Boot

Boot, also called BOOTS, or BOOTIKIN, an instrument of judicial torture, formerly used in Scotland to force confessions from persons accused of crimes, or answers from unwilling or suspected witnesses. Bishop Burnet in the History of his Own Time, and Sir Walter Scott in his Old Mortality, speak of the boot as made of iron; but the Rev. Thomas Morer in his Short Account of Scotland (1702), written from personal observation of the country at a time when the boot was still in use, describes it as 'made of four pieces of narrow boards nailed together, of a competent length for the leg, not unlike those short cases we use to guard young trees from the rabbits.' One or both legs of the person to be tortured having been placed in this case, wedges were inserted between the limb and the sides of the case, and these wedges were driven down by the executioner with a mallet or hammer, questions being at intervals put to the sufferer, until either he gave the desired information, or fainted away, or showed such endurance as satisfied the judges that no answer could be extorted from him. In one case—that of a lad in Orkney in 1596—it is recorded that they struck as many as fifty-seven times. In another—that of John Fian, schoolmaster at Prestonpans, burned for sorcery in 1591—the victim 'did abide so many blows, that his legs were crushed and beaten together as small as might be, and the bones and flesh so bruised that the blood and marrow spouted forth in great abundance, whereby they were made unserviceable for ever.' 'Still,' it is added, 'he would not confess;' and, indeed, it is remarkable in how many cases we are told that the torture, agonising as it was, failed in its purpose. When the boots were first used in Scotland is not known. In a case where a deed of conveyance of land was challenged as a forgery in 1579, two witnesses, a clergyman and a notary, both of Forfarshire, were ordered to be 'put in the boots, gins, or any other torments, to urge them to declare the truth.' In a letter, preserved in the Record Office at London, Sir Francis Walsingham writes to the English ambassador at Edinburgh in 1583, that Queen Elizabeth desires that Father William Holt, an English Jesuit then in Scotland, may be 'put to the boots.' The boot was subject of allusion on the English stage in 1604; in Marston's Malcontent, printed in that year, one of the characters is made to say: 'All your empirics could never do the like cure upon the gout the rack did in England, or your Scotch boots.' A young gentlewoman of Aberdeenshire was tortured by the boot in 1630. Soon afterwards, it is said to have fallen into desuetude for about thirty years. It was revived after the insurrection of the westland Covenanters in 1666, and continued to be used throughout the reigns of Charles II., and James II., and during the first years of William III. The Claim of Right brought forward by the Scottish Convention in 1689, denounced 'the use of torture, without evidence, and in ordinary crimes, as contrary to law.' Notwithstanding, Neville Payne, an English gentleman who was supposed to have entered Scotland on a treasonable mission, was in 1690 put to the torture under a warrant subscribed by King William, and still shown in the Register House at Edinburgh. The boot was applied to one leg, the thumbscrews to both hands, but without any effect, although, in the words of one of the Privy-councillors, the torture, which lasted for two hours, was inflicted 'with all the severity that was consistent with humanity, even unto that pitch that we could not preserve life and have gone further.' This is believed to be the last time that the boot was used. But it was not until 1709, when Scotland had ceased to be an independent kingdom, that the British parliament enacted that in future 'no person accused of any crime in Scotland shall be subject or liable to any torture.' Torture is believed not to have been used in England after 1640. An instrument similar to that known in Scotland was in use in Germany under the name of 'Spanish Boots.' And in some collections there are shown iron boots which were heated to an unbearable degree on the foot of the victim (see TORTURE). For the boot in France, see Bingham's Bastille (1888).