Fox's Book of Martyrs: Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant; Deaths of the Primitive Protestant MartyrsFoxe, John
HistoryHistory
Fox's Book of Martyrs: Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant; Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs
Foxe, John
Church history; Martyrs; Persecution
At the first time of torturing, six executioners entered, stripped him
naked to his drawers, and laid him upon his back on a kind of stand,
elevated a few feet from the floor. The operation commenced by putting
an iron collar round his neck, and a ring to each foot, which fastened
him to the stand. His limbs being thus stretched out, they wound two
ropes round each thigh; which ropes being passed under the scaffold,
through holes made for that purpose, were all drawn tight at the same
instant of time, by four of the men, on a given signal.
It is easy to conceive that the pains which immediately succeeded were
intolerable; the ropes, which were of a small size, cut through the
prisoner's flesh to the bone, making the blood to gush out at eight
different places thus bound at a time. As the prisoner persisted in not
making any confession of what the inquisitors required, the ropes were
drawn in this manner four times successively.
The manner of inflicting the second torture was as follows: they forced
his arms backwards so that the palms of his hands were turned outward
behind him; when, by means of a rope that fastened them together at the
wrists, and which was turned by an engine, they drew them by degrees
nearer each other, in such a manner that the back of each hand touched,
and stood exactly parallel to each other. In consequence of this violent
contortion, both his shoulders became dislocated, and a considerable
quantity of blood issued from his mouth. This torture was repeated
thrice; after which he was again taken to the dungeon, and the surgeon
set the dislocated bones.
Two months after the second torture, the prisoner being a little
recovered, was again ordered to the torture-room, and there, for the
last time, made to undergo another kind of punishment, which was
inflicted twice without any intermission. The executioners fastened a
thick iron chain round his body, which crossing at the breast,
terminated at the wrists. They then placed him with his back against a
thick board, at each extremity whereof was a pulley, through which there
ran a rope that caught the end of the chain at his wrists. The
executioner then, stretching the end of this rope by means of a roller,
placed at a distance behind him, pressed or bruised his stomach in
proportion as the ends of the chains were drawn tighter. They tortured
him in this manner to such a degree, that his wrists, as well as his
shoulders, were quite dislocated. They were, however, soon set by the
surgeons; but the barbarians, not yet satisfied with this species of
cruelty, made him immediately undergo the like torture a second time,
which he sustained (though, if possible, attended with keener pains,)
with equal constancy and resolution. After this, he was again remanded
to his dungeon, attended by the surgeon to dress his bruises and adjust
the part dislocated, and here he continued till their Auto de Fe, or
jail delivery, when he was discharged, crippled and diseased for life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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