Felton was menaced with torture.  Rushworth has noticed the fact, and given some imperfect notes of his speech, when threatened to be racked; but the following is not only more ample, but more important in its essential particulars.  When Lord Dorset told him (says the MS. letter) “Mr. Felton, it is the king’s pleasure that you should be put to the torture, to make you confess your accomplices, and therefore prepare yourself for the rack:”—­Felton answered, “My lord, I do not believe that it is the king’s pleasure, for he is a just and a gracious prince, and will not have his subjects tortured against law.  I do affirm upon my salvation that my purpose was not known to any man living; but if it be his majesty’s pleasure, I am ready to suffer whatever his majesty will have inflicted upon me.  Yet this I must tell you, by the way, that if I be put upon the rack, I will accuse you, my lord of Dorset, and none but yourself."[254] This firm and sensible speech silenced them.  A council was held; the judges were consulted; and on this occasion they came to a very unexpected decision, that “Felton ought not to be tortured by the rack, for no such punishment is known or allowed by our law.”  Thus the judges condemned what the government had constantly practised.  Blackstone yields a fraternal eulogium to the honour of the judges on this occasion; but Hume more philosophically discovers the cause of this sudden tenderness.  “So much more exact reasoners, with regard to law, had they become from the jealous scruples of the House of Commons.”  An argument which may be strengthened from cases which are unknown to the writers of our history.  Not two years before the present one, a Captain Brodeman, one who had distinguished himself among the “bold speakers” concerning the king and the duke, had been sent to the Tower, and was reported to have expired on the rack; the death seems doubtful, but the fact of his having been racked is repeated in the MS. letters of the times.  The rack has been more frequently used as a state engine than has reached the knowledge of our historians:  secret have been the deadly embraces of the Duke of Exeter’s daughter.[255] It was only by an original journal of the transactions in the Tower that Burnet discovered the racking of Anne Askew, a narrative of horror!  James the First incidentally mentions in his account of the powder-plot that this rack was shown to Guy Fawkes during his examination; and yet under this prince, mild as his temper was, it had been used in a terrific manner.[256] Elizabeth but too frequently employed this engine of arbitrary power; once she had all the servants of the Duke of Norfolk tortured.  I have seen in a MS. of the times heads of charges made against some members of the House of Commons in Elizabeth’s reign, among which is one for having written against torturing!  Yet Coke, the most eminent of our lawyers, extols the mercy of Elizabeth in the trials of Essex and Southampton, because she had not used torture against