When the prisoners reached Baden, they were thrown into a dungeon. The form of an examination began the following day; the bailiff Writh was first brought in. The Catholics, acting upon their old motto, "that it is wrong to keep faith with heretics," immediately questioned the bailiff concerning the removal of the images at Stamheim, and other points affecting his religion. The deputies of Zurich protested, reminding the diet that this was a gross violation of the conditions on which the prisoners were allowed to appear. But expostulations were of no avail now. The Zurichers and their appeals were treated with derision. The prisoners were put to the torture, in the hope of extorting from them some confessions which might give a color of justice to the sentence which was already determined to be pronounced upon them.
The most cruel tortures were inflicted on the father, without regard to his character or his age; but he persisted in declaring his innocence of the pillage and burning of Ittingen. From morning till noon they practiced their cruelties on the old man. His pitiful cries to God to sustain and comfort him, only called forth the impiety of his tormentors. "Where is your Christ now?" said one of the deputies, "bid Him come to your relief." His intrepid son, John, was treated with still greater barbarity. But nothing could move his constancy in Christ. He seems to have triumphed in his sufferings, and gloried in his cross. Adrian was threatened with having his veins opened one after another, unless he made a confession of his guilt. But he could only confess to having preached the gospel of Christ, and been married. When wearied with their work of torture, they sent back the faithful confessors of Christ to a loathsome dungeon; their bodies well nigh racked to pieces, themselves strong in the consciousness of their innocence, and sustained by the presence and power of their Lord and Master, Christ Jesus.
The bailiff's wife, Hannah Writh, and the mother of the two young priests, hastened to Baden, carrying an infant child in her arms, to implore the mercy of the judges. With floods of tears she pleaded for mercy to her husband and her sons; she pleaded her large family, her husband's past services to the state and his country; but all in vain. Her entreaties, such as only a wife and a mother could pour forth, instead of softening the judges, irritated them more and more, and betrayed that Satanic hatred to the truth which was the real cause of all their cruelties. One of the judges, the deputy for Zug, was led in the providence of God to give the most wonderful testimony to the character of Writh, and the treachery of his judges. "You know the bailiff Writh," said a friend of the distressed wife to him. "I do," he replied, "I have been twice bailiff of Thurgau, I never knew a more innocent, upright, and hospitable man than John Writh. His house was open to all who stood in need of his assistance; in fact, his house was a convent, an inn, and a hospital; and I cannot imagine what demon can have drawn him into this tumult. If he had plundered, robbed, or even murdered, I would willingly have made every exertion to obtain his pardon; but seeing he has burned the image of the blessed St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin, he must die; there can be no mercy shown him." The court broke up, the deputies returned to their cantons, the prisoners to their cells, and did not meet again till that day month.