The Privy Council addressed a letter to Mr. Recorder of London, Mr. Topcliffe, Nicholas Fuller, William Gerrard, and Mr. Altham, requiring them to examine strictly the two suspected persons, “and yf by those persuasions and other meanes you shall use you shall not be able to bring them to confesse the truthe of this horrible facte, then we require you to put them both or either of them to the manacles in Bridewell, that by compulsory meanes the truthe of this wicked murther may be discovered, and who were complices and privy to this confederacy and fact” (“Acts of the Privy Council,” New Series, xxviii. 187). The case is interesting as showing that torture was at this time used in ordinary criminal cases. All the dictionaries speak of manacles as instruments of restraint merely. In the present case they were evidently an instrument of torture. Its nature must have been well known to Shakespeare’s audiences, for in “The Tempest,” referred to the year 1610, Prospero says:— “I’ll manacle thy neck and feet together” (Act I., sc. 2). From the Middlesex Sessions Rolls we learn that the murder was done on the night of November 12th. Richard Ainger the younger, Agnes, his wife, and Edward Ingram were tried for the crime. Richard and his wife pleaded Guilty, and were sentenced to be hanged. From Stow’s account it would appear that Richard alone was hanged. Ingram was found Not Guilty (Middlesex County Records, i. 241). =1598.= On the tenth of July, 19. persons for fellony were hanged at Tyborne, & one pressed to death at Newgate of London (Stow, p. 787). =1598.= The ninth of November, Edward Squire, of Greenewich was arraigned at Westminster condemned of high Treason, and on the 13. drawne from the Tower to Tyborne, and there hanged, bowelled, and quartered (Stow, p. 787). =1601.= After the capture of Essex—