Edward Wightman knew from the earliest days of his life that to stray from the religion of the Established Church was possibly a capital offence. Queen Elizabeth I, though loved and respected by most of her subjects, was ruthless with those who challenged the Established Church. Religious freedom just was not accepted, and the Queen tolerated no opposing religious views. She was more than half a Protestant; however, she could be wholly a Catholic when it suited her. It had been her desire not to use capital punishment for religious offenses -- however, those who didn't conform suffered her wrath. When Edward was a youth in 1577, she hanged Catholic priests without any charge except religion. A fourteen year old child, Thomas Sherwood, was executed for refusing to deny his religion. Those who admitted to be heretics were put to the rack and revealed through torture the names of friends with whom they had conversed. Even those people that imagined the queen's death were indicted. The rack seldom stood idle in the Tower for all the latter part of Elizabeth's reign. Her torture chambers equalled the French Bastille and the Spanish Inquisition with all of its hatred and horrors. In the sixty years before Edward's martyrdom, 200 Catholics were executed by Elizabeth, and 300 Protestants were burned at the stake and hung by Mary I, her sister. Both of these queens were children of Henry VIII.
 

    There were several forms of torture to get the heretics to confess. The RACK was a large open frame of oak, raised three feet from the floor. The prisoner was laid under it with his back on the floor. His wrists and ankles were attached by cords to two rollers at the ends of the frame. These were moved by levers in opposite directions until the body rose to a level with the frame. Questions were then asked, and if the answers were unsatisfactory, the victim was stretched more and more till the bones started to tear from their sockets.
 

    The SCAVENGER'S DAUGHTER was a broad hoop of iron consisting of two parts fastened by a hinge. The prisoner was made to kneel on the pavement and to contract himself into as small a compass as he could. Then the executioner, kneeling on his shoulders and having introduced the hoop under his legs, compressed the victim close together, till he was able to fasten the extremities over the small of the back. The time allotted to this kind of torture was an hour and a half, during which time it commonly happened that from excess of compression, the blood started from the nostrils. Sometimes the blood would ooze from the hands and feet. Eventually you gave them any answer that they wanted. This created another problem for the victim. The executioners might then punish you by boring a hole through your "blasphemous" tongue with a hot iron.
 

    IRON GAUNTLETS could be contracted by the aid of a screw. They served to compress the wrists, and to suspend the prisoner in the air, from two distant points of a beam. He was placed on three pieces of wood, piled one on the other which were withdrawn from under his feet one at a time after his hands had been made fast. "I felt," said F. Gerard, one of the sufferers, "the chief pain in my breast, belly, arms and hands. I thought that all the blood in my body had run into my arms, and began to burst out at my finger ends. This was a mistake; but the arms swelled, till the gauntlets were buried within the flesh. After being thus suspended an hour, I fainted, and when I came to myself I found the executioners supporting me in their arms; they replaced the pieces of wood under my feet; but as soon as I was recovered, removed them again. Thus I continued hanging for the space of five hours, during which I fainted eight or nine times."
 

    Another form of torture was a cell called "LITTLE EASE". It was so small and so constructed that a prisoner could neither stand, walk, sit, or lie in it at full length. He was compelled to draw himself up in a squatting posture, and so remained during several days. While waiting for the torture chamber, the prisoners were chained to the floor. This could last for days or weeks depending on how busy the torture chambers were, or how soon the prisoners confessed their heresy.
 

    We do not know how many of these tortures Edward Wightman had to experience while he was in jail. There is no doubt that he knew what would probably happen to him when he chose to oppose the Established Church. His religious beliefs probably became a problem when the Puritans were brought in great numbers before the commissioners to be fined, imprisoned, or otherwise punished. Under the Act of Supremacy, no bounds were set for punishment. The executioners could use any or all methods of cruelty to make the victim confess heresy and to name religious friends.
 

    Fines, imprisonment, and the gibbet (to be hanged) continued to be the main form of punishment for those whose opinions differed from the church and government up to the close of Queen Elizabeth's reign in 1603. However, at the close of her reign, she by her own act used the old writ "de Hoeretico comburendo" (the stake and fagot) to punish a mere religious opinion. This was nothing new -- her father, Henry VIII, and her sister, Mary I (Bloody Mary), used the same tactics. Even before Edward was put to the stake during King James I reign, Edward Fox protested with great risk the destroying of the "poor anabaptists". He suggested that a suitable punishment would be close imprisonment, perpetual banishment, burning of the hand, whipping, or even slavery itself. He said, "The one thing I most earnestly beg, that the piles and flames in Smithfield, so long ago extinguished by your happy government, may not now be again revived."