Having at length got safe into French Flanders, I there repaired to the college of the Scotch Jesuits at Douay, and discovering myself to the rector, I acquainted him with the cause of my sudden departure from Italy, and begged him to give notice of my arrival, as well as the motives of my flight to Michael Angelo Tambuvini, general of the order, and my very particular friend.
The rector wrote as I desired him, to the general, and he, taking no notice of my flight, in his answer, (for he could not disapprove, and did not think it safe to approve of it,) ordered me to continue where I was till further notice. I arrived at Douay early in May, and continued there till the beginning of July, when the rector received a second letter from the general, acquainting him that he had been commanded by the congregation of the Inquisition, to order me, wherever I was, back into Italy; to promise me, in their name, full pardon and forgiveness if I obeyed, but if I did not obey, to treat me as an apostate. He added, that the same order had been transmitted, soon after my flight, to the nuncios at the different Roman Catholic courts; and he, therefore, advised me to consult my own safety without further delay.
Upon the receipt of the general's kind letter, the rector was of opinion that I should repair by all means, and without loss of time, to England, not only as the safest asylum I could fly to, in my present situation, but as a place where I should soon recover my native language, and be usefully employed, either there or in Scotland. The place being thus agreed on, and it being at the same time settled between the rector and me, that I should set out the very next morning, I solemnly promised, at his request and desire, to take no kind of notice, after my arrival in England, of his having been in any way privy to my flight, or the general's letter to him. This promise I have faithfully and honorably observed; and should have thought myself guilty of the blackest ingratitude if I had not observed it, being sensible that, had it been known at Rome, that, either the rector or general had been accessary to my flight, THE INQUISITION WOULD HAVE RESENTED IT SEVERELY IN BOTH. For although a Jesuit in France, in Flanders, or in Germany, is out of the reach of the Inquisition, the general is not; and the high tribunal not only have it in their power to punish the general himself, who resides constantly at Rome, but may oblige him to inflict what punishment they please on any of the order obnoxious to them.
The rector went that very night out of town, and in his absence, but not without his privity, I took one of the horses of the college, early next morning, as if I were going for a change of air, being somewhat indisposed, to pass a few days at Lisle; but steering a different course, I reached Aire that night and Calais the next day. I was there in no danger of being stopped and seized at the prosecution of the Inquisition, a tribunal no less abhorred in France than in England. But being informed that the nuncios at the different courts had been ordered, soon after my flight, to cause me to be apprehended in Roman Catholic countries through which I must pass, as an apostate and deserter from the order, I was under no small apprehension of being discovered and apprehended as such even at Calais. No sooner, therefore, did I alight at the Inn, than I went down to the quay, and there as I was very little acquainted with the sea, and thought the passage much shorter than it is, I endeavored to engage some fishermen to carry me that very night, in one of their small vessels, over to England. This alarmed the guards of the harbor, and I should have been certainly apprehended as a person guilty, or suspected of some great crime, fleeing from justice, had not Lord Baltimore, whom I had the good luck to meet in the Inn, informed me of my danger, and pitying my condition, attended me that moment, with all his company, to the port, and conveyed me immediately on board his yacht. There I lay that night, leaving every thing I had but the clothes on my back, in the Inn; and the next day his Lordship set me ashore at Dover, from whence I came in the common stage to London.
In the year 1706, the Inquisition at Arragon was broken up by the French troops, under the command of the Duke of Orleans. The Holy Inquisitors were driven from their beautiful house, and in answer to their indignant remonstrance were told that the king wanted the house to quarter his troops in, and they were therefore compelled to leave it immediately. The doors of the prisons were then thrown open, and among the four hundred prisoners who were set at liberty were sixty young women, very beautiful in person, and clad in the richest attire.
Anthony Gavin, formerly one of the Roman Catholic priests of Saragossa, Spain, relates (in a book published by him after his conversion) that when travelling in France he met one of those women in the inn at Rotchfort; the son of the inn-keeper, formerly an officer in the French army, having married her for her great beauty and superior intelligence. In accordance with his request, she freely related to him the incidents of her prison life, from which we take the following extract:
"Early the next morning, Mary got up, and told me that nobody was up yet in the house; and that she would show me the DRY PAN and the GRADUAL FIRE, on condition that I should keep it a secret for her sake as well as my own. This I promised, and she took me along with her, and showed me a dark room with a thick iron door, and within it an oven and a large brass pan upon it, with a cover of the same and a lock to it. The oven was burning at the time, and I asked Mary for what purpose the pan was there. Without giving me any answer, she took me by the hand and led me to a large room, where she showed me a thick wheel, covered on both sides with thick boards, and opening a little window in the center of it, desired me to look with a candle on the inside of it, and I saw all the circumference of the wheel set with SHARP RAZORS. After that she showed me a PIT FULL OF SERPENTS AND TOADS. Then she said to me, 'Now, my good mistress, I'll tell you the use of these things. The dry pan and gradual fire are for those who oppose the holy father's will, and for heretics. They are put naked and alive into the pan, and the cover of it being locked up, the executioner begins to put in the oven a small fire, and by degrees he augmenteth it, till the body is burned to ashes. The second is designed for those who speak against the Pope and the holy fathers. They are put within the wheel, and the door being locked, the executioner turns the wheel till the person is dead. The third is for those who contemn the images, and refuse to give the due respect and veneration to ecclesiastical persons; for they are thrown alive into the pit, and there they become the food of serpents and toads.' Then Mary said to me that another day she would show me the torments for public sinners and transgressors of the commandments of holy mother church; but I, in deep amazement, desired her to show me no more places; for the very thought of those three which I had seen, was enough to terrify me to the heart. So we went to my room, and she charged me again to be very obedient to all commands, for if I was not, I was sure to undergo the torment of the dry pan."
Llorente, the Spanish historian and secretary-general of the Inquisition, relates the following incident: "A physician, Juan de Salas, was accused of having used a profane expression, twelve months before, in the heat of debate. He denied the accusation, and produced several witnesses to prove his innocence. But Moriz, the inquisitor at Valladolid, where the charge was laid, caused de Salas to be brought into his presence in the torture-chamber, stripped to his shirt, and laid on a LADDER or DONKEY, an instrument resembling a wooden trough, just large enough to receive the body, with no bottom, but having a bar or bars to placed that the body bent, by its own weight, into an exquisitely painful position. His head was lower than his heels, and the breathing, in consequence, became exceedingly difficult. The poor man, so laid, was bound around the arms and legs with hempen cords, each of them encircling the limb eleven times.
"During this part of the operation they admonished him to confess the blasphemy; but he only answered that he had never spoken a sentence of such a kind, and then, resigning himself to suffer, repeated the Athanasian creed, and prayed to God and our Lady many times. Being still bound, they raised his head, covered his face with a piece of fine linen, and, forcing open the mouth, caused water to drip into it from an earthen jar, slightly perforated at the bottom, producing in addition to his sufferings from distension, a horrid sensation of choking. But again, when they removed the jar for a moment, he declared that he had never uttered such a sentence; and this he often repeated. They then pulled the cords on his right leg, cutting into the flesh, replaced the linen on his face, dropped the water as before, and tightened the cords on his right leg the second time; but still he maintained that he had never spoken such a thing; and in answer to the questions of his tormentors, constantly reiterated that he HAD NEVER SPOKEN THOSE WORDS. Moriz then pronounced that the said torture should be regarded as begun, but not finished; and De Salas was released, to live, if he could survive, in the incessant apprehension that if he gave the slightest umbrage to a familiar, he would be carried again into the same chamber, and be RACKED IN EVERY LIMB."
Llorente also relates, from the original records, another case quite as cruel and unjust as the above. "On the 8th day of December, 1528, one Catalina, a woman of BAD CHARACTER, informed the inquisitors that, EIGHTEEN YEARS BEFORE she had lived in the house with a Morisco named Juan, by trade a coppersmith, and a native of Segovia; that she had observed that neither he nor his children ate pork or drank wine, and that, on Saturday nights and Sunday mornings they used to wash their feet, which custom, as well as abstinence from pork and wine, was peculiar to the Moors. The old man was at that time an inhabitant of Benevente, and seventy-one years of age. But the inquisitors at once summoned him into their presence, and questioned him at three several interviews. All that he could tell was, that he received baptism when he was forty-five years of age; that having never eaten pork or drunk wine, he had no taste for them; and that, being coppersmiths, they found it necessary to wash themselves thoroughly once a week. After some other examinations, they sent him back to Benevente, with prohibition to go beyond three leagues' distance from the town. Two years afterwards the inquisitor determined that he should be threatened with torture, IN ORDER TO OBTAIN INFORMATION THAT MIGHT HELP THEM TO CRIMINATE OTHERS. He was accordingly taken to Valladolid, and in a subterranean chamber, called the 'chamber, or dungeon, of torment,' stripped naked, and bound to the 'ladder.' This might well have extorted something like confession from an old man of seventy-one; but he told them that whatever he might say when under torture would be merely extorted by the extreme anguish, and therefore unworthy of belief; that he would not, through fear of pain, confess what had never taken place. They kept him in close prison until the next Auto de Fe, when he walked among the penitents, with a lighted candle in his hand, and, after seeing others burnt to death, paid the holy office a fee of four ducats, and went home, not acquitted, but released. He was not summoned again, as he died soon afterwards."