Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 19.djvu/424

* TORTURE. 368 TORY. its use. Until the thirteenth century torture seems to have been unknown to the canon hiw; about that period the Roman treason law began to be adapted to lieresy as crimen kes(e majes- iatis Dicinw. A decree of Pope Innocent IV. in 1282, calling on civil magistrates to put persons accused of heresy to the torture, to elicit con- fessions against themselves and others, was prob- ably the earliest instance of ecclesiastical sanc- tion being extended to this mode of examina- tion. Gradually the ecclesiastical courts devel- oped from the Roman law and applied a system of torture which readied its culmination in the atrocities of the Inquisition. The influence of the C'luircli during the .Middle Ages undoul)tedly con- tributed to the adoption of torture by the civil tribunals. It was early adopted by the Italian municipalities, but its introduction into Western Europe as an instrument of judicial inquisition as distinguished from the ordeal or compurgation was slow. It first ajipeared in France in the latter part of the thirteenth century and in Ger- many in the fifteenth century, and ultimately became a part of the legal system of every Euro- pean nation except Sweden and England. The use of torture seems to have been repugnant to the genius of the law of England, and it never became a part of the conunon law, although its use by exercise of the royal prerogative was law- ful both in State trials and in the case of ordi- nary crimes. The first instance we have of its use' is in 1310, in aid of the ecclesiastical law, during the struggle between Pope Clement V. and the Templars. Edward II., when applied to to sanction the infliction of torture by the In- quisitors in the ease of certain Templars accused of heresy and apostasy, at first refused ; but on a remonstrance by Clement, he referred the mat- ter to the council ; and on the recommendation of the council, the Inquisitors were authorized to put the accused to the torture, but without mu- tilation or serious injury to the person, or effu- sion of the blood. During the Tudor period the council frequently assumed the power of direct- ing torture-warrants to the lieutenant of the Tower, and other officers both against State prisoners and those accused of other serious crimes ; and similar warrants were at times is- sued under the sign manual. Under James I. and Charles I. torture was less resorted to, and only in State trials. In 1628, in the case of Felton, the assassin of the Duke of Buckingham, the judges declared the examination of the ac- cused by torture, for the purpose of discovering his accomplices, to be illegal. The last recorded instance of the use of torture in England was in the reign of Charles I. (1640) to compel a con- fession of treason. The use of torture was never legal in the English colonies, and the few in- stances of torture in the American colonies were properly forms of execvition, or the infliction of peine forte et dure as a means of compelling the defendant to plead to an indictment. Even during the period when the use of torture was most prevalent its cruelty was recognized and its employment deplored as an evil necessary to the due administration of justice. In all ages there have been leading writers and think- ers who denounced the use of torture, not only because of its cruelty and its debas- ing effect upon public morals, but because of its unreliability as a means of discovering the truth, since it oftentimes led the innocent from weakness and exhaustion to plead guilty or accuse others of crimes which had not been committed. The horrors of the Inquisition and the excessive use of judiciiil torture from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century led to a gradual but nevertheless progressive change of public sentiment, which ultimately caused its disuse in all the countries of Europe. The use of torture was abolished in Prussia, Saxony, •Austria, and Switzerland by the middle of the eighteenth centurj'. Its use in Russia was lim- ited by command of Catharine II. in 1762, and finally abolished in 1801. In France it was abolished in 1789 (although temporarily restored by the Bourbons in 1814), in Wiirttemberg in 1806, in Bavaria in 1807, in Hanover in 1822, and in Baden in 1831. The instruments and methods of judicial tor- ture have been numerous. Among the Greeks torture was inflicted by the rack, the scourge, by thrusting the victim bent double into a vault which comjielled him to retain that position until his suffering became extreme, the injection of vinegar into the nostrils, and torture by ap- plication of fire. The Romans also made use of the rack, torture by fire, the scourge, and mutilat- ing the flesh by hooks. The most celebrated in- strument of torture is the rack, an oblong hori- zontal frame, on which the accused was stretched, while cords, attached to his legs and arms, were gradually strained by a lever or windlass, an operation which, when carried to extreme sever- ity, dislocated the joints of the wrists and ankles. It is as old as the second century in the south of Europe, and seems to have been known in one form to the Greeks, but is said to have been unknown in England till introduced into the Tower by the Duke of Exeter, constable of the Tower, whence it acquired the name of the 'Duke of Exeter's daughter." In Germany the rack was sometimes furnished with a roller, armed with spikes, rounded off, over which the sufferer was drawn backward and forward. The wheel, upon which the victim was bound and his bones broken by the gradual application of force, was also used throughout the Jliddle Ages. Among the lesser tortures may be men- tioned the thumbikins. boots, pincers, and mana- cles; and in England an instrument called the Scavenger's (properly Skeffington's) daughter, the invention of Sir William Skeffington, lieu- tenant of the Tower in the reign of Henry VIII. This enumeration, however, by no means includes all the methods, ingenious and unspeakably cruel, by which torture was inflicted upon innumerable victims during the Jliddle .ges. Consult: .Tar- dine, Reading on the Use of Torture in the Crimi- nal Lan^ of England (London, 1837) ; Lea, Su- perstition and Foree (Philadelphia. 1866) ; and Stephen. Tlintory of the Criminal Law of Eng- land (London, 1883). TORUS (Lat., protuberance, mattress, bed). A bold and simple architectural molding, of eon- vex outline, used in doorways and cornices, but especially in the bases of columns immediately above the plinth. TORY (from Ir. toridhe, tornidhe. torniqhe. pursuer, plunderer, from torighim, to fancy, pursue). The name of one of the historic par- ties in England. It was originally the term ap- plied to Irish brigands and about the year 1680