Nearly opposite this spot, in the middle of the street, stood a building devoted from 1677 until 1718 to municipal and judicial uses. In 1692, most of the nineteen persons who suffered death on the gallows after being condemned for witchcraft were tried and condemned there. Giles Corey was tried there on the same charge and, refusing to plead, was taken away and pressed to death. In January 1693, twenty-one persons were tried there for witchcraft, of whom eighteen were acquitted and three condemned, but later set free along with about 150 accused persons in a general delivery that occurred in May.
