The torture of the ''boots'' occurs at an earlier period of our history than that of the thumbikens... Thus we read, that in 1596, the son and daughter of Aleson Balfour, who was accused of witchcraft were tortured before her to make her confess her crime in the manner following: Her son was put in the ''buits'' where he suffered fifty seven strokes; and her daughter about seven years old, was put in the ''pilniewinks''. In the same case, mention was made, besides ''pilniewinks'', ''pinniewinks'' or ''pilliwinks'', of ''caspitanos'' or ''caspicaws'', and of ''tosots'', as instruments of torture. Lord Royston, in his manuscript notes upon Mackenzie's criminal law conjectures that these may have been only other names for the ''buits'' and ''thumbikens''; thus much seems certain, that in those times there was some torturing device applied to the fingers which bore the name of pilniewinks; but it will immediately appear, that the most authentic accounts assign the introduction and use of the instrument known by the name of ''thumbikens'' to a much later period.〔