yield, if he be a
noble man, to be tried by an inquest (as I have said) and his peers; if a
gentleman, by gentlemen; and an inferior, by God and by the country, to
wit, the yeomanry (for combat or battle is not greatly in use), and, being
condemned of felony, manslaughter, etc., he is eftsoons hanged by the neck
till he be dead, and then cut down and buried. But if he be convicted of
wilful murder, done either upon pretended malice or in any notable
robbery, he is either hanged alive in chains near the place where the fact
was committed (or else upon compassion taken, first strangled with a
rope), and so continueth till his bones consume to nothing. We have use
neither of the wheel nor of the bar, as in other countries; but, when
wilful manslaugh