on the malignant passions of mankind.

A Japanese soldier, in the service of the Dutch, happened one night to fall into conversation with an European sentinel, who was posted on the ramparts of the citadel, and amongst other matters about which they discoursed, the Japanese asked many questions relative to the nature of the fortifications, the number of cannon, and the strength of the garrison. The Japanese troops did duty in the exterior town, but were not allowed to form any part of the garrison of the fortress; so that a kind of general suspicion of their fidelity appears to have been entertained. An officer who had observed the sentinel in conversation with the Japanese, consequently interrogated the former, as to the subject of their discourse, and he considered the report of the sentinel of sufficient importance to be communicated to the governor. The Japanese was immediately arrested, on suspicion of being concerned in some treasonable design. Upon being put to the torture, he confessed that he and some of his countrymen were guilty of the crime with which he was charged. His supposed accomplices, together with a Portugacse who superintended the Dutch slaves, were accordingly seized, and likewise put to the torture. The examination of these persons lasted four days, during which time the English factors transacted their business in the citadel as usual; a striking proof, not only of their being altogether unsuspicious of any design on the part of the Dutch government to implicate them in the alleged conspiracy, but likewise of the entire consciousness of their own innocence. They were in fact perfectly unacquainted with the

Japanese and Portuguese, who had already suffered under these summary and harsh proceedings. But there was another circumstance which the government eagerly scized on, as a colourable ground of accusation against the English. A person of the name of Price, formerly surgeon to the English factory, was at this time confined in the citadel, for having, in a drunken frolic, threatened to set fire to the house of a Dutchman, against whom he bore some personal resentment. The ingenious suspicion of the government connecting this threat with the alleged plot, fixed upon Price as an accomplice; and he was brought before the Fiscal for examination, whilst the Japanese soldier was a second time suffering the agonies of the rack. He was told that the English were accused of being confederates in the conspiracy, and that unless he immediately revealed the whole circumstances of the affair, he should undergo a still severer punishment than that which he now beheld. Price replied that he knew of no plot, and had therefore nothing to reveal; but the execution of the punishment with which he had been menaced, subdued his conscience as well as his constancy; and he answered in the affirmative all the questions of his unrelenting judges. Upon an admission of assumed facts, thus wrung from a victim on the rack, by the dread of further pain, and the fear of ulterior death, the Dutch government arrested Mr. Towerson, the chief of the English factory, and the whole of the English factors in the island of Amboyna.

This measure, which nothing but the most clear, unbiassed, positive, and unexceptionable evidence of the supposed conspiracy could have

rendered

rendered justifiable on any principle, was followed up with a summary examination of the prisoners, and with the process of the torture, in order to extort confession. Beaumont and Johnson, two seamen were first examined. The latter was brought to the rack, whilst the former was placed in an adjoining apartment, where he could distinctly hear the groans of his companion at every application of the torture; so that the same instrument which inflicted actual punishment on the person of the one, might, by means of intimidation, serve to operate on the mind of the other. Johnson having borne the torments of the rack, with immoveable inflexibility, was confronted with Price; but the former persisted with manly firmness in asserting his innocence of what was laid to his charge. In defiance of the various modes of torture, both with water and fire, which were applied to him, he resolutely adhered to the truth; and thus exhibited a noble example of the triumph of fortitude over all the efforts of a depraved and ferocious cruelty. He was then remanded back to confinement,and Beaumont was brought from the adjoining apartment. The venerable appearance of this man, who was stricken in years, and the pious ejaculations which he uttered in protestation of his innocence, brought back his judges to some sense of humanity, and he was dismissed with the sad privilege of being confined in the same dungeon with Johnson. On the following day, nine more of the prisoners were examined, and underwent the same tortures which Johnson had endured and withstood. But the fortitude of some of the sufferers was unequal to the severity of the trial. A person of the name of

Collins, when he beheld the dreadful apparatus by which he was to suffer, shrunk from so horrible a scene. But this was the effect of terror, at which the conscience of the unhappy man immediately revolted as soon as the cause was removed. When he was conducted into another apartment, he protested that he had nothing to confess, for he was entirely ignorant of the existence of any conspiracy whatever; and appealed to God, with solemn vehemence, to attest the truth of his protestation, and move the hearts of his judges with compassion. This moral proof of innocence, more convincing in such a case than even the positive evidence of human testimony, was wholly disregarded by his merciless accusers, who were more intent on punishing than on discovering the authors of a plot, in the reality of which it is manifest they never believed. Collins was accordingly bound to the rack, and the tortures were ordered to be applied, when he again implored for mercy, and promised to confess; but at the same time avowed that it was the torments they were going to inflict, which he dreaded, and that rather than endure them, he was ready to answer in the affirmative any questions which the Fiscal should be pleased to ask. He then admitted that he, and some of the other English prisoners had engaged in a conspiracy with the Japanese, to take the citadel by surprise. He was asked whether Mr. Towerson was a confederate in the plot? to which he resolutely replied in the negative. The Fiscal however insisted that Towerson was the prime mover of the conspiracy. Collins was then asked, whether he had been sworn to secrecy on the Bible? He at first answered, no; but on

being ordered to the torture, he said that an oath of secrecy had been taken. After various interrogatories of a similar tendency, to all of which he signified his assent, this person was remanded to confinement.

Mr. John Clark, a factor, who was next examined, was not so readily intimidated into submission; and he was therefore treated with a savage cruelty, proportioned to the unshaken intrepidity which he displayed. For upwards of two hours he withstood the excruciating torments of a greater variety of tortures than the most ingenious depravity perhaps ever before furnished to the barbarity of the most merciless tyrant. All the inventions of cruelty were exhausted, and the strength of this brave man was almost entirely spent, before his spirit yielded to his inhuman oppressors; and even then, all that could be extorted from him was a bare assent to the interrogations of the Fiscal, which amounted to nothing more than the questions that had been already put to Collins. Finding it impossible to force Clark to any declaration, or even admission more suitable to their purpose, he was thrown into a loathsome dungeon, whilst yet bleeding, and unable to move with the horrible burnings and lacerations which had been inflicted by the tortures; and unprovided with any attendance, much less with any sort of surgical aid, the unhappy man perished in a few days, in a state of putrefaction.

So deep a terror was struck into

most of the prisoners not yet examined, by the dreadful cruelties with which Clark had been treated, that four of them gave affirmative answers to the questions asked them, without being put to the torture. These men even went so far as to sign a formal confession, which had been purposely drawn up. But they were no sooner conducted back to their place of confinement, than they burst out into the most fervent prayers and supplications to God for forgiveness of the perjury, which the dread of the torture could alone have prompted them to commit.

The last person examined was Mr. George Sharrock, superintendant of the English factory at Hitto, a place situated in the island of Amboyna, at a considerable distance from the Dutch capital. Upon being brought up to the place of torture, he prayed God to enable him to frame such probable falshoods against himself and his countrymen, as might serve to persuade his judges, and deliver him from the torments of the rack. But when the Fiscal proceeded to ques tion him, he stood motionless and terrified, and unable to utter a syllable in reply. Appalled with the notion of the crime he was about to commit, in giving his testimony to falshoods which involved the lives of his innocent and suffering compatriots, he fell upon his knoes, in a pious frenzy, protesting to God his total freedom from the guilt imputed to him, and invoking the clemency of his judges. Exasperated, not touched with pity, at this affecting exhibition, the re

VOL. VI.

C

morseless

morseless Governor and his Fiscal gave immediate orders for the application of the torture. He then besought for a short respite, eagerly urging in his vindication that he was actually at Hitto on the very day on which the supposed conspiracy was alleged to be planned; that from that day he had not been at the town of Amboyna, until brought there under arrest, and that he was ready to prove these facts on the positive evidence of Dutchmen of unquestionable credit and good faith. But even this defence was wholly disregarded, and the torture being applied, his fear of pain at last drove him to the commission of that crime of which be had expressed his abhorrence. with such emphatic sincerity. He then related that he had heard Clark say he would be revenged of the Dutch, for the insufferable wrongs they had done the English; and that for the execution of that purpose, he had proposed a scheme to Towerson, and that he had intreated his permission to go to Macassar, in order to consult measures with the Spaniards for seizing the smaller factories in Amboyna, and the neighbouring islands. On being asked whether Towerson assented to this proposal, he replied that he was in the highest degree incensed with Clark, for entertaining it, and could never afterwards endure him. Enraged at this answer, the Fiscal again threatened

See Harleian Collect. vol. ii.

him with the torture; but after various contradictory stories and inconsistent replies, all tending to shew the fallacy of his first relation, it was thought useless to persist farther in the examination of Sharrock, and he was sent back to his dungeon. On the day following, he was again brought before the Fiscal, to sign his confession, which he did with all imaginable reluct ance: but he had nevertheless the resolution to declare, that the confession to which he had thus subscribed his name, in order to deprecate the implacable hostility of his judges, was totally without foundation *.

Thus by the infliction of a variety of monstrous and insupportable barbarities, were a number of innocent and blameless men loaded and scourged to confessions, the numberless incongruities and improbabilitics of which render palpably false; and of which they made a solemn disavowal, the instant they were relieved from those pains, that had overborne their nature. The Dutch government however, with that unbending perseverance which is one of the characteristic qualities of enormous vice, proceeded on this evidence alone to pass judgment on Mr. Towerson, and the whole of the prisoners, both English and Japanese +. They were all condemned to death, excepting four, who had adduced positive proof of their being at Ilitto at the time of

the

the pretended conspiracy. The whole of the prisoners were then brought up together before the Governor and Fiscal, to receive sentence, when the English reproached the Japanese, for their false accusation of innocent men, who had never injured them, and whom they had never seen. The Japanese, according to the Asiatic style, answered only, by shewing the wounds they had received from the torture, and by asking whether human beings could resist a trial, which would have changed even the nature of inanimate bodies? Three of the English were pardoned; one from permission having been given for four of them to draw lots, the other two at the earnest and repeated entreaties of the Dutch merchants. Mr. Towerson, and the rest of the English, ten in number, together with one Portuguese and eleven Japanese, were ordered to be executed; and on the 27th of February, 1623, they were all conducted to the place of execution, where, after making a solemn renunciation of their confessions before the Dutch clergyman who attended them t, they suffered death. The following day was devoted to the solemnization of a public thanksgiving, for the signal deliverance of the Dutch settlement at Amboyna from this mighty conspiracy1.

These extraordinary proceedings being thus brought to a final termination, the several English factors who remained, were sent to Batavia; from whence, with the per

Harleian Collect. ibidem supra.

mission of the Supreme Council,' they were to be conveyed to Eng land. After the departure of these unhappy persons, the Governor and Fiscal made an excursion to Banda, with the view of discovering some plausible pretext on which to ground an accusation against the English agents in that island, for being concerned with the conspirators at Amboyna. But after the severest scrutiny into the con duct of Mr. Welden the president, and the subordinate factors, no circumstance was found that could even give a colour to suspicion §.

Welden received from the governor the first intelligence respecting his countrymen at Amboyna; and no less forcibly struck with the improbability of their having formed a conspiracy, than touched with sorrow for their fate, he immediately proceeded to that island, in order to make every practicable enquiry amongst the natives, relative to the transaction, as well as to demand from the Dutch Government the restoration of the property of the English Company. The result of his enquiries contains a substantial confirmation of the deposi tions of the surviving factors, who returned to England: but his endeavours to obtain the company's effects proved altogether unsuccessful. The government of Amboyna alleged, that they had no authority to restore them, and referred him to the Supreme Council at Batavia, whitherWelden accordingly went ¶; for the ardour of his public spirit

was