From the above it is evident that the natural tendency of wool and
feathers to felt and clog together, has been distorted, by widely
different peoples, into an outward and visible sign that occult and
malignant influences were at work.
* * * * *
As to the manner in which wizards and witches were put to the question
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.
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