Edmund, pierced with arrows, is often seen on old rood screens.
xiv Norman Torture Chamber.
We read in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of the barons in Stephen's
days.
"They greatly oppressed the wretched people by making them work at
their castles, and when the castles were finished they filled them
with devils and evil men. Then they took those whom they suspected
to have any goods, by night and by day, seizing both men and women,
and they put them in prison for their gold and silver, and tortured
them with pains unspeakable. They hung some up by their feet, and
smoked them with foul smoke; some by their thumbs, or by the head,
and they hung burning things on their feet. They put a knotted
string about their heads, and twisted it till it went into their
brain. They put them into dungeons, wherein were adders and snakes
and toads, and thus wore them out. Some they put into a crucet
house--that is, into a chest that was short and narrow, and not
deep, and they put sharp stones in it, and crushed the man therein
so that they broke all his limbs. There were hateful and grim
things called Sachenteges in many of the castles, and which two or
three men had enough to do to carry. The sachentege was made thus:
it was fastened to a beam having a sharp iron to go round a man's
throat and neck, so that he might noways sit, or lie, or sleep, but
must bear all the iron.
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