by Alan Judd
We learned later from Babington’s many examinations – I think he was interrogated nine times – that Poley had urged him to flee, saying he would do the same himself. This was no doubt to preserve his reputation among the plotters and with Thomas Morgan and others on the Continent. He could have suggested it to Mr Secretary, who might have agreed so long as we had sufficient notice to apprehend the plotters, but as so often with men like Poley their complications serve but to confound themselves. It was because this cover story was not planned and properly disseminated that we had later to protect Poley’s reputation by imprisoning him for a period.
The plotters scattered, two to Cheshire, one to Worcestershire, but the rest never got far from London. They fled north of the city to St John’s Wood where they hid for about ten days. Finding country living hard and unforgiving, as any animal could have told them, they finally tottered into the town of Harrow, ragged, filthy, starving scarecrows. Begging for food brought them to notice of the authorities and they took their next meal in the Tower, which must have been a relief, at first.
They did not need racking. In their weakened state they talked readily in exchange for food and rest, Babington no less than the others although he was shown the rack before questioning, to encourage him. This meant I was again distracted from my cipher work since I had to prepare questions and evidence for them to swear. I had personally to confront Babington with the cipher he used in his correspondence with the Queen of Scots. Indeed, I had to help him through it since he was far from expert in these matters. In the presence of a notary public he confirmed that it was the alphabet ‘by which only I have written unto the Queen of Scots or received letters from her’. Asked to recall from memory the last letter he had had from her – not knowing of course that we had added the forged paragraph to it – he stated that she had ‘required to know the names of the six gentlemen: that she might give her advice thereupon’. This was very satisfactory, to me especially, since it showed that our forgery was swallowed whole. Although I was relieved when it was not included in the trial of the Queen of Scots – who would rightly have denied it, of course – I suspect it would have stood the test.
I have said that Christopher had no further involvement in the case but he was greatly curious about the Tower and the details of examination and torture, especially the circumstances in which torture licences were granted. He wanted to know how prisoners responded, at which points they talked. He even wanted descriptions of the cellars and chambers in which such examinations were conducted. Most people were rightly fearful of such things and preferred not to hear about them lest they had nightmares. But Christopher wanted to know it. He was like that about everything. He wanted to know everything.
‘Is this for your plays?’ I asked. ‘You want to have someone racked on stage?’
‘One day, maybe. Torture is so terrible, it fascinates me as much as it frightens me.’
‘Yet you want to witness what frightens you. You enjoy it?’
‘I want to confront my demons. Don’t you?’
‘I have seen enough of racking and torture and do not like it. No demons beckon me to it.’
‘You are a simple man, Thomas. Simplicity is a virtue.’
Christopher was very persuasive. When he wanted something his eyes shone with wanting, like a child’s. And, like a child, he persisted until his whole being seemed suffused with longing. Eventually, swallowing my aversion, I took him to witness one of the interrogations of Babington. He was not being racked, which was a relief to me, so it was not in a cellar but in a large upper room in the Tower with windows overlooking the river. When we arrived the examining officials and lawyers were still waiting for him to be brought up from the cells. They talked among themselves with some good humour, like men before a market. When brought in in chains he made a pale and pathetic figure, gazing in wonder at so many of importance gathered to hear him. He was eager to speak and several times answered so fully and repetitively that he had to be stopped. Presumably he hoped to ingratiate himself by being helpful.
‘He hopes for mercy,’ Christopher whispered to me. ‘Will he get it?’
‘No.’ I had heard from Mr Secretary that the Queen had ordered her would-be murderers to be executed in the most prolonged and painful manner the law permitted, that their suffering should be an example to all. ‘Unless from God.’
‘He hopes in vain then.’
We sat through the full examination, two hours during which Babington confessed enough to have himself hanged, drawn and quartered several times over. That was the purpose of his repeated examinations, to ensure that he gave evidence sufficient to condemn himself and all his colleagues, especially Ballard. In fact, they all condemned themselves readily enough, though Ballard only after significant persuasion. When the time came to take Babington back to the cells he had to be helped to his feet – he had been permitted to sit after the first hour – and I remember still the slow clank of his chains as he shuffled away, a bent and sorry figure. At the door he stopped and turned back to us all, saying in a weak hoarse voice, ‘Gentlemen, I am truly sorry to have caused you trouble. We never intended—’
He never finished because the gaolers took hold and yanked him away.
‘Another simple man,’ whispered Christopher. ‘But a foolish one, which – happily – you are not.’
Afterwards I persuaded a sub-warden of the Tower to show us the cells. We first saw those where noble prisoners were held, along with the wealthy whose fate was not decided. They were half-decent quarters such as I have now, thanks to your interest in me, sir. Some were truly generous, such as those in which Sir Walter Ralegh was subsequently imprisoned for sixteen years while writing his great history of the world. Christopher, of course, knew Ralegh and his fellow free-thinkers and it is ironic that we lingered at that door, not knowing how their fates would entwine.
Then we were taken down to the lower cells where the meaner sort were kept, along with those already condemned or awaiting torture. These – as perhaps you have heard, sir, though I hope you have been spared personal acquaintance? – are dark, damp, noisome places often lit only by gratings at ground level and sometimes not at all, unless by flares and candles in the hands of gaolers. We traversed a long tunnel past these grim cellars at the end of which was a great door.
Our warden paused. ‘Do you wish to see the chamber, sirs? The confessing chamber, we call it. It is in use today.’
I knew what that meant and would have been content to stop there but Christopher’s thirst for the vicarious was not slaked. He wanted to go in.
‘I must ask you to be silent for fear of interrupting the conversation,’ our warden cautioned us.
The great door creaked back to reveal a flight of wooden stairs leading down into a cavernous basement. The air was heavy with smoke from torches in the walls and the only other light came from two gratings giving onto the moat. The floor was solid rock laid with rushes. In the middle of the chamber, lit by four torches on poles, was the rack. Since that machine seems to have fallen out of use now and there is even, I hear, talk of a law to prohibit it, I shall briefly describe it for you, sir. It comprised a rectangular wooden frame with sides about a foot high and inside at each end a wooden roller which could be turned upon a ratchet by poles inserted into slots. Attached to each of these rollers were two chains to which the hands and feet of the victim were tied. When the victim was stretched between them his whole body was lifted from the ground and suspended under tension, which was increased, notch by notch, according to whether he answered the questions. His shoulders, hips, ankles, knees, elbows and wrists were gradually pulled apart and dislocated, and his tendons and muscles so stretched that those who resisted long were often unable to walk or stand at their trials. It is said there were some few who withstood all torture without confessing, but they were rare. Almost all talked, the sensible ones merely upon being shown the rack, sometimes with their predecessor still stretched upon it.
There was a ra
cking that day. A man in a dark tunic and breeches was suspended, while a man at each roller held the poles in their ratchets. Three other men were at the side of the rack, one kneeling to address the victim. Another, a lawyer, to judge by his robe, stood watching. A third, younger, sat at a low desk with quill, paper and ink. The scene was lit by the flickering flares and the only sounds were the murmured words of the kneeling man, which we could not make out.
Our warden stopped us some yards away. ‘We must not intrude,’ he whispered, as if it were a religious ceremony.
As in a sense it was. The man being racked was the priest John Ballard. Christopher recognised him and murmured in my ear. I think I have said enough to you, sir, to indicate that I have never been as much at ease with racking and other tortures as some men are. I don’t think Mr Secretary or Lord Burghley were, either, though they accepted its necessity and occasionally attended a racking themselves to be sure that the correct questions were put. I accepted the necessity of it but the fact, the sight of it, left me out of sorts for days. I endured it only by reminding myself of the many of my own faith, loyal men and women, who had been stretched, hanged and burned alive during the reign of Bloody Mary. Then it was Protestants who were racked, now Catholics, almost as if it were a rite of passage. Save that the Catholics were not racked merely for being such but only if they threatened the security of the state. That, at least, was how it was supposed to be.
I could not look at Ballard’s suspended body for long but Christopher, whose face I fancied was paler than usual, stared intently. It was as if he sought to absorb, to soak up everything from the scene. The man kneeling by the rack spoke in an undertone, softly, monotonously, as if mouthing a catechism. He paused for some seconds, during which the only sounds were the crackling of the torches and the breeze through the gratings. Then he raised his forefinger and nodded at the man with the pole at the head of the rack. Speaking distinctly this time, he said, ‘One more.’
The man removed his pole from one notch and carefully inserted it into the next. Then he leaned against the pole and pushed it forward. There was a single loud click of the ratchet.
For another second or two there was silence, then a small but very distinct plop as something was plucked out of its joint. This was immediately followed by a prolonged strangled sound, not a full-throated scream but one that sounded as if it too were being racked, pulled from the throat of John Ballard. The priest’s face showed white through his beard, rigid, staring upwards, his mouth and eyes open wide, his cheeks wet and quivering. When the scream stopped the kneeling man said something to which there must have been an answer because he motioned again to the man at the ratchet, who eased it a notch back to where it had been. The kneeling man moved closer to Ballard’s head, putting his ear almost to his mouth. Ballard said something and the man turned towards the scribe at the desk, again with words we could not distinguish, which the scribe took down.
Thus was John Ballard’s confession extracted, a word, a name, a sentence at a time. It was later read aloud for him in court, he being too weak to profess it himself. Not that it was needed by then because the confessions of Babington and the others, obtained without racking, were sufficient to have them all hanged, drawn and quartered at St Giles-in-the-Fields – which was where they had met and plotted. The drawing of their guts was done as slowly and carefully as could be, the Queen having said she wanted an example made of these men ‘for more terror’. I witnessed that too, again with Christopher. They were done over two days and we were there to see the ending of Ballard, Chidiocke Tycheborne, John Savage and Anthony Babington. There was such a crush of people we could not see all of it clearly and, neither of us being tall, we had to peer over many men’s heads.
Ballard died too soon to be drawn alive, his head still in the noose, such was his state following his racking. Unlike those he seduced to his cause he did not suffer being laid out on the ground while the executioner knelt between his legs and cut off his private parts. Then the executioner would throw them into the fire or, if he were minded, into the crowd. Nor did Ballard suffer the evisceration of his bowels and gut as the executioner’s knife opened him from crotch to ribs, pulling out his intestines and organs hand over hand and holding them aloft for all to see before throwing them to the flames or feeding them to the dogs. Some said that Babington sighed as his heart was plucked out but we were not close enough to hear.
I tell you this, sir, not because I enjoyed such spectacles – though it was impossible not to watch if you were anywhere near – but so that you understand the significance of my conversation with Christopher afterwards. I believe it had a bearing on his own death seven years later.
We left the execution that day with a sense of relief – for me, at least – and threaded our way towards Christopher’s lodging without either of us having expressed any intention of where to go. I think we were both somewhat dazed by what we had witnessed and it was a while before we spoke. For me, the jostling, noisy, smelly streets were a relief for once, the buffets and hazards of daily life a pleasure again. It was not until we were approaching Hog Lane that either of us spoke.
‘What are you thinking?’ he asked. ‘Now, this minute?’
‘I was thinking of those men, the rackers and executioners, whose daily task that is. Whether it makes them morbid or whether their senses are so blunted that they become like cider-presses, heedless of the apples they crush.’
‘But you accept it has to be done so that God’s will be fulfilled?’
‘Yes. Though I prefer that others should do it.’
‘You count yourself a good Christian, Thomas. Is what we’ve seen Christian? What about mercy?’
‘It is our Christian duty to defend God’s purpose and God’s word. Mercy is God’s prerogative.’
‘Which is exactly what Father Ballard would say if it were you or me on the rack.’
I was well aware of this uncomfortable truth and tried not to think about it because I saw no way around it. ‘If it is God’s will that such things should happen, whoever does them, in order that we may come to His truth and be reconciled to Him, then we have to accept it. His ways may be mysteries to us now but when we are brought before Him all will be revealed and all shall be reconciled.’
‘Thus a multitude of individual sufferings is the price of reconciliation with the Almighty. A price worth paying. Is that what you truly believe?’
‘I say God works in mysterious ways, ways beyond our comprehension.’
‘But if someone says the price is too high, that they reject reconciliation on such terms, they spurn God, what would happen to them?’
‘They would be punished everlastingly.’
‘By the ever-merciful?’ There was a playful light in his eyes. ‘So we suffer in this world or in the next. We are doomed to suffer either way. But what if there is no next world? Supposing that beyond us, after us, beyond the sky, there is nothing? No thing. Yet if there is after all another world, then we suffer in both. Is that your idea of a just and merciful God?’
There are men who relish such arguments, delighting in wordy twists and turns, but I am not one of them. Arguments like that always lead so quickly to extreme conclusions that within a few sentences I find myself forced into positions I would never have chosen. Words are slippery, easily disguised, their meanings changing with context. You and I, sir, may use the same words but mean them differently, making us honest neither with each other nor with ourselves. Do you not think?
Very well, I go on.
I stopped Christopher in the street when he spoke as he did then. ‘You cannot, must not say such things. They would make you a free-thinker, an atheist.’
He raised his arms. ‘Atheist, theist, deist – I care nothing for any ists. I care for the mind and I follow thought as far and as honestly as I can. I have no time for stories invented to persuade us we never really die.’ Then he smiled and patted my arm. ‘I’m sorry, Thomas, I don’t mean to trouble you and make you unhappy.’
‘I’m not unhappy. But I worry for your sake.’ That was only half true. Such thoughts, rarely expressed and as dangerous then as now, unsettled me. They watered seeds of doubt planted deep in my soul. Some men have the gift of faith, believing with a serenity that is proof against doubt. Mr Secretary was one. I am not.
I hope this does not shock you, sir, and I hope His Majesty will not think worse of me if you report it. I confess freely now because at my age I am close enough to the answers to these questions not to worry what men think of me. Either I shall find that religion is true and that Christopher and all doubters were wrong, or I shall know nothing. I shall be as I was before I was born and never know that the doubters were right. There is nothing to fear from that. But I tell you this so that you understand that he thought these thoughts himself from early days, long before the stories of free-thinking that surrounded him at his death. I ask again, could that be the reason for His Majesty’s interest in him?
If so, His Majesty will wish to know that both before and after his death Christopher was accused of scoffing at religion and of being part of Sir Walter Ralegh’s School of Night. That was a supposed cabal of free-thinkers, though I don’t believe Ralegh ever organised anything as formal. Whether Christopher was part of it, I do not know. Robert Greene, a player and writer not known for his kindly opinions of others, wrote in his death-bed repentance of what he called Christopher’s diabolical atheism, saying, ‘he hath said… like the fool in his heart: There is no God.’ Also another play-maker, Thomas Kyd, who had sometime shared rooms with Christopher and who was later arrested for the Dutch Church libel which I investigated, claimed that Christopher had ‘monstrous opinions’. He said that he scoffed and jested at scripture, called St Paul a juggler and accused Christ of unnatural love for St John. Among papers found in Kyd’s room were some that questioned the truths of divine scripture. He said they were Christopher’s and must have been mixed with his when they shared a room. But he was being racked when he said these things, pleading for his life. He was being racked for the Dutch Church libel, of which he was innocent, poor man. He was released after racking, I am glad to say.