[1830] Diarium rerum gestarum in Turri Londinensi (Sanderi Schisma Anglicanum, ad calcem, Ingolstadt, 1586).
[1831] Sir William Skevington, a lieutenant of the Tower, under Henry VIII., immortalized himself by reviving an old implement of torture, consisting of an iron hoop, in which the prisoner was bent, heels to hams and chest to knees, and was thus crushed together unmercifully. It obtained the nickname of Skevington’s Daughter, corrupted in time to Scavenger’s Daughter. Among other sufferers from its embraces was an unlucky Irishman, named Myagh, whose plaint, engraved on the walls of his dungeon, is still among the curiosities of the Tower:—
“Thomas Miagh, which liethe here alone,
That fayne wold from hens begon:
By torture straunge mi truth was tryed,
Yet of my libertie denied.
1581. Thomas Myagh.” (Jardine, op. cit. pp. 15, 30).
[1832] Jardine, pp. 53, 57-8.
It is rather remarkable to find torture legalized at this period, even in qualified form of the question définitive in the Colony of Massachusetts. The Body of Liberties, enacted in 1641, declares:—
“45. No man shall be forced by Torture to confesse any crime against himselfe nor any other, unlesse it be in some Capitall case where he is first fully convicted by cleare and suffitient evidence to be guilty, After which if the case be of that nature, That it is very apparent there be other conspiritours or confederates with him, Then he may be tortured, yet not with such Tortures as be Barbarous and inhumane.”—Whitmore’s Colonial Laws of Massachusetts, Boston, 1889 (N. Y. Nation, No. 1268, p. 318).