have conferred with a very honest gentleman whom I knew
to have good and sufficient means to deliver the truth." &c. And the
following are the heads of this "honest gentleman's" testimony. "It is
affirmed for truth, and is offered upon due examination to be proved,"
"that the forms of torture in their severity or rigor of execution have
not been such as is slanderously represented"... "that even the
principal offender Campion himself"... "before the conference had with
him by learned men in the Tower, wherein he was charitably used, was
never so racked but that he was presently able to walk and to write, and
did presently write and subscribe all his confessions." That Briant, a
man said to, have been reduced to such extremities of hunger and thirst
in prison, that he ate the clay out of the walls and drank the droppings
of the roof, was kept in that state by his own fault; for certain
treasonable writings being found upon him, he was required to give a
specimen of his handwriting; which refusing, he was told he should have
no food till he wrote for what he wanted, and after fasting nearly two
days and nights he complied. Also, that both with respect to these two
and others, it might be affirmed, that the warders, whose office it is
to use the rack, "were ever by those that attended the examinations
specially charged to use it in as charitable a manner as such a thing
might be."

Secondly, that none of those catholics who have been racked during her
majesty's reign were, "upon the rack or in any other torture," demanded
of any points of faith and doctrine merely, "but only with what persons,
at home or abroad, and touching what plots and practises they had
dealt... about attempts against her majesty's estate or person, or to
alter the laws of the realm for matters of religion, by treason or by
force; and how they were persuaded themselves and did persuade others,
touching the pope's pretence of authority to depose kings and princes;
and namely for deprivation of her majesty, and to discharge subjects
from their allegiance." &c.

"Thirdly, that none of them have been put to the rack or torture, no not
for the matters of treason, or partnership of treason, or such like, but
where it was first known and evidently probable, by former detections,
confessions, and otherwise, that the party was guilty, and could
deliver truth of the things wherewith he was charged; so as it was first
assured that no innocent was at any time to