In Western Europe it can be seen that the conviction rate of witches varies and is conditional on the legal procedures used in each specific state. It is easy to highlight that throughout the early modern period, there were obvious and extensive changes of the legal systems, both on continental Europe and in England. A main topic for discussion in this essay is the relation between the use of torture and the conviction rates of alleged witches. It is prominent to us today that the implication of torture would have affected the persons physical and psychological state. However, at the time, they saw no problems with the reliability of such confessions under torture. On the continent and across England, secular and ecclesiastical courts adopted
