Arnold Wright

“ There must have been amongst them many islanders from without, men who had known and fought with Courthope and with whose pity mingled a fierce feeling of anger and bitter disappointment at the era of hopeless subjection which the approaching execution seemed so inexorably to usher in.
Meanwhile, in the great hall of the castle all the prisoners were assembled for the grim pageantry which was to precede the final awful rites. At the door of the chamber were " the quit and pardoned," to whom with streaming eyes and broken voices the prisoners tendered their last farewells. ”

“ The Dutch were not bloodthirsty murderers venting their private vengeance on unoffending men: nor were they patterns of justice meting out punishment to proved -criminals. They were simply men inspired by unholy zeal for a bad cause. They sincerely believed that a conspiracy was afoot against them and that the Englishmen were implicated in it. ”

“ Even the superstitious natives traced a connexion between the misfortunes which overwhelmed them and the ruthless act which had practically extirpated the English. Their sense of justice, dulled though it was by ages of oppression, was sufficiently strong to see in the procedure which had encompassed the deaths of Towerson and his associates a degree of turpitude which called aloud to heaven for vengeance. Hence it was that the days following the execution were a period of gloom in Amboina for the islanders, and maybe for Van Speult and his associates a time of dark communings and remorse. ”

“ Nothing can extenuate the horrible brutality with which the so-called evidence was got together, or the ruthless—and even from the extreme standpoint of Dutch policy—unnecessary severity with which the course of justice was directed. ”

“ The poore men, perceiving they were made believe each had accused others before they had so done, indeed, showed them their tortured bodies and said— "'If a stone were thus burnt, would it not change his nature? How much more we that are flesh and blood?'"
To such reasoning there could be no reply. The English prisoners had tasted too deeply the bitter pangs of the torture chamber, had themselves offended too much against truth under the infernal stimulus applied, to be able to raise their voices in censure. ”

“ In every instance the victim's private property was ordered to be confiscated—an idle injunction, for the poor fellows had so little to leave that the Dutch were afterwards content that the surviving English should divide their hapless comrades' possessions amongst themselves.
Before the prisoners were removed, it occurred to the Council that the wholesale execution of the English would give rise to inconvenience by throwing upon them the onus of administering the affairs of the English factory. They, therefore, resolved to reprieve two of the prisoners to look after the Company's interests. ”

“ Almost simultaneously there broke out on the island a terrible pestilence which carried off hundreds of victims before it was stayed. The surviving Englishmen, recalling Thomson's dying words, saw in these visitations signs of the Divine wrath at the doing to death of their innocent fellow-countrymen. ”

“ De Bruyne, to follow the Dutch record, "stated his suit and drew his conclusion." It is almost unnecessary to say what that conclusion was. The Fiscal was an apt tool of an infamous system under which men could be done to death with due judicial forms. Torquemada was not more indefatigable in scenfcing out a heretic than De Bruyne was in discovering a conspirator. To his own satisfaction he brought home guilt to all the prisoners save four of the least important of them, viz., Powle, Ramsey, Sadler and Ladbrook. ”