Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 44.djvu/121

 made Payne believe that ‘he could win the whole nation with a speech’ (Memoirs, p. 51). Payne came north to Scotland to manage the conspiracy there, and, on the discovery of the plot, was arrested. Burnet states that Robert Ferguson (d. 1714) [q. v.] the plotter informed against him (Own Time, p. 561); but there is no confirmation of this, and Balcarres mentions Montgomery as the informer (Memoirs, p. 66). As the use of torture was still permitted in Scotland, it was resolved to apply it on Payne, Sir William Lockhart having informed Lord Melville that if it were applied to Payne those that knew him were of opinion he would not abide it, ‘for he is but a dastardly fellow’ (Melville Papers, p. 529). An order for its application was therefore sent by the privy council on 4 Aug. 1690, and, as the order was not immediately acted on, a special order was sent by King William on 18 Nov. It was carried into effect on 10 and 11 Dec., the torture being first applied to his thumbs, and afterwards by means of ‘the boot’ to one of his legs; but Payne endured his excruciating sufferings with the utmost firmness, and they failed to elicit from him the slightest information. ‘It was surprising to me and others,’ wrote the Earl of Crawford to Melville, that he could ‘endure the heavy penances he was in for two hours’ (ib. p. 583). This was the last occasion on which torture was applied to a prisoner in Scotland.

Notwithstanding the representation of the privy council that, by the claim of right, delay in putting a prisoner to trial was contrary to law, it was not until 19 May 1693 that a warrant was given to the lord advocate to raise an indictment against Neville Payne for high treason before the parliament. In connection with the proposed trial there was printed for the information of members of parliament ‘Nevil Payn's Letter, and some other Letters that concern the Subject of the Letter, with Short Notes on them,’ 1693; but parliament decided that the process be remitted ‘to the commissioners of Justiciary, or otherwise that the process be continued until next meeting of parliament as his majesty shall think fit to order.’ Burnet states that Payne ‘sent word to several of the lords, in particular to Duke Hamilton, that as long as his life was his own, he would accuse none; but he was resolved he would not die, and he could discover enough to deserve his pardon.’ ‘This’ adds Burnet, ‘struck such terror into many of them whose sons or near relatives had been concerned with him that, he moving for a delay on pretence of some witnesses that were not then at hand, a time was given him beyond the continuance of the session; so he escaped, and the inquiry was shifted’ (Own Time, p. 597). On the petition of his nephew, Francis Payne, he was for some time after his torture allowed the benefit of the open prison, and permitted to be attended by his own physicians and surgeons; but the order was overruled by the king on 23 Dec. 1690, and it was decided that he should be received into close confinement. While in imprisonment in Stirling Castle in 1699, he stated, in a letter to the privy council, that he had been preparing an experiment for river navigation, and to attend to this he was granted liberty for a range of half a mile from the castle during a portion of each day (, Domestic Annals of Scotland, 2nd edit. ii. 218). He was still in prison as late as 9 Dec. 1700, when the Duke of Queensberry informed Carstares that it was not in their power to detain him, and advised that he should be set at liberty.

[Burnet's Own Time; Balcarres's Memoirs and Leven and Melville Papers in the Bannatyne Club; Lord Macaulay's History of England; Chambers's Book of Days, ii. 371; Mark Napier's Memorials of Graham of Claverhouse, viscount Dundee.]  PAYNE, JOHN (d. 1506), bishop of Meath, was an Irishman by birth, and early entered the order of St. Dominic. Proceeding to Oxford, he became D.D., and professor of theology in the Dominican convent there. He was subsequently elected provincial of the Dominicans in England. On 17 March 1483–4 he was appointed to the bishopric of Meath by a bull of Sixtus IV, having been granted custody of the temporalities a year before; he was enthroned on 4 Aug. following. He formed a close friendship with Gerald Fitzgerald, eighth earl of Kildare [q. v.], and, like most of the inhabitants of the Pale, was a strenuous Yorkist. When Lambert Simnel landed in Ireland in 1487, Payne became one of the foremost of his adherents; he preached the sermon at Simnel's coronation in Christ Church, Dublin, on Whit-Sunday, 24 May 1487. But after the battle of Stoke he was among the first to make his peace with Henry VII. He accompanied Sir Richard Edgcumbe (d. 1489) [q. v.], whom Henry had sent over to ‘settle Ireland’ from Malahide to Dublin, and was also employed as an intermediary between him and Kildare. Henry VII had asked the pope to excommunicate Payne, but on 25 May 1488 the bishop received a general pardon for his share in the rebellion, and he appears to have sought to further ingratiate himself with the king by accusing his metropolitan, Octavian de Palatio, archbishop of Armagh, of complicity in the rebellion (Let-