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, an Englishman, who, as he tells us in his travels, was taken up as a spy in Mallagom, a city of Spain, 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, because his journal abounded with blasphemies against the pope and the Virgin Mary. When he confessed himself a Protestant before the inquisitor, he was admonished to convert himself to the Roman church, and was allowed eight days to deliberate on it. In the mean while the inquisitor and Jesuits came to him often, sometimes wheedling him, sometimes threatening and reproaching him, and sometimes arguing with him. At length they endeavoured to overcome his constancy by kind assurances and promises; but all in vain. And therefore as he was immoveably fixed, he was condemned, in the beginning of Lent, to sutler the night following eleven most cruel torments; and after Easter to be carried privately to Granada, there to be burnt 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 hands 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 was almost quite strangled. After this they tied a small cord about both his great toes, and hung him up thereby with his head towards the ground, and then cut the rope about his neck, 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. But this method of torturing doth not belong to this place, where we are treating only of the inquisition of a crime not yet fully proved. If when the person is decently tortured he confesses nothing, he is allowed to go away free; and if he demands of his judges that he be cleared by sentence, they cannot deny it him; and they pronounce, that having diligently examined the merits of the process, they find nothing of the crime of which he was accused legally proved against him.