In the third year of King Charles the first, Felton was threatened with the rack by the Earl of Dorset in the Tower, and Laud, then bishop of London, repeated the threats in council, but the king insisted upon the judges being consulted as to the legality of the application, and they being unanimously of opinion that it was illegal, it was never attempted afterwards. The answer which Felton made to Laud’s threats, is well worthy of attention; when Laud told him “if he would not confess he must go to the rack,” he replied “if it must be so, he could not tell whom he might nominate in the extremity of torture, and if what he should say then was to go for truth, he could not tell whether his Lordship (meaning the bishop of London) or which of their Lordships he might name, for torture might draw unexpected things from him.” In the year 1680 (32 Charles 2d) Elizabeth Collier was tried at the Old Bailey,[28] before Mr. Baron Weston, for the publication of a libel, in which many circumstances were related for the purpose of inducing a belief that Prance, when a prisoner in Newgate, had been tortured there, and he was produced to prove the falsehood of the publication. The learned judge in summing up the evidence to the jury said, “But you must first know the laws of the land do not admit a torture, and since Queen Elizabeth’s time there hath been nothing of that kind ever done. The truth is indeed, in the twentieth year of her reign, Campion was just stretched upon the rack, but yet not so but he could walk; but when she was told it was against the law of the land to have any of her subjects racked (though that was an extraordinary case, a world of seminaries being sent over to contrive her death, and she lived in continual danger) yet it was never done after to any one, neither in her reign, who reigned twenty-five years, nor in king James’s reign, who reigned twenty-two years after, nor in king Charles the first’s reign, who reigned twenty-four years after; and GOD in Heaven knows there hath been no such thing offered in this king’s reign; for I think we may say we have lived under as lawful and merciful a government as any people whatsoever, and have as little blood shed, and sanguinary executions as any nation under heaven.” The learned judge may have been mistaken when stating Campion to be the last person racked, for in Murden’s state papers, one Atslow, as before observed, is mentioned to have been tortured four years afterwards. Mr. Baron Weston states that upon a suggestion made to Queen Elizabeth of the illegality of the practice, it was discontinued in her reign, and thus we may account for Campion being racked with so little severity, as to be able to walk afterwards, and to manage the conferences with protestant doctors during his confinement in prison.