a stupid ass, and a gnawing worm with
envious lips, I bequeath thee to a carnificiale
reward, where a flaxen rope will soon despatch
thy backbiting slander, and free my toilsome
travels and now painfull labours from the deadly
poison of thy sharp-edged calumnies, and so go
hang thyself, for I neither will respect thy love
nor regard thy malice."

There is one strange feature in the volume.
Lithgow gives no account of his antecedents or
of his motives for travelling, and this rather
confirms me in my opinion that he was a spy of
King James's. But this—two hundred years
after—matters little; suffice it to say, that after
being often robbed, and beaten, and shipwrecked,
and in danger from the Turks and the galleys,
Lithgow arrived in Malaga in the October of
the year 1620, intending there to embark in
a French ship for Alexandria, thence hoping
to reach the dominions of Prester John: that
priestly monarch of whom Shakespeare, a great
listener to travellers' stories, had also heard.

Unluckily, the midnight after his arrival the
English fleet anchored at Malaga. The town,
mistaking our sailors for Turks, was thrown into
a paroxysm of alarm. The castle bells rang backward,
the drums beat, the women and children
fled to the interior, and the men remained all
night under arms. At daybreak the sight of
the English colours removed the Spaniards'
fears, and the English " General " and his chief
officers came on shore, and informed Don
Jaspar Ruiz de Peredas, the governor, that they
were under sail to attack Algiers.

Resisting all overtures to accompany his
countrymen, Lithgow was walking to his lodgings
to pack up for his venturous voyage, when,
in a narrow lonely street of the slanting town,
nine alguazils leaped out on him, and gripping
his throat to stop his shouts, wrapped him in a
black frieze cloak, and carried him to the
governor's house, where he was locked up in a
small room until mass should be over. On the
governor's return from mass, Lithgow was shown
into a room where the governor, the captain of
the town, the alcalde major, and the state
scrivener, sat to examine him. They asked him
his motive in coming to Spain, the destination
of the English fleet, and why the English admiral
had refused to come on shore? But finding that
neither threats nor cajolery would draw confession
from him, they all at once shouted out that
he lied, and called him a Lutheran son of the
devil, and a spy and a traitor who had been
hiding nine months in Seville, obtaining information
for the English admiral when the Plate
fleet was expected from the Indies. They then
searched his cloak-bag, but found only a book of
passports and testimonials, a Jerusalem medal,
and a letter of safe-conduct from King James.

For fear that he should be seen by his
countrymen, poor Lithgow was then incarcerated in
the corregidor's house (his ship that night off
on the free ocean), and first searched. In the
neck of his doublet, between two canvases,
were found one hundred and thirty-seven double
pieces of gold, three hundred and forty-eight
ducats of which the governor pocketed, giving
the other two hundred crowns in aid of the
foundation of a new Capucin monastery.

Two Turkish slaves then led Lithgow to his
prison, and there laid him on his back, heavily
ironed, and left him to lament the thirst for
travelling that had led him into such dangers. His
only food for forty-six days was three ounces of
bread and a pint of water daily. On the forty-seventh
day, he heard at daybreak the noise of a
coach in the street. Soon afterwards nine alguazils
entered, and carried him, ironed as he was,
into a carriage, and drove to a vine-press-house
in a lonely vineyard, a league from the town,
where the governor and alcalde were.

Still refusing to confess himself a spy, the
poor Englishman, faint with hunger, was
sentenced to the rack. He was carried to the
stone gallery, where the rack stood, and the
tormentor, as he was rightly called, began to unbolt
his irons: striking off an inch of the unhappy
prisoner's left heel, in a rage at not being able
to unscrew the wedges quick enough. The
moment the irons fell off, Lithgow sank on his
knees, and prayed to God for strength in that
hour of fiery trial: determining that no pain
should induce him to confess himself guilty. He
was then stripped to the skin, and hung by the
shoulders to the rack, with cords that went
under both his arms, and ran on two rings of
iron that were fixed in the wall above his head.
The tormentor next drew down the prisoner's
legs through the two sides of the rack, and tied
a cord about each ankle: bending his knees at
the same time so as to crush his knee-pans
against the wood of the rack.

The corregidor, who looked on, observing
that the name of King James was tattooed on
the prisoner's arm, here ordered the executioner
to tear it asunder; on which the ruffian, tying
both Lithgow's arms, laid down on his back,
setting his feet against the prisoner, and dragged
on the cords until they cut through the sinews to
the bone. By this time the miserable man, half
dead with pain, his eyes starting, his mouth in a
foam, kept, shouting, " I am innocent, I am
innocent! O Lord, have mercy upon me, and
strengthen me with patience to undergo this
barbarous murder! " At length, they struck
him on the face with cudgels, and forced him to
silence.

The rack was not in appearance a sort of
mangle, with windlasses, as usually represented
by artists, but a triangle, formed of massive
wooden beams with a plank in the centre, made
to support the body of the prisoner. The legs
were strained apart, and then bound by cords,
which passed through holes in the outer plank,
and terminated in pierced wooden blocks,
through which a stick was inserted, in order
to screw the cords tighter and tighter. The
cords were bound round six parts of Lithgow's
legs and arms; and the severe tortures
he underwent consisted in three turns of each
of these six cords, seven times repeated for each
torture. Between each of these seven tortures,
he was urged to confession.