It would be needlessly revolting to relate the details of the subsequent trials, in which the Court, driven by the popular panic and the prevailing religious ideas, perverted justice and destroyed the innocent.[87] Nineteen persons in all were executed, all of whom, without exception, died professing their innocence and forgiving their murderers, and thus refused to save their lives by confessing crimes which they had not committed and could not possibly commit.[88] Besides those who suffered for witchcraft, one other, Giles Cory, was put to death with the utmost barbarity. When arraigned for trial he refused to plead, and was condemned to the _peine forte et dure_, the only time this infamous torture was ever inflicted in America. It consisted in placing the contumacious person on a hard floor, and then piling weight after weight upon him, until he consented to plead or was crushed to death. A nearly contemporary account relates that when, in the death agony, the poor wretch’s tongue protruded from his mouth, the sheriff with his cane pushed it in again; and local tradition and ballad told how in his torment he cried for “more rocks” to be heaped on him to put him out of his misery.[89] This was the last of the executions. The Court of Oyer and Terminer sat no more, and in the interval between its adjournment and the opening of the sessions of the “Supreme Standing Court,” in the following January, time was given for consideration and reflection.[90] But it may be questioned whether consideration and reflection would have put a stop to the delusion without the operation of another and more powerful cause. Thus far, the accused persons had been generally of insignificant position, friendless old women, or men who had either affronted their neighbors or, by the irregularity of their lives, had lost the sympathy of the community.[91] But with their success, the boldness or the madness of the accusers increased; some of the most prominent people in the colony, distinguished in many cases by unblemished lives, were now charged with dealings with the devil, and even the wife of the Governor fell under suspicion. The community came at last to its senses, and began to realize that the evidence, which till then had seemed conclusive, was not worthy of attention. Confessions were withdrawn, and the testimony of neighbors to good character and life was at length regarded as of greater weight than the ravings of hysterical girls or the malice of private enemies. So it came about that before long those who were not prejudiced and committed by the part they had played, acknowledged that they had been condemning the innocent and bringing blood-guiltiness upon the land. Even Cotton Mather, who had been largely responsible for the spread of the delusion, was compelled to admit that mistakes had been made, though he still maintained that if a further investigation had been held in the cases of many who were set free, their guilt might have been made apparent.