Soon after his wife’s arrest Giles Corey himself was arrested, taken from his mill and brought before the judges of the special court, appointed by Governor Phipps but held in Salem, to hear the witch trials. Again the accusing girls went through their performance, again the judges assumed the guilt of the accused, and tried to browbeat a confession from him. But in the interval between his arrest and trial this old man of eighty had had abundant leisure for reflection. He was sure not only of his own innocence but of his wife’s as well, and it must have been a bitter thought that his own testimony had helped convict her. Partly as an atonement for this offense and partly to save his property for his children, which he could not have done if he had been convicted of witchcraft, after pleading “not guilty” he remained mute, refusing to add the necessary technical words that he would be tried “by God and his country.” Deaf alike to the entreaties of his friends and the threats of the Court, he was condemned to the torture of _peine forte et dure_, the one instance when this old English penalty for contumacy was enforced in New England. According to the law the aged man was laid on his back, a board was placed on his body with as great a weight upon it as he could endure, while his sole diet consisted of a few morsels of bread one day and a draught of water the alternate day, until death put an end to his sufferings. The execution of eight persons on Gallows Hill three days later, September 22, were the last to occur in the Colony. Accusations were still made, trials were held, more people were thrown into jail. But there were no more executions, and the next spring there was, according to Hutchinson, such a jail delivery as was never seen before. “The smith filed off the chains he forged, The jail bolts backward fell; And youth and hoary age came forth Like souls escaped from hell.” The tragedy was at an end. It lasted about six months, from the first accusations in March until the last executions in September. Nineteen persons had been _hanged_, and one man pressed to death. _There is no foundation for the statement that witches were burned._ No one was ever burned in New England for witchcraft or any other crime. But hundreds of innocent men and women were thrown into jail or obliged to flee to some place of concealment, their homes were broken up, their property injured, while they suffered great anxiety for themselves and friends.