Witch trials in early modern Scotland
In early modern Scotland, in between the early 16th century and the mid-18th century, judicial proceedings concerned with the crimes of witchcraft took place as part of a series of witch trials in Early Modern Europe. In the Late Middle Ages, there were a handful of prosecutions for harm done through witchcraft, but the passing of the Witchcraft Act 1563 made witchcraft, or consulting with witches, capital crimes. The first major issue of trials under the new act were the North Berwick witch trials, beginning in 1590, in which King James VI played a major part as "victim" and investigator. He became interested in witchcraft and published a defence of witch-hunting in the Daemonologie in 1597, but he appears to have become increasingly sceptical and eventually took steps to limit prosecutions.
An estimated 4,000 to 6,000 people, mostly from the Scottish Lowlands, were tried for witchcraft in this period, a much higher rate than for neighbouring England. There were five major series of trials in 1590–91, 1597, 1628–31, 1649–50 and 1661–62. Seventy-five per cent of the accused were women. Modern estimates indicate that more than 1,500 persons were executed; most were strangled and then burned. The hunts subsided under English occupation after the Civil Wars during the period of the Commonwealth led by Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s, but returned after the Restoration in 1660, causing some alarm and leading to the Privy Council of Scotland limiting arrests, prosecutions and torture. There was also growing scepticism in the later seventeenth century, while some of the factors that may have contributed to the trials, such as economic distress, subsided. Although there were occasional local outbreaks of witch-hunting, the last recorded executions were in 1706 and the last trial in 1727. The Scottish and English parliaments merged in 1707, and the unified British parliament repealed the 1563 act in 1736.
Many causes have been suggested for the hunts, including economic distress, changing attitudes to women, the rise of a "godly state", the inquisitorial Scottish judicial system, the widespread use of judicial torture, the role of the local kirk, decentralised justice and the prevalence of the idea of the diabolic pact. The proliferation of partial explanations for the witch-hunt has led some historians to proffer the concept of "associated circumstances", rather than one single significant cause.
Origins
Legal origins
For late medieval Scotland there is evidence of occasional prosecutions of individuals for causing harm through witchcraft. High-profile political cases included the action against John Stewart, Earl of Mar for allegedly using sorcery against his brother King James III in 1479. Evidence of these political cases indicates that they were becoming rarer in the first half of the sixteenth century however. Popular belief in magic was widespread in the Middle Ages, but theologians had been generally sceptical, and lawyers interested in prosecuting only cases in which harm from magic was seen as being evident. Three women from Edinburgh and Dunfermline accused of witchcraft were held at St Andrews Castle and executed by burning on 10 October 1542. They were accused of divination and malefice, using harmful magic.From the late sixteenth century attitudes began to change, and witches were seen as deriving powers from the devil, with the result that witchcraft was seen as a form of heresy. These ideas were widely accepted by both Catholics and Protestants in the sixteenth century. In the aftermath of the initial Reformation settlement of 1560, Parliament passed the Witchcraft Act 1563, one of a series of laws underpinning Biblical laws and similar to that passed in England a year earlier, which made the practice of witchcraft itself, and consulting with witches, capital crimes.
The first witch-hunt under the act was in the east of the country in 1568–69 in Angus and the Mearns, where there were unsuccessful attempts to introduce elements of the diabolic pact and the hunt collapsed. The Earl of Argyll made a progress in Lorne, Argyll, and Cowal in July 1574 holding courts and executing men and women convicted of "common sorcery."
Role of James VI
James VI's visit to Denmark in 1589, where witch-hunts were already common, may have encouraged an interest in the study of witchcraft, and he came to see the storms he encountered on his voyage as the result of magic. After his return to Scotland, he attended the North Berwick witch trials, the first major persecution of witches in Scotland under the 1563 Act and the first known to successfully involve the diabolic pact. Several people, most notably Agnes Sampson and the schoolmaster John Fian, were convicted of using witchcraft to send storms against James' ship. James became obsessed with the threat posed by witches. He subsequently believed that his cousin, the nobleman Francis Stewart, 5th Earl of Bothwell, was a witch, and after the latter fled in fear of his life, he was outlawed as a traitor. Stewart had been a rival of James as there were several disputes over the legitimacy of the Scottish and English thrones, especially following the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, causing Stewart to be punished by James for several plots against him. The king subsequently set up royal commissions to hunt down witches in his realm, recommending torture in dealing with suspects. James is known to have personally supervised the torture of women accused of being witches. Inspired by his personal involvement, in 1597 he wrote the Daemonologie, a tract that opposed the practice of witchcraft and which provided background material for Shakespeare's Tragedy of Macbeth, which contains probably the most famous literary depiction of Scottish witches.James imported continental explanations of witchcraft. In the view of Thomas Lolis, James I's goal was to divert suspicion away from male homosociality among the elite, and focus fear on female communities and large gatherings of women. He thought they threatened his political power so he laid the foundation for witchcraft and occultism policies, especially in Scotland. The point was that a widespread belief in the conspiracy of witches and a witches' Sabbath with the devil deprived women of political influence. Occult power was supposedly a womanly trait because women were weaker and more susceptible to the devil. However, after the publication of Daemonologie his views became more sceptical, and in the same year he revoked the standing commissions on witchcraft, limiting prosecutions by the central courts.
Nature of the trials
Although Scotland had probably about one quarter of the population of England, it had three times the number of witchcraft prosecutions, at an estimated 4,000 to 6,000 over the entire period. This was about four times the European average. The overwhelming majority were in the Lowlands, where the Kirk had more control, despite the evidence that basic magical beliefs were very widespread in the Highlands. Persecution of witchcraft in Orkney differed from the mainland with most trials taking place before 1650. Large series of trials included those in 1590–91 and the Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1597, which took place across Scotland from March to October. At least 400 people were put on trial for various forms of diabolism. The number of those executed as a result of these trials is unknown, but is believed to be about 200. Later major trials included hunts in 1628–31 and 1649–50. Probably the most intense witch-hunt was in 1661–62, which involved some 664 named witches in four counties.File:Witch-pricking Needles00.gif|thumb|left|upright|False witch-pricking bodkins from Reginald Scott's Discovery of Witchcraft, 1584
Most of the accused, some 75%, were women, though some men were also executed as witches or as warlocks. Modern estimates indicate that over 1,500 persons were executed. Most of these were older women, with some younger women and men accused because they were related to an accused witch, usually as daughters and husbands. Some men were accused because they were folk healers who were felt to have misused their powers, although folk healers as a group were not targeted. Most were not vagrants or beggars, but settled members of their communities. Most had built a reputation for witchcraft over years, which resulted in prosecution when a "victim" suffered ill fortune, particularly after a curse had been issued. The use of curses by some women as a means of acquiring social power may have made this process more likely to occur.
Almost all witchcraft prosecutions took place in secular courts under the provisions of the 1563 Act. In 1649 the religiously radical Covenanter regime passed a new witchcraft act that ratified the existing act and extended it to deal with consulters of "Devils and familiar spirits", who would now be punished with death. There were three main types of court in which accused witches could be tried. First was the Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh, which took cases from all over Scotland, with a heavy bias to the local region. Next were the circuit courts, presided over by judges from the central courts and held in the various shires of the country. Finally, there were a series of ad hoc local courts, held under commissions by the Privy Council or Parliament and staffed by local landholders and gentlemen to try witches in the places where they were accused. Based on known outcomes, the execution rates for the local courts were much higher than the courts run by professional lawyers, with the local courts executing some 90 per cent of the accused, the Judiciary Court 55 per cent, but the circuit courts only 16 per cent. After the revocation of the standing commissions in 1597, the pursuit of witchcraft was largely taken over by kirk sessions, disciplinary committees run by the parish elite, and was often used to attack "superstitious" and Catholic practices. The central courts only launched a trial when the Privy Council issued a commission, although the council did not have full control over prosecutions in the Court of Judiciary.
Scottish witchcraft trials were notable for their use of pricking, in which a suspect's skin was pierced with needles, pins and bodkins as it was believed that they would possess a Devil's mark through which they could not feel pain. Professional prickers included John Kincaid and John Dick, whose actions helped set off the outbreak of witch-hunting in 1661–62, and whose exposure as frauds, and subsequent imprisonment, helped end the trials. Judicial torture was used in some high-profile cases, like that of John Fine, one of the witches accused of plotting the death of the king in 1590, whose feet were crushed in a shin press, known as the boots. However, these cases were relatively rare. Confessions, considered the best evidence for conviction, were more usually extracted by "waking" the witch, keeping the suspect sleep deprived. After about three days individuals tend to hallucinate, and this provided some exotic detail in witchcraft trials. In Scotland, convicted witches were usually strangled at the stake before having their bodies burned, although there are instances where they were burned alive.