Scotland one of the most Superstitious Countries in
Europe--Scott's Relation of the Barbarities perpetrated in
the Witch-trials under the auspices of James VI.--The Fate
of Agnes Sampson, Euphane MacCalzean, &c.--Irrational
Conduct of the Courts of Justice--Causes of voluntary
Witch-confessions--Testimony of Sir G. Mackenzie, &c.--Trial
and Execution of Margaret Barclay--Computation of the number
of Witches who suffered death in England and Scotland in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--Witches burned alive at
Edinburgh in 1608--The Lancashire Witches--Sir Thomas
Overbury and Dr. Forman--Margaret Flower and Lord Rosse.
Scotland, by the physical features of the country and by the
character and habits of the people, is eminently apt for the
reception of the magical and supernatural of any kind;[131] and
during the century from 1563 it was almost entirely subject to
the dominion of Satan. Sir Walter Scott has narrated some of the
most prominent cases and trials in the northern part of the
island. The series may be said to commence from the confederated
conspiracy of hell to prevent the union of James VI. with the
Princess Anne of Denmark. An overwhelming tempest at sea during
the voyage of these anti-papal, anti-diabolic royal personages
was the appointed means of their destruction.
[131] A late philosophic writer has ventured to institute a
comparison in point of superstition and religious
intolerance between Spain and Scotland. The latter country,
however, has denied to political what it conceded to
priestly government: hence its superior material progress
and prosperity.--Buckle's _History of Civilisation in
England_.
The human agents were Agnes Sampson, the wise wife of Keith (one
of the better sort, who cured diseases, &c.); Dame Euphane
MacCalzean, widow of a senator of the College of Justice, and a
Catholic; Dr. John Fian or Cunninghame, a man of some learning,
and of much skill in poison as well as in magic; Barbara Napier
or Douglas; Geillis Duncan; with about thirty other women of the
lowest condition. 'When the monarch of Scotland sprung this
strong covey of his favourite game, they afforded the Privy
Council and himself sport for the greatest part of the remaining
winter. He attended on the examinations himself.... Agnes
Sampson, after being an hour tortured by the twisting of a cord
around her head according to the custom of the buccaneers,
confessed that she had consulted with one Richard Grahame
concerning the probable length of the king's life and the means
of shortening it. But Satan, to whom at length they resorted for
advice, told them in French respecting King James, _Il est un
homme de Dieu_. The poor woman also acknowledged that she had
held a meeting with those of her sisterhood, who had charmed a
cat by certain spells, having four joints of men knit to its
feet, which they threw into the sea to excite a tempest: they
embarked in sieves with much mirth and jollity, the fiend rolling
himself before them upon the waves dimly seen, and resembling a
huge haystack in size and appearance. They went on board of a
foreign ship richly laden with wines, where, invisible to the
crew, they feasted till the sport grew tiresome; and then Satan
sunk the vessel and all on board. Fian or Cunninghame was also
visited by the sharpest tortures, ordinary and extraordinary. The
nails were torn from his fingers with smiths' pincers; pins were
driven into the places which the nails usually defended; his
knees were crushed in the _boots_; his finger-bones were
splintered in the _pilniewincks_. At length his constancy,
hitherto sustained, as the bystanders supposed, by the help of
the devil, was fairly overcome; and he gave an account of a great
witch-meeting at North Berwick, where they paced round the church
_withershins_--i. e. in reverse of the motion of the sun. Fian
then blew into the lock of the church door, whereupon the bolts
gave way: the unhallowed crew entered, and their master the devil
appeared to his servants in the shape of a black man occupying
the pulpit. He was saluted with a "Hail, Master!" but the company
were dissatisfied with his not having brought a picture of the
king, repeatedly promised, which was to place his Majesty at the
mercy of this infernal crew.... The devil, on this memorable
occasion, forgot himself, and called Fian by his own name instead
of the demoniacal sobriquet of Rob the Rowan, which had been
assigned to him as Master of the Rows or Rolls. This was
considered as bad taste; and the rule is still observed at every
rendezvous of forgers, smugglers, or the like, where it is
accounted very indifferent manners to name an individual by his
own name in case of affording ground of evidence which may upon
a day of trial be brought against him. Satan, something
disconcerted, concluded the evening with a divertissement and
a dance after his own manner. The former consisted in disinterring
a new-buried corpse, and dividing it in fragments among
the company; and the ball was maintained by well-nigh two
hundred persons, who danced a ring dance.... Dr. Fian, muffled,
led the ring, and was highly honoured, generally acting as
clerk or recorder. King James was deeply interested in those
mysterious meetings, and took great delight to be present at the
examinations of the accused. He sent for Geillis Duncan, and
caused her to play before him the same tune to which Satan and
his companions led the brawl in North Berwick churchyard. His
ears were gratified in another way: for at this meeting it was
said the witches demanded of the devil why he did bear such
enmity against the king, who returned the flattering answer,
that the king was the greatest enemy whom he had in the world.
Almost all these poor wretches were executed: nor did Euphane
MacCalzean's station in life save her from the common doom, which
was strangling to death and burning to ashes thereafter. The
majority of the jury which tried Barbara Napier, having acquitted
her of attendance at the North Berwick meeting, were themselves
threatened with a trial for wilful error upon an assize, and
could only escape from severe censure and punishment by pleading
guilty, and submitting themselves to the king's pleasure. The
alterations and trenching,' adds Scott, 'which lately took place
on the Castle-hill at Edinburgh for the purpose of forming the
new approach to the city from the west, displayed the ashes of
the numbers who had perished in this manner, of whom a large
proportion must have been executed between 1590--when the great
discovery was made concerning Euphane MacCalzean and the wise
wife of Keith and their accomplices--and the union of the
crowns.'[132]
[132] Sir W. Scott's _Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft_,
ix.
Euphane's exceptional doom was 'to be bound to the stake, and
burned in ashes _quick_ to the death.' 'Burning quick' was not an
uncommon sentence: if the less cruel one of hanging or strangling
first and afterwards burning was more usual. Thirty warlocks and
witches was the total number executed on June 25th, 1591. A few,
like Dr. Cunninghame, may have been really experienced in the use
of poison and poisonous drugs. The art of poisoning has been
practised perhaps almost as extensively as (often coextensively
with) that of sorcery; a tremendous and mostly inscrutable crime
which science, in all ages, has been able more surely to conceal
than to detect.
Two facts eminently illustrate the barbarous iniquity of the
Courts of Justice when dealing with their witch prisoners. An
expressed malediction, or frequently an almost inaudible mutter,
followed by the coincident fulfilment of the imprecation, was
accepted eagerly by the judges as sufficient proof (an antecedent
one, contrary to the boasted principle of English law at least,
which assumes the innocence until the guilt has been proved, of
the accused) of the crime of the person arraigned. And they
complacently attributed to conscious guilt the ravings produced
by an excruciating torture--that equally inhuman and irrational
invention of judicial cruelty; confidently boasting that they
were careful to sentence no person without previous confession
duly made.
But these confessions not seldom were partly extracted from a
natural wish to be freed from the persecution of neighbours as
well as from present bodily torture. Sir George Mackenzie, Lord
Advocate of Scotland during the period of the greatest fury, and
himself president at many of the trials, a believer, among other
cases in his _Criminal Law_, 1678, relates that of a condemned
witch who had confessed judicially to him and afterwards 'told me
under secrecy, that she had not confessed because she was guilty;
but being a poor creature who wrought for her meat, and being
defamed for a witch she knew she should starve, for no person
thereafter would either give her meat or lodging, and that all
men would beat her and set dogs at her, and that therefore she
desired to be out of the world. Whereupon she wept most bitterly,
and upon her knees called God to witness to what she said.
Another told me that she was afraid the devil would challenge a
right to her after she was said to be his servant, and would
haunt her, as the minister said when he was desiring her to
confess, and therefore she desired to die. And really,' admits
the learned judge, 'ministers are oft-times indiscreet in their
zeal to have poor creatures to confess in this; and I recommend
to judges that the wisest ministers should be sent to them; and
that those who are sent should be cautious in this particular.'
Another confession at the supreme moment of the same sort, as
recorded by the Rev. G. Sinclair in 'Satan's Invisible World
Discovered' is equally significant and genuine. What impression
it left upon the pious clergyman will be seen in his concluding
inference. The witch, 'being carried forth to the place of
execution, remained silent during the first, second, and third
prayer, and then, perceiving there remained no more but to rise
up and go to the stake, she lifted up her body and with a loud
voice cried out, "Now all you that see me this day know that I am
now to die as a witch by my own confession, and I free all men,
especially the ministers and magistrates, of the guilt of my
blood. I take it wholly upon myself--my blood be upon my own
head; and as I must make answer to the God of heaven presently, I
declare I am as free of witchcraft as any child. But being
delated by a malicious woman, and put in prison under the name of
a witch; disowned by my husband and friends, and seeing no ground
of hope of my coming out of prison or ever coming in credit
again, through the temptation of the devil I made up that
confession on purpose to destroy my own life, being weary of it,
and choosing rather to die than live"--and so died; which
lamentable story as it did then astonish all the spectators, none
of which could restrain themselves from tears, so it may be to
all a demonstration of Satan's subtlety, whose design is still to
destroy all, partly by tempting many to presumption, and some
others to despair.'
The trial of Margaret Barclay took place in 1613. Her crime
consisted in having caused by means of spells the loss of a ship
at sea. She was said to have had a quarrel with the owner of the
shipwrecked vessel, in the course of which she uttered a wish
that all on board might sink to the bottom of the sea. Her
imprecation was accomplished, and upon the testimony of an
itinerant juggler, John Stewart, she was arraigned before a Court
of Justice. With the help of the devil in the shape of a handsome
black dog, she had moulded some figures of clay representing the
doomed sailors, which with the prescribed rites were thrown into
the deep. We are informed by the reporters of the proceedings at
this examination, that 'after using this kind of gentle torture
[viz. placing the legs in a pair of stocks and laying on
gradually increasing weights of iron bars], the said Margaret
began, according to the increase of the pain, to cry and crave
for God's cause to take off her shin the foresaid irons, and she
should declare truly the whole matter. Which being removed, she
began at her formal denial; and being of new assayed in torture
as before, she then uttered these words: "Take off, take off! and
before God I shall show you the whole form." And the said irons
being of new, upon her faithful promise, removed, she then
desired my Lord of Eglinton, the said four justices, and the said
Mr. David Dickson, minister of the burgh; Mr. George Dunbar,
minister of Ayr; Mr. Mitchell Wallace, minister of Kilmarnock;
Mr. John Cunninghame, minister of Dalry; and Hugh Kennedy,
provost of Ayr, to come by themselves and to remove all others,
and she should declare truly, as she should answer to God, the
whole matter. Whose desire in that being fulfilled, she made her
confession in this manner without any kind of demand, freely
without interrogation: God's name by earnest prayer being called
upon for opening of her lips and easing of her heart, that she by
rendering of the truth might glorify and magnify His holy name
and disappoint the enemy of her salvation.'
One of those involved in the voluntary confession was Isabel
Crawford, who was frightened into admitting the offences alleged.
In court, when asked if she wished to be defended by counsel,
Margaret Barclay, whose hopes and fears were revived at seeing
her husband, answered, 'As you please; but all I have confessed
was in agony of torture; and, before God, all I have spoken is
false and untrue.' She was found guilty; sentenced to be
strangled at the stake; her body to be burned to ashes. Isabel
Crawford, after a short interval, was subjected to the same sort
of examination: a new commission having been granted for the
prosecution, and 'after the assistant-minister of Irvine, Mr.
David Dickson, had made earnest prayers to God for opening her
obdurate and closed heart, she was subjected to the torture of
iron bars laid upon her bare shins, her feet being in the stocks.
She endured this torture with incredible firmness, since she did
"admirably, without any kind of din or exclamation, suffer above
thirty stone of iron to be laid on her legs, never shrinking
thereat in any sort, but remaining, as it were, steady." But in
shifting the situation of the iron bars, and removing them to
another part of her shins, her constancy gave way; she broke out
into horrible cries of "Take off! take off!" On being relieved
from the torture she made the usual confession of all that she
was charged with, and of a connection with the devil which had
subsisted for several years. Sentence was given against her
accordingly. After this had been denounced she openly denied all
her former confessions, and died without any sign of repentance;
offering repeated interruptions to the minister in his prayers,
and absolutely refusing to pardon the executioner.'[133] It might
be possible to form an imperfect estimate of how many thousands
were sacrificed in the Jacobian persecution in Scotland alone
from existing historical records, which would express, however,
but a small proportion of the actual number: and parish registers
may still attest the quantity of fuel provided at a considerable
expense, and the number of the fires. By a moderate computation
an average number of two hundred annually, making a total of
eight thousand, are reckoned to have been burned in the last
forty years of the sixteenth century.[134]
[133] _Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft_, ix.
The Scotch trials and tortures, of which the above cases are
but one or two out of a hundred similar ones, are perhaps the
more extraordinary as being the result of _mere_
superstition: religious or political heresy being seldom an
excuse for the punishment and an aggravation of the offence.
[134] A larger proportion of victims than even those of the
Holy Office during an equal space of time. According to
Llorente (_Hist. de l'Inquisition_) from 1680 to 1781, the
latter period of its despotism (which flourished especially
under Charles II., himself, as he was convinced, a victim of
witch-malice), between 13,000 and 14,000 persons suffered by
various punishments: of which number, however, 1,578 were
burned alive.
In England, from 1603 to 1680, seventy thousand persons are said
to have been executed; and during the fifteen hundred years
elapsed since the triumph of the Christian religion, millions are
reckoned to have been sacrificed on the bloody altars of the
Christian Moloch. An entry in the minutes of the proceedings in
the Privy Council for 1608 reveals that even James's ministers
began to experience some horror of the consequences of their
instructions. And the following free testimony of one of them is
truly 'an appalling record:'--'1608.--December 1.--The Earl of
Mar declared to the council that some women were taken in
Broughton [suburban Edinburgh] as witches, and being put to an
assize and convicted, albeit they persevered constant in their
denial to the end, yet they were burned _quick_ after such a
cruel manner that some of them died in despair, renouncing and
blaspheming God; and others half-burned broke out of the fire,
and were cast _quick_ in it again till they were burned to the
death.'[135]
[135] The terrestrial and _real_ Fiends seem to have striven
to realise on earth and to emulate the 'Tartarus horrificos
eructans faucibus aestus' described by the Epicurean
philosophic poet (Lucretius, _De Rerum Natura_, iii.).
Equally monstrous and degrading were the disclosures in the
torture-chambers; and many admitted that they had had children by
the devil. The circumstances of the Sabbath, the various rites of
the compact, the forms and method of bewitching, the manner of
sexual intercourse with the demons--these were the principal
staple of the judicial examinations.
In the southern part of the island witch-hanging or burning
proceeded with only less vehemence than in Scotland. One of the
most celebrated cases in the earlier half of the seventeenth
century (upon which Thomas Shadwell the poet laureate, who, under
the name of MacFlecknoe, is immortalised by the satire of Dryden,
founded a play) is the story of the Lancashire Witches. This
persecution raged at two separate periods; first in 1613, when
nineteen prisoners were brought before Sir James Altham and Sir
Edward Bromley, Barons of Exchequer. Elizabeth Southern, known as
'Mother Demdike' in the poet laureate's drama, is the leader of
the criminals. In 1634 the proceedings were renewed wholly on the
evidence of a boy who, it was afterwards ascertained, had been
instructed in his part against an old woman named Mother
Dickenson. The evidence was of the feeblest sort; nor are its
monotonous details worth repetition. Out of some forty persons
implicated on both occasions, fortunately the greater number
escaped. 'Lancashire Witches,' a term so hateful in its origin,
has been long transferred to celebrate the superior _charms_ (of
another kind) of the ladies of Lancashire; and the witches'
spells are those of natural youth and beauty.
The social position of Sir Thomas Overbury has made his fate
notorious. An infamous plot had been invented by the Earl of
Rochester (Robert Kerr) and the Countess of Essex to destroy a
troublesome obstacle to their contemplated marriage. The practice
of 'hellish charms' is only incidental; an episode in the dark
mystery. Overbury was too well acquainted with royal secrets
(whose disgusting and unnatural kind has been probably correctly
conjectured), too important for the keeping of even a private
secretary. His ruin was determined by the revenge of the noble
lovers and sealed by the fear of the king. At the end of six
months he had been gradually destroyed by secret poison in his
prison in the Tower (to which for an alleged offence he had been
committed) by the agency of Dr. Forman, a famous 'pharmaceutic,'
under the auspices of the Earl of Rochester. This Dr. Forman
had been previously employed by Lady Essex, a notorious
_dame d'honneur_ at James's Court, to bewitch the Earl to an
irresistible love for her, an enchantment which required,
apparently, no superhuman inducement. A Mrs. Turner, the
countess's agent, was associated with this skilful conjuror. They
were instructed also to bewitch Lord Essex, lately returned from
abroad, in the opposite way--to divert his love from his
wife.[136]
[136] The husband was impracticable; he could not be
_disenchanted_. Conjurations and charms failing, 'the
countess was instructed to bring against the Earl of Essex a
charge of conjugal incapacity: A commission of reverend
prelates of the church was appointed to sit in judgment,
over whom the king presided in person; and a jury of matrons
was found to give their opinion that the Lady Essex was a
maiden.' Divorce was accordingly pronounced, and with all
possible haste the king married his favourite to the
appellant with great pomp at Court. After the conspirators
had been arraigned by the public indignation, a curious
incident of the trial, according to a cotemporary report,
was, that there being 'showed in court certain pictures of a
man and a woman made in lead, and also a mould of brass
wherein they were cast; a black scarf also full of white
crosses which Mrs. Turner had in her custody; enchanted paps
and other pictures [as well as a list of some of the devil's
particular names used in conjuration], suddenly was heard a
crack from the scaffold, which carried a great fear, tumult,
and commotion amongst the spectators and through the hall;
every one fearing hurt as if the devil had been present and
grown angry to have his workmanship known by such as were
not his own scholars' (_Narratives of Sorcery and Magic_, by
Thomas Wright). Whatever may have been the crime or crimes
for the knowledge of which Sir Thomas Overbury was doomed,
it is significant that for his own safety the king was
compelled to break an oath (sworn upon his knees before the
judges he had purposely summoned, with an imprecation that
God's curse might light upon him and his posterity for ever
if he failed to bring the guilty to deserved punishment),
and to not only pardon but remunerate his former favourite
after he had been solemnly convicted and condemned to a
felon's death. The crime, the knowledge of which prevented
the appearance of Somerset at the gibbet or the scaffold,
has been supposed by some, with scarcely sufficient cause or
at least proof, to be the murder by the king of his son
Prince Henry. Doubt has been strongly expressed of the
implication at all of the favourite in the death of
Overbury: the evidence produced at the trial about the
poisoning being, it seems, made up to conceal or to mystify
the real facts.
Two women were executed at Lincoln, in 1618, for bewitching Lord
Rosse, eldest son of the Earl of Rutland, and others of the
family--Lord Rosse being bewitched to death; also for preventing
by diabolic arts the parents from having any more children.
Before the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and one of the
Barons of the Exchequer, it was proved that the witches had
effected the death of the noble lord by burying his glove in the
ground, and 'as that glove did rot and waste, so did the liver of
the said lord rot and waste.' Margaret Flower confessed she had
'two familiar spirits sucking on her, the one white, the other
black spotted. The white sucked under her left breast,' &c.