“Then, by command of the justice, was my trembling body laid above and long, upon the face of the rack, with my head downward, inclosed within a circled hole, my belly upward toward the top of the rack; my legs and arms being drawn asunder, were fastened with pins and cords to both sides of the outward planks, for now was I to receive my greatest torments.
Now, the alcaide giving commission, the executioner laid fast a cord over the calf of my leg, then another in the middle of my thigh; and the third cord over the great part of my arm, which was severally done on both sides of my body, receiving the ends of the cords from the six several places, through the holes made in the outward planks, which were fastened to pins, and the pins made fast with a device: for he was to charge on the outside of the planks with as many pins as there were holes and cords, the cords being first laid next to my skin; and on every one of these six parts of my body I was to receive seven several tortures, each torture consisting of three winding throws of every pin, which amounted to twenty-one throws in every one of those six parts. Then the tormentor, carrying a pot full of water, in the bottom whereof was a hole, stopped by his thumb till it came to my mouth, he did pour it into my belly; the measure being an English pottle. The first and second services I gladly received, such was the scorching drought of my tormenting pain, and I had drunk none for three days before. But at the third charge, perceiving these measures of water to be inflicted upon me as tortures, I closed my mouth; whereat, the alcaide, enraged, set my teeth asunder with a pair of iron cadges, whereupon my hunger-charged belly waxing great, grew drum-like; for it being a suffocating pain, in regard of my head hanging downward, and the water re-ingorging itself in my throat with a struggling force, it strangled and swallowed up my breath from yowling and groaning.
“Between each one of these seven circular charges I was always re-examined half an hour; each half hour a hell of infernal pain; and between each torment a long distance of life-quelling time. Thus lay I six hours upon the rack, between four o’clock in the afternoon and ten o’clock at night, having had inflicted upon me threescore and seven torments. Nevertheless, they continued me a large half hour, after all my torture, at the full bending, my body being all begored with blood, and cut through, in every part, to the crushed and bruised bones; I pitifully roaring, howling, foaming, and gnashing my teeth, with insupportable cries, before the pains were undone and my body loosed. True it is, it passeth the capacity of man either sensibly to conceive, or I patiently to express, the intolerable anxiety of mind and affliction of body, in that dreadful time I sustained. At last, my head being by their arms advanced, and my body taken from the rack, the water regushed abundantly from my mouth; then they, reclothing my broken, bloody, cold, and trembling body, being all this time stark naked, I fell twice in a sounding trance; which they again refreshed with a little wine, and two warm eggs—not done out of charity, but that I should be reserved for further punishment; and if it were not well known that these sufferings are true, it would almost seem incredible to many, that a man, being brought so low with starving hunger and extreme cruelties, could have subsisted any longer, reserving life.
“And now, at last, they charged my broken legs with my former eye-frighting irons, and carried me to the coach, being after brought secretly to my former dungeon, without any knowledge of the town, save to my lawless and merciless tormentors. I was laid, with my head and heels alike high, on my former stones. The latter end of this woeful night, poor mourning Hazier, the Turk, was sent to keep me; and on the morrow the governor entered my room, threatening me with still more tortures, to confess; and so he caused every morning, to make me believe I was going to be racked again, to make me confess an untruth; and thus they continued every day of five days to Christmas.
“Upon Christmas-day, Marina, the ladies’ gentlewoman, got permission to visit me, and with her licence she brought abundance of tears, presenting me also with a dish of honey, sugar, some confections, and raisins in great plenty, to my no small comfort, besides using many sweet speeches, for consolation’s sake. The twelfth day of Christmas expired, they began to threaten me on still with more tortures, even till Candlemas. In all which comfortless time I was miserably afflicted with the beastly plague of gnawing vermin, which lay crawling in lumps, within, without, and about my body; yea, hanging in clusters about my beard, my lips, my nostrils, and my eye-brows, almost inclosing my sight. And for my greater satisfaction to their merciless minds, the governor called Areta, his silver-plate keeper, to gather and sweep the vermin upon me twice in eight days, which tormented me almost to death, being a perpetual punishment; yet the poor infidel, some few times, and when opportunity served, would steal the keys from Areta, and about midnight would enter my room, with sticks and burning oil, and sweeping them together in heaps, would burn the greatest part, to my great release; or, doubtless, I had been miserably eaten up and devoured by them.”
Cruelty more diabolical it appears difficult to imagine, than that exercised upon this unhappy Scotchman. Yet he was preserved for still greater suffering. For being now in the power of the inquisitors, they pretended to be anxious for his soul’s salvation; and therefore they implored him to be converted to the Roman Catholic faith, that he might escape condemnation to the flames as a heretic. When the inquisitor interrogated him as to his difficulties, errors, and misbelief, Lithgow replied, like a North Briton taught by the Bible, that “he was confident in the promises of our Saviour, believing the revealed doctrines of the Gospel, professed by the reformed Catholic church; that these being confirmed by grace, he possessed an infallible assurance in his own soul of the true word of Christ.” “To these words,” as Lithgow observes, “he answered, ‘Thou art no Christian, but an absurd heretic, and, without conversion, a member of perdition.’ Whereupon I replied, ‘Reverend Sir, the nature of charity and religion does not consist in opprobrious speeches: wherefore, if you would convert me, as you say, convince me by argument; if not, all your threatenings of fire, death, or torments, shall not make me shrink from the truth of God’s word in Sacred Scriptures,’ Whereupon the mad inquisitor clapt me on the face with his foot, abusing me with many railings; and if the Jesuits had not intercepted him, he had stabbed me with a knife; where, when dismissed, I never saw him more.”
Lithgow was as little affected by another interview with an inquisitor; he made no confession, and he was sentenced to be again tortured. He says, therefore, “I was condemned to receive that night eleven strangling torments in my dungeon; and then, after Easter holidays, I should be transported privately to Granada, and there, about midnight, to be burnt, body and bones, into ashes, and my ashes to be flung into the air. Well, that same night, the scrivan, sergeants, and the young English priest entered my melancholy prison, where the priest, in the English tongue, urging me all he could, though little it was he could do, and not prevailing, I was disburdened of mine irons, unclothed to my skin, set on my knees, and held up fast with their hands; where, instantly setting my teeth asunder with iron cadges, they filled my belly full of water, even gorging to my throat; then with a garter they bound fast my throat, till the white of mine eye turned upward; and being laid on my side, I was tumbled by two sergeants to and fro seven times through the room, till I was almost strangled. This done, they fastened a small cord about each of my great toes, and hoisting me therewith to the roof of a high loft (for the cords ran in two rings fastened above), they cut the garter, and there I hung, with my head downward, in my tormented weight, till all the gushing water dissolved. This done, I was let down from the loft, quite senseless, lying a long time cold dead among their hands; whereof the governor being informed, came running up stairs, crying, ‘Is he dead? O fie, villains, go fetch me wine!’ which they poured in my mouth, regaining thereby a slender spark of breath.
“These strangling torments closed, and I reclothed and fast bolted again, they left me lying on the cold floor, praising my God, and singing of a psalm. The next morning, the pitiful Turk visiting me with bread and water, brought me also secretly, in his shirt sleeve, two handfuls of raisins and figs, laying them on the floor, amongst the crawling vermin; for having no use of arms, I was constrained by hunger and impotency of time to lick one up with another with my tongue. This charity of figs the slave did once every week or fortnight, or else I had long or then famished.”
Mr. Lithgow’s case became known, by some means, to the English factors at Malaga; and they, therefore, at once united with the consul in an application to the king and council of Spain. Their petition was granted, and the release of the wretched prisoner was ordered, in a warrant to the governor. His generous friends received the injured confessor, treated him with kindness, and procured for him a passage to England in a ship-of-war, in 1621. His case being made known at court, he was visited by many of the nobility, and by King James I., who commanded him to be sent to the Spanish ambassador, then in London. That grandee promised that restitution should be made to him of the money and valuables that had been taken from him at Malaga, and compensation for the injuries that he had sustained in prison. These assurances were not, however, honoured; and Mr. Lithgow, reproaching the ambassador with having deceived him, and, as some say, striking him, under the provocation, he was imprisoned for some months in the Marshalsea, London.
2. Elizabeth Vasconellos.—This lady, having been released from the Inquisition at Lisbon, made the following deposition, in December, 1706:—