Next came the water torture. The tormentor
filled from a great water-jar, a small pottle which
had a hole at the bottom. Removing his
thumb, he then poured the water down
Lithgow's mouth. Having had nothing to drink
for three days, and being parched with the fever
of pain, Lithgow drained the pottle twice with
gratitude. The third time, suspecting evil, he
refused to drink; upon which the alcalde ordered
an iron wedge to be put in his mouth to keep
his teeth apart, and the torture then continued
until his body began to swell and the water
almost to choke him.

These punishments, sixty in all, lasted six
hours—from four o'clock in the afternoon until
ten o'clock at night; at last they released the
bleeding and groaning man, lifted up his almost
lifeless body (for he twice swooned), and
re-clothed him, giving him a little warm wine and
two eggs, to enable him to endure a second day's
torture. They then carried him to the coach,
and drove him back to his former prison again,
loaded with irons.

For five days more the governor threatened
him with the rack, in order to induce him
to confess; daily the coach was driven to the
door, and a great noise made, as if the alguazils
were coming again to carry him to the vineyard.
All this time the poor prisoner's only consolation
was the sympathy of his Turkish jailer,
who believed that the English and Moorish
fleets were coming soon to storm Malaga; once,
indeed, he had a visit from a female attendant
of the governor's wife, who brought him dishes
of honey, raisins, and sweetmeats.

Having now lain twenty days more in prison,
lame in every limb, and half devoured by vermin,
Lithgow was visited by the inquisitor and two
Jesuits, and was examined about what he had
written in the first edition of his travels against
the miracles performed in Loretto. He, constant
in refuting all their arguments, and defying
all their cruelty, the inquisitor got enraged
at his sarcasms, and would have stabbed him
but for the interposition of the Jesuits who were
with him. On the eighth day of these interviews,
the Jesuits came to him, with crocodile
tears in their eyes, and, falling on their knees,
cried: " Convert, convert, O, dear brother, for
our blessed Lady's sake convert!" Whereupon
he replied that he feared neither death nor fire,
if it were God's pleasure that he should suffer,
and warned them not to believe him, if, through
fear, he should pretend to change his religion.

Then the governor entered, declaring that he
had now discovered, but too late, that Lithgow
had been punished unjustly, and promising him
great rewards if he would change his religion—
offering to restore him his money and patents,
and to send him to court with a pension of three
hundred ducats a year. But finding both threats
and promises useless, the governor stormed out
of the room, threatening his prisoner with eleven
more tortures that day, and vowing that, after
Easter, he should be taken to Granada and
burned at midnight.

That same night the alguazils, servitors, and
priests entered the Englishman's cell, removed
his irons, stripped him, and proceeded to torture
him with water. They bound his throat with a
garter till they thought he was dead, and then
rolled him seven times round the room. They
next tied a small cord round each of his great
toes, and hoisting him by pulleys to the roof,
suddenly cut the rope and let him fall head
downward. Upon this he swooned, and the
governor, hearing the alarm of his supposed
death, came running up-stairs, bringing wine to
revive him, and reproaching the alguazils for
their undue severity. Then they re-clothed him,
and left him revived and singing a psalm; for
this cruelty had aroused a spirit of indomitable
resistance within him. All this time he was
kept alive, not so much by the scant prison fare
of bread and water as by handfuls of raisins and
figs secretly brought him by the Turkish slave,
and by wine furnished him by the governor's
cook, a Mexican woman.

The way in which this entrapped man finally
obtained his release was singular. In the Easter
of 1621, a gentleman of Granada came to visit
the governor of Malaga; and at supper the
governor, to pass the time, told him the story
of the heretic's sufferings and obstinacy. The
strange cavalier's servant, a Fleming, standing
behind his master's chair, heard the story
with sympathy and horror—that night his dreams
were of horrible tortures and burning men. In
the morning he went straight to the chief English
consul, and related to him the story of the
poor prisoner. The consul, suspecting it was
Lithgow, instantly called a meeting of English
factors, and sent letters quickly to the English
ambassador at Madrid; and he, going to the
king, obtained a warrant for the delivering up of
the unjustly detained prisoner, who was instantly
released.

Lithgow was at once carried out of prison in
blankets and put on board the Good Will, of
Harwich, one of the ships belonging to the English
squadron then lying in the roads. The English
merchants sent him a present of clothes, and a
barrel of wine, and some figs, eggs, oranges,
sugar, bread, and about two hundred reals in
money. Four English captains, finally, at
Lithgow's request, went to the governor to get back
his papers and patents and ducats; but in vain.

In fifty days from Malaga, the ship arrived
home, and Lithgow was instantly carried to
Theobalds on a feather-bed, and there brought
into the Privy Gallery, to be seen by the king
on his return from hunting; and there all the
court (from the king to the kitchen, as he
expresses it) saw him. By the king's order, and
at the royal expense, he was then sent to the
Bath, to recover his strength. Soon afterwards,
by the king's direction, he was conveyed to
Holborn, where the Spanish ambassador then
resided, and there the Spaniard promised to
restore him his money and papers, and to give him
a thousand pounds, which the governor of
Malaga was to refund.

A year passing, and these promises remaining
unfulfilled, Lithgow lost patience, and one