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Mr Jamieson's curious communication on the Origin of the Picts,—Mr Duncan's View of the Commerce and Manufactures of Glasgow,-a very able article on the merits of Mr Kemble as an Actor,-and a learned paper on Atmospheric Phenomena,—will appear in our next.

An interesting account of Block-Printing is in preparation.

A series of Original Letters to and from Queen Elizabeth-Also Original Letters of Burns-will appear successively, as our arrangements permit.

As soon as we have recovered from the alarm occasioned by the abrupt appearance of Satan, his very characteristic address may find a place in our Miscellany.

Our materials will soon enable us to present our readers with a comprehensive view of the improvements which have taken place in this Metropolis from a very early period to the present time.

Printed by George Ramsay & Co.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE SCOTS MAGAZINE was begun in 1739, and has been continued, without interruption, during the seventy-eight years which have since elapsed. It forms now a record of Scottish Literature and History, during that long period, the value of which is so universally acknowledged, as to render all panegyric superfluous. For some time past, however, it has been strongly pressed on the Proprietors, from various quarters, that, in order more fully to adapt it to the taste of the times, a considerable enlargement of plan was become necessary, and that it ought to receive some improvements in typography and appearThe Proprietors felt some hesitation in making any change upon the plan of a work so long established; but the ample and highly respectable assurances which they have received, both of regular support, and of occasional contributions, in the event of such a change, have at length determined them to enter with spirit and zeal upon the execution of the improvements suggested.

ance.

The Proprietors, therefore, beg to intimate, that the present series closes with the Number for July; and that the Number for August forms the first of a new series, upon a plan greatly enlarged and improved, and which will combine, with the objects hitherto treated in the SCOTS MAGAZINE, a variety of others, which the narrower limits of that Miscellany did not permit it to embrace.

To form a repository for the short and occasional productions of men of genius,-to draw illustrations of the manners, history, and antiquities of Scotland, from mines

yet unexhausted or unexplored,-to record the remarkable occurrences of the Republic of Letters, including an obituary of its eminent characters,-to illustrate the progress and present state of the fine, as well as of the useful arts, and to preserve a faithful journal of foreign and domestic occurrences;-these are objects which, with many others of a nature too miscellaneous to be particularly enumerated, they confidently expect to fulfil, with a success not attained by any similar work hitherto attempted in this country.

The work will now be entitled, "THE EDINBURGH MAGAZINE and LITERARY MISCELLANY, being a New Series of the SCOTS MAGAZINE," and will be published monthly. The Magazine bearing the former title was, in 1804, incorporated with the SCOTS MAGAZINE, and the two united have since been published under the title of the Scors MAGAZINE AND EDINBURGH LITERARY MISCELLANY. It will contain Six Sheets of Letter Press, and, being printed in a closer manner, will comprise in each number nearly double the present quantity of matter. The price will be Two Shillings. This moderate addition is rendered unavoidable by the enlargement of the plan and the improvement of the materials; nor is there now any publication of the kind which is sold at a lower rate.

August 1817.

THE

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE,

AND

LITERARY MISCELLANY.

AUGUST 1817.

ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE INTRODUCTION INTO SCOTLAND, AND THE USE MADE THERE, OF THE INSTRU

savage mockery of judicial inquiry.' In Scotland, where torture continued to be employed long after it was aban

MENT OF TORTURE CALLED THUM- doned in England, there were two

BIKENS.

Ir history were not full of the enormities which man has perpetrated upon man, under the sanction of established systems of religion and law, it would be difficult in an enlightened age, to believe, that torture had ever been employed as an instrument of justice. We can enter into those mistaken feelings in regard to the nature and end of punishment, which have sometimes prompted men to inflict cruel torments upon the convicted perpetrators of great crimes; but there seems to be no apology in any good feeling of our nature, for the blind and brutal expedient of applying torture, in order to force the discovery of such crimes. In this case, there is not only a flagrant violation of every principle of justice and humanity, by the infliction of torment previous to conviction, but guilt and innocence are made wholly to depend upon the physical strength or resolution of the sufferer. It is nevertheless true, however, that almost all countries have, at one time or other, had recourse to this barbarous expedient; insomuch, that it would require a volume of no small size to describe even the instruments which have been employed in this

modes chiefly in use, the torture of the boots and that of the thumbikens. The exquisite picture of the torturing of Macbriar, in the Tales of my Landlord, has made every one acquainted with the cruel process employed in the torture of the boots; and as we are enabled, through the kindness of Alexander Dunlop, Esq. banker in Greenock, grand-nephew of the celebrated Principal Carstares, who was tortured with the thumbikens in 1684, to present our readers with a figure of the instrument used upon that occasion; we have collected together a few particulars regarding its origin and employment in this country.

The thumbikens, as the name imports, was an instrument applied to the thumbs, in such a way as to enable the executioner to squeeze them violently; and this was often done with so much force as to bruise the thumb-bones, and swell the arms of the sufferer up to his shoulders. The thumbikens used in torturing Principal Carstares was an iron instrument fastened to a table with a screw, the

The materials of this picture are evi. dently drawn from the account given by Wodrow of the torturing of Mitchell, in the first volume of his History.

upper part of the instrument being squeezed down upon the thumbs by means of another screw, which the executioner pressed at the command of his employers.

The torture of the boots occurs at an earlier period in our history than that of the thumbikens; and is mentioned in conjunction with some other torturing instruments, of which we have not been able to find any description in the writings of our antiquaries. Thus we read, that, in 1596, the son and daughter of Alison Balfour, who was accused of witchcraft, were tortured before her to make her confess her crime, in the manner following: "Her son was put in the buits, where he suffered fifty-seven strokes; and her daughter, about seven years old, was put in the pilniewinks.' In the same case, mention is made, besides pilniewinks, pinniewinks or pilliewinks, of caspitaws or caspicaws, and of tosots, as instruments of torture. * Lord Royston, in his manuscript notes upon Mackenzie's Criminal Law, conjectures, that these may have been only other names for the buits and thumbikens ; † and thus much seems certain, that in those times, there was some torturing device applied to the fingers, which bore the name of pilniewinks; but it will immediately appear, that the most authentic accounts assign the introduction and use of the instrument known by the name of thumbikens, to a much later period.

"It has been very generally asserted," says Dr Jamieson, "that part of the cargo of the invincible Armada was a large assortment of thumbikens, which, it was meant, should be employed as powerful arguments for convincing the heretics." The country of the inquisi

* Maclaurin's Criminal Cases, Introduct. p. 35.

+ Quoted by Maclaurin, Ibid. p. 36. See Newes from Scotland, declaring the damnable life of Doctor Fian, a nota ble sorcerer, who was burned at Edinburgh in Januarie last, 1591.

the learned author would, before he pubSDictionary, v. Thumbikens. We wish

lishes another edition of his Dictionary, extend his researches to the pilniewinks, caspicars, and tosots, implements which he has wholly overlooked; though they seem to have been at one time as freely employed upon the persecuted witches, as the

"to

tion was certainly a fit quarter from whence to derive so congenial an implement; but other accounts, as we have said, and these apparently unquestionable, assign it a later introduction, and from a quarter and by means of agents, very well fitted for the production and importation of such a commodity. In the journal of the proceedings of the Scotch Privy-Council kept by Lord Fountainhall, and partly published in that very curious collection called his Decisions, he takes occasion to mention the origin of the thumbikens, in his account of the various torturings inflicted in 1684, upon William Spence, a person who had been in the employment of the Earl of Argyll. Upon the 26th of July in that year, this unfortunate man was put to the torture of the boots," to force him," as Fountainhall says, reveal what he knew of the Earl's and other persons accessions to the late English fanatic plot, and the association and design of rising;" but as he would confess nothing at this time, "he was put in General Dalyell's hands; and it was reported, that, by a hair shirt and prickings, as the witches are used, he was five nights kept from sleep, till he was turned half distracted." Spence's resolution did not, however, forsake him, for sometime after he had, with due consideration, doubtless, of Dalyell's fitness for the office, been placed in the fangs of that merciless persecutor; but, on the 7th of August, after being tried in vain with the thumbikens, in which "his thumbs were crushed," and being about to be again tortured in the boots, he then, says Fountainhall, became "frighted, and desired time, and he would tell what he knew; whereon, they gave him some time, and sequestrated him in the Castle of Edinburgh, as a place where he would be free from any bad advice to be obstinate in not revealing." It is upon this occasion that Fountainhall mentions the origin of the thumbikens, stating, that this instrument was 66 new invention used among the colliers having seen them used in Muscovy." upon transgressors, and discovered by General Dalyell and Drummond, they

a

The account which Bishop Burnet

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