If the party accused is found to be only defamed for heresy, and not convicted of heresy by any legal proofs, he is not absolved, but enjoined canonical purgation. The manner of the purgation is this: the party accused must produce several witnesses, good and Catholic men, who must swear by God, and the four holy gospels of God, that they firmly believe he hath not been an heretic, or believer of their errors; and that he hath sworn the truth, in denying it upon oath. If he fails in his purgation, i. e. cannot procure such a number of purgers as he is enjoined, he is esteemed as convict, and condemned as an heretic. If the person accused is not found guilty by his own confession, or proper witnesses; yet if he cannot make his innocence appear plainly to the inquisitor, or if he is caught contradicting himself, or faultering, or trembling, or sweating, or pale, or crying; or if there be half proof of his crime, he is put to the question or torture. And this liberty the inquisitors sometimes shamefully abuse, by torturing the most innocent persons; as appears by the following instance. “[261]A noble lady, Joan Bohorquia, the wife of Francis Varquius, a very eminent man, and lord of Higuera, and daughter of Peter Garsia Xeresius, a wealthy citizen of Seville, was apprehended, and put into the inquisition at Seville. The occasion of her imprisonment was, that her sister, Mary Bohorquia, a young lady of eminent piety, who was afterwards burnt for her pious confession, had declared in her torture that she had several times conversed with her sister concerning her own doctrine. When she was first imprisoned, she was about six months gone with child; upon which account she was not so straitly confined, nor used with that cruelty which the other prisoners were treated with, out of regard to the infant she carried in her. Eight days after her delivery they took the child from her, and on the fifteenth shut her close up, and made her undergo the fate of the other prisoners, and began to manage her cause with their usual arts and rigour. In so dreadful a calamity she had only this comfort, that a certain pious young woman, who was afterwards burnt for her religion by the inquisitors, was allowed her for her companion. This young creature was, on a certain day, carried out to her torture, and being returned from it into her jail, she was so shaken, and had all her limbs so miserably disjointed, that when she laid upon her bed of rushes, it rather encreased her misery than gave her rest, so that she could not turn herself without the most excessive pain. In this condition, as Bohorquia had it not in her power to shew her any, or but very little outward kindness, she endeavoured to comfort her mind with great tenderness. The girl had scarce began to recover from her torture, when Bohorquia was carried out to the same exercise, and was tortured with such diabolical cruelty upon the rack, that the rope pierced and cut into the very bones