y, it is for this end also, that if the
parties which watch them, be so carefull that none come visible nor
invisible but that may be discerned, if they follow their directions
then the party presently after the time their Familiars should have
come, if they faile, will presently confesse, for then they thinke they
will either come no more or have forsaken them. Thirdly it is also to
the end, that Godly Divines and others might discourse with them, for if
any of their society come to them to discourse with them, they will
never confesse.... But if honest godly people discourse with them,
laying the hainousnesse of their sins to them, and in what condition
they are in without Repentance, and telling them the subtilties of the
Devil, and the mercies of God, these ways will bring them to Confession
without extremity, it will make them break into confession hoping for
mercy."[109]

Hopkins tells us more about the walking of the witches. In answer to the
objection that the accused were "extraordinarily walked till their feet
were blistered, and so forced through that cruelty to confesse," "he
answered that the purpose was only to keepe them waking: and the reason
was this, when they did lye or sit in a chaire, if they did offer to
couch downe, then the watchers were only to desire them to sit up and
walke about."

Now, the inference might be drawn from these descriptions that the use
of torture was a new feature of the witchcraft persecutions
characteristic of the Civil War period. There is little evidence that
before that time such methods were in use. A schoolmaster who was
supposed to have used magic against James I had been put to the rack.
There were other cases in which it is conjectured that the method may
have been tried. There is, however, little if any proof of such trial.

Such an inference would, however, be altogether unjustified. The
absence of evidence of the use of torture by no means establishes the
absence of the practice. It may rather be said that the evidence of the
practice we possess in the Hopkins cases is of such a sort as to lead us
to suspect that it was frequently resorted to. If for these cases we had
only such evidence as in most previous cases has made up our entire sum
of information, we should know nothing of the terrible sufferings
undergone by the poor creatures of Chelmsford and Bury. The confessions
are given in full, as in the accounts of other trials, but no word is
said of the cause