in Guernsey--that is tortured until they confessed whatever was
required of them--Mr. Warburton, a herald and celebrated antiquary who
wrote in the reign of Charles II., has given a circumstancial account,
the correctness of which may be relied on. His _Treatise on the
History, Laws and Customs of the Island of Guernsey_, bears the date
of 1682, and at page 126 he says:--

By the law approved (_Terrien_, Lib. xii. cap. 37), torture
is to be used, though not upon slight presumption, yet where
the presumptive proof is strong, and much more when the
proof is positive, and there wants only the confession of
the party accused. Yet this practice of torturing does not
appear to have been used in the island for some ages, except
in the case of witches, when it was too frequently applied,
near a century since. The custom then was, when any person
was supposed guilty of sorcery or witchcraft, they carried
them to a place in the town called _La Tour Beauregard_, and
there, tying their hands behind them by the two thumbs, drew
them to a certain height with an engine made for that
purpose, by which means sometimes their shoulders were
turned round; and sometimes their thumbs torn off; but this
fancy of witches has for some years been laid aside.

It will be noticed in the subsequent _Confessions_ of witches (page
11, &c.), that a number of colons (:) are inserted in the text where
they would not be required as ordinary marks of punctuation. These
correspond, however, to similar pauses in the original records, and
evidently indicate the successive stages by which the story was wrung
from the wretched victims. They are thus endowed with a sad and
ghastly significance, which must be borne in mind when the confessions