Gonsalvius[o] tells us of another kind of torture. There is a wooden bench, which they call “the wooden horse,” made hollow like a trough, so as to contain a man lying on his back at full length, about the middle of which there is a round bar laid across, upon which the back of the person is placed, so that he lies upon the bar instead of being let into the bottom of the trough, with his feet much higher than his head. As he is lying in this posture, his arms, thighs, and shins are tied round with small cords or strings, which being drawn with screws at proper distance from each other, cut into the very bones, so as to be no longer discerned.
The Tormento di Toca
Besides this, the torturer throws over his mouth and nostrils a thin cloth, so that he is scarce able to breathe through them, and in the meanwhile a small stream of water like a thread, not drop by drop, falls from on high upon the mouth of the person lying in this miserable condition and so easily sinks down the thin cloth to the bottom of his throat, so that there is no possibility of breathing, his mouth being stopped with water and his nostrils with the cloth, so that the poor wretch is in the same agony as persons ready to die, and breathing out their last. When this cloth is drawn out of his throat, as it often is, that he may answer to the questions, it is all wet with water and blood, and is like pulling his bowels through his mouth.
The Chafing-dish; The Water-cure
There is also another kind of torture peculiar to this tribunal, which they call the fire. They order a large iron chafing-dish full of lighted charcoal to be brought in and held close to the soles of the tortured person’s feet, greased over with lard, so that the heat of the fire may more quickly pierce through them.
This is inquisition by torture, when there is only half full proof of their crime. However, at other times torments are sometimes inflicted upon persons condemned to death, as a punishment preceding that of death. Of this we have a remarkable instance in William Lithgow,[w] an Englishman, who, as he tells us in his travels, was taken up as a spy in Malaga, and was exposed to the most cruel torments upon the Wooden Horse. But when nothing could be extorted from him, he was delivered to the Inquisition as an heretic. He was condemned, in the beginning of Lent, to suffer the night following eleven most cruel torments, and after Easter to be carried privately to Grenada, there to be buried at midnight, and his ashes to be scattered into the air; when night came on his fetters were taken off, then he was stripped naked, put upon his knees, and his head lifted up by force; after which, opening his mouth with iron instruments, they filled his belly with water till it came out of his jaws. Then they tied a rope hard about his neck, and in this condition rolled him seven times the whole length of the room, till he almost quite strangled. After this they tied a small cord about both his great toes, and hung him up thereby with his head down, letting him remain in this condition till all the water discharged itself out of his mouth, so that he was laid on the ground as just dead, and had his irons put on him again. But beyond all expectation, and by a very singular accident, he was delivered out of jail, escaped death, and fortunately sailed home to England.[b]
Details of another revolting case are quoted by Limborch from an official contemporary document, which may best be reproduced here in its original form.[a]
THE PROCEEDINGS AGAINST AN ENGLISHWOMAN
Elizabeth Vasconcellos, now in the city of Lisbon, doth, on the 10th day of December, anno 1706, in the presence of John Milner, Esq., her majesty’s consul-general of Portugal, and Joseph Willcocks, minister of the English factory at Lisbon, declare and testify: