| For 10 loads of coal to burn the witches | £3 06.8 |
| “ A tar barrell | 0 14.0 |
| “ towes | 0 06.0 |
| “ hurdles to be jumps for them | 3 10.0 |
| “ making of them | 0 08.0 |
| “ one to go to Tinmouth for the lord to sit upon the assize as judge | 0 06.0 |
| “ the executioner for his pains | 8 14.0 |
| “ his expenses there | 0 16.4 |
What was the special office of the executioner does not appear; whether to drag the victims upon hurdles, to the places of burning, to light the fire, to keep it well blazing, is not mentioned although his office was important and a well paid one; eight pounds and fourteen shillings above his expenses, sixteen shillings and four pence more; in all nine pounds, ten shillings and four pence, a sum equal to one hundred and fifty or two hundred dollars of the present day. At these rates it was easy to find men for the purpose desired. It is worthy of note that under the frequency of torture the payment lessened. Strange experiences sometimes befell those who were tortured: a cataleptic or hypnotic state coming on amid their most cruel sufferings causing an entire insensibility to pain. To the church this condition was sure evidence of help from Satan and caused a renewal of torture as soon as sensibility returned.
In the year 1639 a poor widow called Lucken, who was accused of being a witch and sentenced to the rack at Helmstadt having been cruelly tortured by the screw, was seized with convulsions, spoke high German and a strange language and then fell asleep on the rack and appeared to be dead. The circumstance related to the juricounsul at Helmstadt she was ordered to be again submitted to the torture. Then protesting she was a good Christian while the executioner stretched her on the rack, whipt her with rods and sprinkled her with burning brimstone, she fell again fast asleep and could not by any means be awakened.[67]
Boiling heretics and malefactors alive, commonly in oil but occasionally in water, was practiced throughout Europe until a comparatively late period. In fact as a civil punishment in England it dates only to 1531 under Henry VII. The “Chronicle of the Gray Friars” mentioned a man let down by a chain into a kettle of hot water until dead. We have expense items of this form of torture, in the boiling of Friar Stone of Canterbury.
| Paid two men that sat by the kettle and boiled him | 1s |
| To three men that carried his quarters to the gate and set them up | 1s |
| For a woman that scoured the kettle | 2d |
Boiling was a form of torture frequently used for women. The official records of Paris show the price paid for torture in France was larger than in England; boiling in oil in the former country costing forty eight francs as against one shilling in the latter. It must be remembered these official prices for torture, are not taken from the records of China or Persia, two thousand years ago, nor from among the savages of Patagonia, Australia or Guinea, but two European countries of highest Christian civilization within the last three hundred years.
The following list of prices for dealing with criminals is taken from the official records in Paris:
| For boiling a criminal in oil, francs | 48 |
| For tearing a living man in four quarters with horses | 30 |
| Execution with the sword | 20 |
| Breaking on the wheel | 10 |
| Mounting the head on a pole | 10 |
| Quartering a man | 36 |
| Hanging a man | 29 |
| Burying a man | 2 |
| Impaling a man alive | 14 |
| Burning a witch alive | 28 |
| Flaying a man alive | 28 |
| Drowning an infanticide in a sack | 24 |
| Throwing a suicide’s body among the offal | 20 |
| Putting to the torture | 4 |
| For applying the thumb-screw | 2 |
| For applying the boot | 4 |
| Torture by fire | 10 |
| Putting a man in the pillory | 2 |
| Whipping a man | 4 |
| Branding with a red-hot iron | 10 |
| Cutting off the tongue, the ears and the nose | 10 |
Burning a witch, probably because of its greater frequency, cost but little over one-half as much as boiling in oil. The battle of gladiators with wild beasts in the Coliseum at Rome in reign of Nero, had in it an element of hope. Not the priesthood but the populace were the arbiters of the gladiator’s destiny, giving always a chance for life in cases of great personal bravery. But in France and England the ecclesiastical code was so closely united with the civil as to be one with it; compassion equally with justice was forgotten, despair taking their place. Implements of torture were of frequent invention, the thought of the age turning in the direction of human suffering, new methods were continually devised. Many of these instruments are now on exhibition in foreign museums. One called “The Spider” a diabolical iron machine with curved claws, for tearing out a woman’s breasts was shown in the United States but a few years since. In Protestant Calvinistic Scotland, where hatred of “popery” was most pronounced, the persecution of witches raged with the greatest violence, and multitudes of women died shrieking to heaven for that mercy denied them by Christian men upon earth. It was in Scotland after the reformation that the most atrocious tortures for the witch were invented, one of the most diabolical being known as “the Witches’ Bridle.” By means of a loop passed about the head, this instrument of four iron prongs was fastened in the mouth. One of the prongs pressed down the tongue, one touched the palate, the other two doing their barbarous work upon the inner side of the cheeks. As this instrument prevented speech thus allowing no complaint upon the part of the victim, it was preferred to many other methods of torture.[68] The woman upon whom it was used was suspended against a wall by a loop at the back, barely touching the floor with her toes. The iron band around her neck rendered her powerless to move, she was unable to speak or scarcely to breathe. Every muscle was strained in order to sustain herself and prevent entire suffocation, the least movement causing cruel wounds by means of the prongs in her mouth.
The victims were mostly aged women who having reared a family, spending their youth and beauty in this self-denying work, had lived until time threading their hair with silver had also robbed cheek and lip of their rosy hue, dimmed the brilliancy of the eye and left wrinkles in place of youthful dimples. Such victims were left for hours, until the malignity of their persecutors was satisfied, or until death after long torture released them from a world where under the laws of both Church and State they found their sex to be a crime. Old women for no other reason than that they were old, were held to be the most susceptible to the assaults of the devil, and the persons most especially endowed with supernatural powers for evil. Blackstone refers to this persecution of aged women in his reference to a statute of the Eight Henry.[69] We discover a reason for this intense hatred of old women in the fact that woman has chiefly been looked upon from a sensual view by christian men, the church teaching that she was created solely for man’s sensual use. Thus when by reason of declining years she no longer attracted the sensual admiration of man, he regarded her as having forfeited all right to life. England’s most learned judge, Sir Mathew Hale, declared his belief in the agency of the devil in producing diseases through the aid of old women. The prosecution against this class raged with unusual violence in Scotland under the covenanters.