retractation

I was expecting you to say obstinacy," said she, laughing, "and was half prepared with a most abject retractation.

Good faith, as a principle of action, being a most important desideratum, no retractation must be made in respect of the number of days conceded prior to our advance on the city.

Those of them who, having confessed, had afterwards retracted, and now persisted in their retractation, were declared to be relapsed heretics, and were delivered over to the secular arm and condemned to the flames; those who, had not confessed, and would not, were sentenced to imprisonment as unreconciled Templars; those who persisted in their confession of the enormities laid to the charge of the order were set at liberty, and called reconciled Templars.

There may have been a few, whose strong confidence, in the bloodguiltiness of Stephen Boorn, had become slightly paralyzed, by his entire and absolute retractation of all his confessions, made before trial.

But even that strong measure failed to induce a satisfactory retractation.