Healers and witches were accepted society members that existed for centuries. The idea that witches were worshipping the devil began spreading in Europe in the beginning of the fifteenth century, leading to witch-hunting. Countries such as Germany, Italy, Scandinavia and Switzerland experienced witch panics, even after division of Europe into Catholic and Protestant as the sixteenth century began. As these sides continued hunting witches the panic eventually reached Scotland in the late sixteenth century, where rulers perceive evil as source of disorder. Witch-hunting in the early modern Scotland was therefore, an extension of the Protestant Reformation. In general, government authorities’ and parish ministers’ intentions were to build state that worshiped God correctly, and hence eradicated ungodliness and all forms of sins such as witchcraft 1 . The causes and conditions leading to the witch-hunts that took place from 1590 to 1662 in phases are complicated and include, but are not limited to, Scottish society’s nature, religion and the law. Witch-hunting in Scotland developed due to social matters as well that created conditions necessary for people to make accusations, successful prosecutions and the death of more women than men.
Political, Social and Religious Changes Resulting in Witch-Hunts
Various political, religious and social issues contributed to the occurrence of witch-hunts in Scotland. The 1590 to 1591 witch-hunts were as a result of political influences, whereby King James acquired witchcraft ideas from Denmark and caused the first panic in Scotland. The second phase on 1597 occurred as Scotland experienced famine and plague and political conflict between the monarch and religious leaders of the Presbyterian Church, which may have contributed 2 . This problem arose when a Christian know as Stewart was accused of bewitching another person to death. When the Scottish army was defeated in the Second English Civil War, more political and religious unrest began. The radical Kirk party rose to power and conducted witch trials and persecutions in the effort to make the Scottish society godly. As a result, the 1649 to 1650 witch-hunt took place, especially after passing of a new Witchcraft Act that encouraged local Presbyterian Church members. Therefore, cases were different depending on the period of the witch-hunt.
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Prior to 1590
In 1563, Scottish Parliament established witchcraft as a criminal offense through the Queen’s Act, but suspected witches faced limited action. It seems that those in power perceived it as a minor issue, which explains the few witchcraft persecutions experienced in Scotland before 1590. However, rumours about the devil’s work in Scotland started spreading in the late 1500s among the locals as they talked about his abilities, which included killing livestock and people through spreading deadly illnesses, and raising storms 3 . They believed that Satan was recruiting secret agents such as witches to assist him in undermining human society from within. As a result, the authorities believed that such diabolical actors had to be eradicated to save the kingdom, which encouraged the General Assembly to complain in 1583 about the minimal punishment that witchcraft carried despite being outlawed. King James VI did not pay attention to these complaints because important persons in society such as Scottish lawyers, philosophers and theologians were not interested in the witchcraft idea, making it an unworthy topic. Nevertheless, things changed in 1589 when King James VI’s interest in Christian-witch theory developed. According to this theory, a witch had made what appeared as a personal agreement with the devil and did not act alone. Therefore, if there was one witch in an area, there was a high probability that more existed. During that year, he travelled to Denmark, where he met philosophers and intellectuals that accepted the demonic pact theory, and thus hunted witches actively. As the king travelled back to Scotland with his Danish wife, the convoy experienced rough storms along the North Sea that led to the loss of one ship. King James VI blamed this occurrence on witches, with the conclusion that they conjured dangerous storms to purposely kill the royals. The Danish court visited Scotland in 1590 to discuss about sorcery and witchcraft, causing the first major panic.
Panic spread after 1590 and execution of witches
Discussions about witchcraft in Denmark and the spread of the Christian-witch theory influenced King James VI’s belief in the subject, causing a sequence of changes socially, politically and religiously due to the shift in witches’ persecution. He used his power to influence the clergy and the ruling classes, and insisted that the crime was punishable by death caused by fire, regardless of the ages and ranks of the accused. As a result, witch hunts in Scotland were severe as intense panics erupted in multiple phases between 1590 and 1662. The 1590s’ witch hunt took place in east and central Scotland, and spread to other areas such as the north-east and ended in 1597. They began at the same period as those of people from East Lothian, known as the witch trials of North Berwick where about a hundred people died 4 . These panics caused the execution of about two thousand and five hundred accused witches, who were mostly women, out of about a million people according to the population count. Therefore, the Scottish ruler, King James VI, played a significant role in the country’s susceptibility to panics regarding witches between 1590 and 1591.
Driving forces . Ministers, local lairds, also known as aristocrats, and leaders of the Scottish society took the most practical measures to drive out witches. They designed kirk sessions, which were known as parish committees of the church, to conduct supervisions and influence people towards godliness. Although kirk sessions were hardly criminal courts, they had authority to arrest suspects and interrogate them, and then involve secular authorities in the relevant cases. The majorities of the offenses that the parish committees handled involved extramarital sexual relations, and so they accused numerous Scottish female witches of having sexual affairs with the devil.
Accusers and the accused . People accused of witchcraft were mostly elderly females with tendencies to quarrel with others, which means that accusations were based on a stereotype. If neighbours complained that certain persons were using harmful magic, such suspects would initiate a panic. Authorities would press these primary suspects to name accomplices, who would then be accused of having personal pacts with the devil instead of harmful magic. As mentioned earlier, the women were the most accused, especially of sexual relations with the male devil, whereas some accusations against men did not include such elements. Additionally, a man would only face witchcraft charges if he was involved in something rare and specific. Therefore, women constituted eighty-five percent of all convicted witches.
Geillis Duncan, a woman that lived at Tranent in East Lothian, was among the first people to face witchcraft accusations in the first panic. David Seton, who was her employer in the late sixteenth century, made these accusations and forced her to confess about her accomplices through torture. When Duncan tried retracting her confession, it was too late as panic had spread. Another accused victim was Agnes Sampson whose confession was quite alarming in 1591 and caused King James to sanction witch trails 5 . According to her revelation that was also acquired through torture, there were about two hundred witches, and some had sailed from Denmark in sieves in the 1590 Halloween night. After arrival, they stayed at the North Berwick coastal town church where they listened to the devil as he preached and stimulated them to strategize on how to destroy the king. Despite that these confessions were obtained through torture, the king and his advisers believed them and hence concluded that his reign was threatened by witchcraft conspiracy.
1597, six years after the first great panic, another one broke out whereby a single individual accused witches of plotting against King James. In this phase, witch-hunters relied on Margaret Aitken, a woman known as the great Balwearie witch, since she claimed to have the ability to detect other sorceresses. As a result, many accused women died based on her announcements. However, this tendency ended when the people proved that Aitken was a fraud, which also halted the panic abruptly 6 . The revelation embarrassed the witch-hunters and King James published the Daemonologie to justify his involvement and those trails based on Aitken’s word. Therefore, as the book indicated King James’ self-perception as an intellectual, scholars gained interest in witchcraft.
Justice process . As mentioned earlier, accusations originated from quarrels and curses as villagers cursed their neighbours during feuds although reconciliations followed. Neighbours and the accused revealed such information in their testimonies and during confessions, respectively. However, peasants did not support the execution of local witches but lacked the courage to object authorities with such responsibilities. Aside from local quarrels, Scottish witch-hunting was also based on magical fantasy as people believed in casting of spells despite that they were generally benevolent, and the elite’s fear of the devil. For instance, Marion Grant from Aberdeenshire casted south-running water on sick cattle to cure them in 1597. The spell was done in the name of the three parts of the Holy Trinity and an angel known as Christsonday, according to locals’ belief. However, the interrogators acknowledged the angel as the devil, which demonstrated the cultural gap between the elite and common folk.
After accusations, witch-hunters used torture to create evidence for the trials, which created and fuelled panic. The victims were asked to name accomplices, who would be arrested and forced to confess about having relations with the devil. Due to the intensity of the torture methods, some confessions included peculiar experiences and fantastical elements. Such common torture methods included sleep deprivation, whereby suspects went for three days or more without sleep. Interrogators used this technique to weaken victims’ abilities to resist questioners. However, it led to hallucinations, which caused confessions comprising of exotic details such as sieve sailing. Therefore, the evidence gathered did not include real activities, but rather fantasies that terrified, and confused people made to satisfy investigators. There is no evidence of judicial scepticism because the courts accepted such insubstantial evidence. Since the Scottish society believed that a threat existed, convicted witches were sentenced to death by fire, which was the same case in most European nations. However, Scotland’s custom was to first strangle them at the stake, before burning them.
Conclusion
The Scottish witch-hunt began with King James influence in 1590, after he learned about witches’ evils from Denmark’s philosophers and intellectuals and hence blamed the rough storms along the North Sea during his voyage back home on a group of people. The panics seemed to have caused neighbours to turn on each other due to arguments, especially among elderly women. As the witch-hunts continued to the early 1660’s, more factors contributed to occurrence such as political and religious changes, especially after the Scottish army was defeated in the Second English Civil War. More women than men were accused of witchcraft as driving forces focused on occurrence of sexual relations with the devil.
Bibliography
Aberdeen City Council. “Witches and Witchcraft in Aberdeen.” Aberdeen City Council . N.d. https://www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/services/libraries-and-archives/aberdeen-city-and-aberdeenshire-archives/witches-and-witchcraft-aberdeen
Goodare, Julian, Rita Voltmer, and Liv Helene Willumsen. Demonology and Witch-Hunting in Early Modern Europe . Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2020.
Goodare, Julian. “A Royal Obsession With Black Magic Started Europe's Most Brutal Witch Hunts.” National Geographic . 2019, October, 16. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/magazine/2019/09-10/scotland-witch-hunts/
Levack, Brian P. Witch-Hunting in Scotland: Law, Politics and Religion . Routledge, 2019. http://www.vlebooks.com/vleweb/product/openreader?id=none&isbn=9780429609428 .
Levack, Brian P. The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe . Routledge. 2013
Macdonald, Stuart. The Witches of Fife: Witch-Hunting in a Scottish Shire, 1560-1710 . East Linton, Scotland: Tuckwell Press, 2002. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/50773353.html .
1 Aberdeen City Council. “Witches and Witchcraft in Aberdeen.” Aberdeen City Council. N.d.
2 Brian P. Levack. Witch-Hunting in Scotland: Law, Politics and Religion. (Routledge, 2019.)
3 Julian, Goodare. “A Royal Obsession With Black Magic Started Europe's Most Brutal Witch Hunts.” National Geographic. 2019, October, 16.
4 Julian, Goodare, Voltmer, Rita and Helene Willumsen, Liv. Demonology and Witch-Hunting in Early Modern Europe. (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2020.)
5 Stuart, Macdonald. The Witches of Fife: Witch-Hunting in a Scottish Shire, 1560-1710. (East Linton, Scotland: Tuckwell Press, 2002.)
6 Brian P. Levack. The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe. (Routledge, 2013.)
