Crime & punishment > Times of Claverhouse, or, Sketches of the persecution

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THE TIMES OF CLAVERHOUSE.
say, then, that considering it as not an improbable
circumstance that we ourselyes may softer, it is
right that we should accustom ourselves to look
broadly and firmly in the face the cruelties which
were practised on our persecuted fathers. This field
is wide, and it is only a very partial glance that
can here be given, leaving a more expansive survey
to be taken, probably, at another time. In view¬
ing a subject so ample, and of such painful interest,
there are three points of it on which we may fix
our gaze, and notice the cruelties which were prac¬
tised by the council,—the cruelties that were exhi¬
bited on the scaffolds,—and the cruelties of the mili¬
tary in the fields.
That the council were guilty of horrid cruelties
in their persecution of the Covenanters, is to be
seen at the very first glance of the history of their
doings. In extorting confessions from the accused,
they had recourse to the application of those engines
of torture peculiar to the dark ages. “ There was
an instrument of exquisite torture called the ‘thumb-
kin/ which, on certain occasions, was applied with¬
out mercy. For some time the patient bore the
pain it occasioned with a firm and unchanging
countenance; but as the instrument was screwed
closer and closer to the thumb, the colour of the
face rapidly came and went, and the person writhed
himself with the agonizing pain when the thumb
was heard crashing to pieces within the instrument,
till nature could hear no more, and the poor sufferer
fell down in a swoon.” Such barbarity, one would
think, could proceed only from savages, and persons
whose feelings were more allied to fiends than to
men. But this barbarous mode of inflicting tor-