and a gracious prince,
and will not have his subjects _tortured against law_. I do affirm upon
my salvation that my purpose was not known to any man living; but if it
be his majesty's pleasure, I am ready to suffer whatever his majesty
will have inflicted upon me. Yet this I must tell you, by the way, that
if I be put upon the rack, I will accuse you, my lord of Dorset, and
none but yourself."[254] This firm and sensible speech silenced them. A
council was held; the judges were consulted; and on this occasion they
came to a very unexpected decision, that "Felton ought not to be
tortured by the rack, for no such punishment is known or allowed by our
law." Thus the judges condemned what the government had constantly
practised. Blackstone yields a fraternal eulogium to the honour of the
judges on this occasion; but Hume more philosophically discovers the
cause of this sudden tenderness. "So much more exact reasoners, with
regard to law, had they become from _the jealous scruples of the House
of Commons_." An argument which may be strengthened from cases which are
unknown to the writers of our history. Not two years before the present
one, a Captain Brodeman, one who had distinguished himself among the
"bold speakers" concerning the king and the duke, had been sent to the
Tower, and was reported to have expired on the rack; the death seems
doubtful, but the fact of his having been racked is repeated in the MS.
letters of the times. The rack has been more frequently used as a state
engine than has reached the knowledge of our historians: secret have
been the deadly embraces of the Duke of Exeter's daughter.[255] It was
only by an original journal of the transactions in the Tower that Burnet
discovered the racking of Anne Askew, a narrative of horror! James the
First incidentally mentions in his account of the powder-plot that this
rack was _shown_ to Guy Fawkes during his examination; and yet under
this prince, mild as his temper was, it had been used in a terrific
manner.[256] Elizabeth but too frequently employed this engine of
arbitrary power; once she had all the servants of the Duke of Norfolk
tortured. I have seen in a MS. of the times heads of charges made
against some members of the House of Commons in Elizabeth's reign, among
which is one for having written against torturing! Yet Coke, the most
eminent of our lawyers, extols the mercy of Elizabeth in the trials of
Essex and Southampton, because she had not used tortur