Some more executions took place, and a great many culprits were fined and set at liberty. For the next few years the Tower held but few captives. Peter Burchet, a member of the Middle Temple, was committed in October, 1573, for attempting to murder Hawkins, the celebrated admiral, whom he mistook for the Chancellor Hatton. During his confinement, he struck to death a man left in charge of him, who was quietly reading the Bible at the window. His hand was first struck off for striking a blow in a royal palace, after which he was hanged at Temple Bar. In 1577 a gentleman named Sherin was drawn on a hurdle from hence to Tyburn and hanged for denying the Queen’s supremacy, and six others were carried to Norwich for the like fate for coining. But it was in 1580 that the cells again became filled with Roman Catholic prisoners. It is easy to account for this. The breach with Rome was complete; the Papal Bull had been issued for the dethronement of Elizabeth, and the newly-established Order of Jesuits was sending forth its missionaries to carry out the decree. And so it was war to the knife. Thus, in June 1580, we have William and Robert Tyrwhitt sent to the Tower for attending Mass at their sister’s marriage; the Archbishop of Armagh, the Earls of Kildare and Clanricarde, with other nobles, for being concerned in the Earl of Desmond’s insurrection in Ireland; and before the year was out, six Catholic priests and three laymen are added. Next year it appears as if a system of torture was established; some were confined in “Little Ease,” a dungeon twenty feet below the level, in which they could neither stand upright nor lie down at length; some were racked, some placed in the “Scavenger’s Daughter,” an iron instrument which held bound the head, hands and feet. Add to these the thumbscrew and the boot. The most conspicuous prisoner in 1581 was Father Campion, an eloquent Jesuit who had worked hard to raise sedition in various parts of the country. He was dragged off with two other seminary priests to ignominious death, so were seven more priests that year; in 1583 a Warwickshire gentleman named Somerville strangled himself to avoid the ghastly dismemberment, but his father-in-law Arden suffered it. In 1584 five seminary priests suffered, as did Francis, the eldest son of Sir John Throckmorton, convicted of treasonable correspondence with the Queen of Scots. In January, 1585, a clearance was made of those prisoners charged with religious offences, and twenty-one of them were shipped off to France. But their places were occupied by others, charged with complicity with the treasonable practices of Throckmorton. Among them were the Earls of Northumberland and Arundel. The former killed himself in the Tower to prevent that bitch, as he called the Queen, from getting possession of his estates by his attainder. Arundel was tried and condemned to death in 1589, but Elizabeth delayed the execution, though she gave very strict orders about his confinement.