existed in the British Islands or Scandinavia. The laws of
Frederick II had no authority there. In England, in 1400, the
death penalty for heresy was introduced by the statute _de
heretico comburendo_. In 1414 a mixed tribunal of ecclesiastics
and laymen was established to search out heretics and punish
them. It was employed to suppress Lollardry. Under Edward VI
these laws were repealed; under Mary they were renewed. In the
first Parliament of Elizabeth they were repealed again, except
the statute of 1400, which was repealed in 1676, when Charles II
wanted toleration for Roman Catholics. Then the ecclesiastical
courts were restricted to ecclesiastical penalties.[603] Torture
was never legal in England. The use of it was pushed to the
greatest extreme when Clement V and Philip the Fair were seeking
evidence against the templars. Then the pope wrote a fatherly
letter of expostulation to Edward of England, because of the lack
of this engine in his dominions.[604] Cases of torture no doubt
occurred. The star chamber had an inquisitorial process in which
the rack seems to have been used. Barbaro, a Venetian ambassador
in the sixteenth century, reported the non-use of torture as an
interesting fact in English mores. He says the English think that
it often forces untrue confession, that it "spoils the body and
an innocent life; thinking, moreover, that it is better to
release a criminal than to punish an innocent man."[605] From the
thirteenth century it was forbidden to keep a prisoner in chains.
In other countries this was the rule, and ingenuity was expended
to fasten the prisoner in a most uncomfortable position.[606] The
last case of the rack in the star chamber was that of Peacham, in
1614.[607] The last execution for heresy in the British Islands
was that of a medical student at Edinburgh, eighteen years of
age, named Aikenhead, in 1696.[608] The greatest cruelty in
England was "pressing" prisoners to compel them to plead because,
if they did not plead, the trial could not go on.

It follows that the repressive system of the mediaeval church did
not produce effects on the mores in England.

+266. The Spanish Inquisition.+ The Spanish Inquisition is an
offshoot and development of that of the mediaeval church. The
latter was started in Aragon and Navarre in 1238.[609] In the
latter half of the fourteenth centu