In the Days of Drake

by J. S. Fletcher

Stephen Brown and Nicholas Peterson, a Dutchman, one hundred lashes and six years in the galleys.

Then came some forty or fifty men whose names I have forgotten, who were condemned to a lesser number of lashes and less servitude in the galleys, and after them some four or five who were adjudged to serve in monasteries for various terms of years, wearing their San-benitos all the time.

And then, after two or three hours of weary waiting, for they did everything with exceeding tediousness and much ceremony, they called upon Pharaoh Nanjulian and myself, and we stood up together to receive sentence. And then we suddenly knew that God had not deserted us, for the sentence was a lighter one than any that we had heard passed. We were to serve two years in the galleys, submitting ourselves to the chaplain for admonition and instruction. So that was over and we could breathe freely again.

Nevertheless the horrible work of that day was far from over, for it was hardly begun. The torments, the murders, were yet to come.

William Moor, John Wood, and Hans Schewitzer, a German Lutheran, were brought up for sentence and condemned, being pestilent and naughty heretics, to be burned to ashes.

They lost no time, these villainous Spaniards, in carrying out this sentence. In front of the scaffold stood three stout iron posts, firmly sunk in the ground, with fagots already piled about them, and to these the unfortunate men were speedily bound, amidst the silence of the crowd and the cries of the monks and Familiars, who pressed upon their victims, bidding them repent and recant ere they were lost forever. But to these murdering villains the three men answered naught, and presently it was all over with them, and there was one more crime recorded against Spain.

Then those of us who had been sentenced to so many lashes were led down from the scaffold and placed upon horses, being stripped to the waist, and having by them, every man, an executioner armed with a whip. Such of us as had escaped this sentence were arranged in pairs behind, with our halters still round our necks and our guards on either side of us. Before the men who were to be whipped marched two criers, crying “Behold these English dogs, Lutherans, enemies of God,” and at intervals came Familiars, such as Frey Bartolomeo, admonishing the executioners to lay on and spare not. Then the procession started, and was conducted by the criers through all the principal streets back to the great square, and at every few steps the executioners laid on with their whips, fetching blood at every stroke, so that to any man having aught of mercy and compassion within him the spectacle was horrible and nauseating, though to the Familiars and Inquisitors it seemed delightful enough.