generally prevalent, had hardly assumed a form much calculated to disturb
the peace of society. Though in some cases, where these powers had been
supposed to have been exercised for treasonable purposes, the punishment
of death had been inflicted on the witches[42], men did not as yet think
it necessary, merely for the supposed possession of such powers, or their
benevolent exercise, to apply the purifying power of fire to eradicate the
disorder. Sir Michael and the Rhymer lived and died peaceably; and the
tragical fate of the tyrant Soulis on the Nine Stane Rigg was owing, not
to the supposed sorceries which had polluted his Castle of Hermitage, but
to those more palpable atrocities which had been dictated by the demon of
his own evil conscience, and executed by those iron-handed and
iron-hearted agents, who were so readily evoked by the simpler spell of
feudal despotism.
From the commencement of the Records of the Scottish Justiciary Court,
down to the reign of Mary, no trial properly for witchcraft appears on the
record. For though in the case of the unfortunate Countess of Glammis,
executed in 1536, during the reign of James V., on an accusation of
treasonably conspiring the king's death by poison, some hints of sorcery
are thrown into the dittay, probably with the view of exciting a popular
prejudice against one whose personal beauty and high spirit rendered her a
favourite with the people, it is obvious that nothing was really rested on
this charge.
But with the introduction of the Reformation "novus rerum nascitur ordo."
Far from divesting themselves of the dark and bloody superstitions which
Innocent's bull had systematized and propagated, the German reformers had
preserved this, while they demolished every other idol, and moving
"In dismal dance around the furnace blue,"
had made even children pass through the fire to Moloch. Their Scottish
brethren, adopting implicitly the creed of their continental prototypes,
transplanted to our own country, a soil unfortunately but too well
prepared for such a seed, the whole doctrine of Satan's visible agency on
earth, with all the grotesque horrors of his commerce with mankind. The
aid of the sword of justice was immediately found to be indispensable to
the weapons of the spirit; and the verse of Moses which declares that a
witch shall not be suffered to live, was forthwith made the groundwork of
the Act 73 of the ninth parliament of Queen Mary, which enacted the
punishment of death against witches or consulters with witches.
The consequences of this authoritative recognition of the creed of
witchcraft became immediately obvious with the reign of James which
followed. Witchcraft became the all-engrossing topic of the day, and the
ordinary accusation resorted to whenever it was the object of one
individual to ruin another, just as certain other offences were during the
reign of Justinian, and during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in
Italy. In Scotland the evil was not less busy in high places, than among
the humbler beings, who had generally been professors of the art magic. A
sort of relation of clientage seems to have been established between the
operative performers, and those noble patrons (chiefly, we regret to say,
of the fair sex) by whom their services were put in requisition. The Lady
Buccleugh, of Branxholm Hall, whose spells have furnished our own
Northern Wizard with some of his most striking pictures,--the Countess of
Athol, the Countess of Huntly, the wife of the Chancellor Arran, the Lady
Ker, wife of James, Master of Requests, the Countess of Lothian, the
Countess of Angus, (more fortunate in her generation than her grandmother
Lady Glammis), were all, if we are to believe the scandal of Scotstarvet,
either protectors of witches or themselves dabblers in the art[43]. Even
Knox himself did not escape the accusation of witchcraft; the power and
energy of mind with which Providence had gifted him, the enemies of the
Reformation attributed to a darker source. He was accused of having
attempted to raise "some sanctes" in the churchyard of St. Andrew's; but
in the course of this resuscitation upstarted the devil himself, having a
huge pair of horns on his head, at which terrible sight Knox's secretary
became mad with fear, and shortly after died. Nay, to such a height had
the mania gone, that Scot of Scotstarvet mentions that Sir Lewis
Ballantyne, Lord Justice Clerk of Scotland, "by curiosity dealt with a
warlock called Richard Grahame," (the same person who figures in the trial
of Alison Balfour, as a confederate of Bothwell), "to raise the devil, who
having raised him in his own yard in the Canongate, he was thereby so
terrified that he took sickness and thereof died." This was a "staggering
state of Scots statesmen" indeed, when even the supreme criminal judge of
Scotland was thus at the head of the delinquents. Well might any
unfortunate criminal have said with Angelo--
"Thieves for their robbery have authority,
When judges steal themselves."
_Measure f. Measure_, ii. 2.
Nor, in fact, was the Church less deeply implicated than the court and the
hall of justice; for in the case of Alison Pearson (1588) we find the
celebrated Patrick Adamson, Archbishop of St. Andrew's, laying aside the
fear of the Act of Parliament, and condescending to apply to this poor
wretch for a potion to cure him of his sickness!
A faith so strong and so general could not be long in manifesting itself
in works. In 1572 occurs the first entry in the Justiciary Record, the
trial of Janet Bowman, of which no particulars are given, except the
emphatic sentence "Convict: and Brynt." No fewer than thirty-five trials
appear to have taken place before the Court of Justiciary during the
remainder of James's reign, (to 1625), in almost all of which the result
is the same as in the case of Bowman.
Two or three of these are peculiarly interesting; one, from the difference
between its details and those which form the usual materials of the witch
trials; the others, from the high rank of some of those involved in them,
and the strange and almost inexplicable extent of the delusion. The first
to which we allude is that of Bessie Dunlop[44], convicted on her own
confession; the peculiarity in this case is that, instead of the devil
himself _in propriâ personâ_, the spiritual beings to whom we are
introduced are our old friends the fairies, the same sweet elves whom
Paracelsus defends, and old Aubrey delighted to honour. Bessie's familiar
was a being whom she calls Thom Reed, and whom she describes in her
judicial declaration[45] as "an honest weel elderlie man, gray bairdit,
and had ane gray coitt with Lumbard sleeves of the auld fassoun, ane pair
of gray brekis, and quhyte schankis gartarrit abone the kne." Their first
meeting took place as she was going to the pasture, "gretand (weeping)
verrie fast for her kow that was dead, and her husband and child that were
lyand sick in the land-ill (some epidemic of the time), and she new risen
out of gissane (childbed)." Thom, who took care that his character should
open upon her in a favourable light, chid her for her distrust in
Providence, and told her that her sheep and her child would both die, but
that her husband should recover, which comforted her a little. His true
character, however, appeared at a second "forgathering," when he
unblushingly urged her "to denye her christendom and renounce her baptism,
and the faith she took at the fount stane." The poor witch answered, that
"though she should be riven at horse-tails she would never do that," but
promised him obedience in all things else,--a qualified concession with
which he rather grumblingly departed. His third appearance took place in
her own house, in presence of her husband and _three_ tailors (three!). To
the infinite consternation of this trio and of the gudeman, he took her by
the apron and led her out of the house to the kiln-end, where she saw
eight women and four men sitting; the men in gentlemen's clothing, and the
women with plaids round about them, and "very seemly to see." They said to
her, "Welcome Bessie, wilt thou go with us?" but as she made no answer to
this invitation, they, after some conversation among themselves which she
could not understand, disappeared of a sudden, and "a hideous ugly sough
of wind followed them." She was told by Thom, after their departure, that
these "were the gude wights that wonned in the Court of Elfane," and that
she ought to have accepted their invitation. She afterwards received a
visit from the Queen of Elfane in person, who condescendingly asked a
drink of her, and prophesied the death of her child and the recovery of
her husband. The use which poor Bessie made of her privileges was of the
most harmless kind, for her spells seem to have been all exerted to cure,
and not to kill. Most of the articles of her indictment are for cures
performed, nor is there any charge against her of exerting her powers for
a malicious purpose. As usual however she was convicted and burnt.
This was evidently a pure case of mental delusion, but it was soon
followed by one of a darker and more complex character, in which, as far
as the principal actor was concerned, it seems doubtful whether the
mummery of witchcraft formed anything more than a mere pageant in the dark
drama of human passions and crimes. We allude to the trials of Lady Fowlis
and of Hector Munro of Fowlis, for witchcraft and poisoning, in 1590. This
is one of those cases which might plausibly be quoted in support of the
ground on which the witch trials have been defended by Selden, Bayle, and
the writers of the Encyclopédie,--namely, the necessity of punishing the
pretensions to such powers, or the belief in their existence, with as
great rigour as if their exercise had been real. "The law against
witches," says Selden, "does not prove there be any, but it punishes the
malice of those people that use such means to take away men's lives. If
one should profess that, by turning his hat and crying buz, he could take
away a man's life, though in truth he could do no such thing, yet this
were a just law made by the state, that whoever should turn his hat thrice
and cry buz, with an intention to take away a man's life, shall be put to
death." We shall hardly stop to expose the absurdity of this doctrine of
Selden in the abstract, which thus makes the will universally equal to
the deed; but when we read such cases as that of Lady Fowlis, it cannot at
the same time be denied, that the power which the pretended professor of
such arts thus obtained over the popular mind, and the relaxation of moral
principle with which it was naturally accompanied in the individual
himself, rendered him a most dangerous member of society. In general, the
profession of sorcery was associated with other crimes, and was frequently
employed as a mere cover by which these might with the more security and
effect be perpetrated. The philters and love-potions of La Voisin and
Forman, the private court calendar of the latter, containing "what ladies
loved what lords best," (which the Chief Justice prudently would not allow
to be read in court), are sufficiently well known. Charms of a more
disgusting nature appear to have been supplied by our own witches, as in
the case of Roy, tried before the sheriff of Perth, in 1601[46], and in
that of Colquhoun, of Luss, tried for sorcery and incest, 1633, where the
instrument of seduction was a jewel obtained from a necromancer. In short,
wherever any flagitious purpose was to be effected, nothing more was
necessary than to have recourse to some notorious witch. In poisoning, in
particular, they were accomplished adepts, as was naturally to be expected
from the power which it gave them of realizing their own prophecies.
Poisoners and witches are classed together in the conclusion of Louis
XIV.'s edict; and the trials before the Chambre Ardente prove that the two
trades were generally found in harmonious juxtaposition. Our own Mrs.
Turner, in England, affords us no bad specimen of this union of the
poisoner with the procuress and the witch; while the prevalence of the
same connection in Scotland appears from the details of the case of Robert
Erskine, of Dun, from that of the daughter of Lord Cliftonhall, Euphemia
Macalzean, and still more from the singular case of Lady Fowlis.
The object of the conspirators in this last case was the destruction of
the young lady of Balnagown, which would have enabled George Ross, of
Balnagown, to marry the young Lady Fowlis. But in order to entitle them to
the succession of Fowlis, supposing the alliance to be effected, a more
extensive slaughter was required. Lady Fowlis's stepsons, Robert and
Hector, with their families, stood in the way, and these were next to be
removed. Nay, the indictment goes the length of charging her with
projecting the murder of more than thirty individuals, including an
accomplice of her own, Katharine Ross, the daughter of Sir David Ross,
whom she had seduced into her schemes, a woman apparently of the most
resolute temper, and obviously of an acute and penetrating intellect;
there seems reason to doubt whether she had any faith in the power of the
charms and sorceries to which she resorted, but she probably thought that,
in availing herself of the services of those hags whom she employed, the
more prudent course would be to allow them to play off their mummeries in
their own way, while she combined them with more effective human means.
Accordingly the work of destruction commenced with the common spell of
making two pictures of clay, representing the intended victims; but
instead of exposing them to the fire, or burying them with their heads
downward, the pictures were in this case hung up on the north side of the
room, and the lady, with her familiars, shot several arrows, shod with
elf-arrow heads, at them, but without effect. Though the Lady Fowlis gave
orders that other two pictures should be prepared, in order to renew the
attempt, she seems forthwith to have resorted to more vigorous measures,
and to have associated Katharine Ross and her brother George in her plans.
The first composition prepared for her victims was a stoupful of poisoned
ale, but this ran out in making. She then gave orders to prepare "a pig of
ranker poison, that would kill shortly," and this she dispatched by her
nurse to the young Laird of Fowlis. Providence however again protected
him: the "pig" fell and was broken by the way, and the nurse, who could
not resist the temptation of tasting the contents, paid the penalty of her
curiosity with her life. So corrosive was the nature of the potion, that
the very grass on which it fell was destroyed. Nothing however could move
Lady Fowlis from her purpose. Like Mrs. Turner, who treated Overbury with
spiders, cantharides, and arsenic, alternately, that she might be able to
"hit his complexion," she now proceeded to try the effect of "ratton
poyson," (ratsbane,) of which she seems to have administered several doses
to the young laird, "in eggs, browis, or kale," but still without effect,
his constitution apparently proving too strong for them. She had more
nearly succeeded, however, with her sister-in-law, her female victim. The
"ratton poyson" which she had prepared for Lady Balnagown, she contrived,
by means of one of her subsidiary hags, to mix in a dish of kidneys, on
which Lady Balnagown and her company supped; and its effects were so
violent, that even the wretch by whom it was administered revolted at the
sight. At the date of the trial, however, it would seem the unfortunate
lady was still alive. Lady Fowlis was at last apprehended, on the
confession of several of the witches she had employed, and more than one
of whom had been executed before her own trial took place. The proceedings
after all terminated in an acquittal, a result which is only explicable by
observing that the jury was evidently a packed one, and consisted
principally of the dependants of the houses of Munro and Fowlis.
This scene of _diablerie_ and poisoning, however, did not terminate here.
It now appeared that Mr. Hector, one of his stepmother's intended victims,
had himself been the principal performer in a witch underplot directed
against the life of his brother George. Unlike his more energetic
stepmother, credulous to the last degree, he seems to have been entirely
under the control of the hags by whom he was surrounded, and who harassed
and terrified him with fearful predictions and ghastly exhibitions of all
kinds. He does not appear to have been naturally a wicked man, for the
very same witches who were afterwards leagued with him against the life of
George, he had consulted with a view of curing his elder brother Robert,
by whose death he would have succeeded to the estates. But being seized
with a lingering illness, and told by his familiars that the only chance
he had of recovering his health was that his brother should die for him,
he seems quietly to have devoted him to death, under the strong instinct
of self-preservation. In order to prevent suspicion, it was agreed that
his death should be lingering and gradual, and the officiating witch, who
seemed to have the same confidence in her own nicety of calculation as the
celebrated inventress of the _poudre de successions_, warranted the victim
until the 17th of April following. It must be admitted that the
incantations which followed were well calculated to produce a strong
effect, both moral and physical, on the weak and credulous being on whom
they were played off. Shortly after midnight, in the month of January,
the witches left the house in which Mr. Hector was lying sick at the time,
and passed to a piece of ground lying betwixt the lands of two feudal
superiors, where they dug a large grave. Hector Munro, wrapped in
blankets, was then carried forth, the bearers all the time remaining dumb,
and silently deposited in the grave, the turf being laid over him and
pressed down with staves. His foster-mother, Christian Neill, was then
ordered to run the breadth of nine riggs, and returning to the grave, to
ask the chief witch "which was her choice." She answered that Mr. Hector
was her choice to live, and his brother George to die for him. This
cooling ceremony being three times repeated, the patient, frozen with cold
and terror, was carried back to bed. Mr. Hector's witches were more
successful than the hags employed by his stepmother. George died in the
month of April, as had been predicted, doubtless by other spells than the
force of sympathy, and Hector appears to have recovered. He had the
advantage, however, of a selected jury on his trial, as well as Lady
Fowlis, and had the good fortune to be acquitted.
Scarcely had the agitation produced by these trials subsided, when the
public mind was again confounded by a new, a more extensive, and almost
inexplicable scene of enchantment, directed against the life of James and
his Queen, in 1591.
The first hint of those strange proceedings which were afterwards
disclosed, was derived from the confessions of a girl named Gellie, or
Gellis Duncan, servant to the Deputy Bailiff of Tranent. Some sudden cures
performed by this girl, and other suspicious points in her conduct, having
attracted the observation of her master, he, with a laudable anxiety for
the discovery of the truth, "did, with the help of others, torment her
with the torture of the pilliewinkis [a species of thumbscrew] upon her
fingers, which is a grievous paine, and binding or wrenching her head with
a cord or rope, which is a most cruel torment also[47]." But,
notwithstanding these persuasive applications, no confession could be
extorted. At last it was suggested by some of the operators, that her
silence was owing to her having been marked by the devil, and on a
diligent examination the mark was found on the fore part of the throat. No
sooner was it detected than the charm was burst: she confessed that all
her cures were performed by the assistance of the devil, and proceeded to
make disclosures relative to the extent of her guilt, and the number of
associates, which utterly eclipse all the preceding "discoveries of
witchcraft," with which the criminal records furnish us down to this time.
Thirty or forty different individuals, some of whom, as the pamphlet
observes, were "as civill honest women as anie that dwelled within the
city of Edinburgh," were denounced by her, and forthwith apprehended upon
her confession. Nor was this list confined to the lower classes, from whom
the victims offered to this superstition had generally been selected; for
among those apprehended on Duncan's information was Euphemia Macalzean,
the daughter of Lord Cliftonhall, one of the senators of the College of
Justice.
To trace out the wide field of witchcraft which was opened to him by the
confessions of the accused, as they were successively examined, was an
employment highly congenial to the credulous mind of James, prone to every
superstition, and versed in all the traditionary lore of Sprenger and
Bodinus. Day after day he attended the examinations in person, was put
into a "wonderful admiration" by every new trait of grotesque horror which
their confessions disclosed, and even carried his curiosity so far as to
send for Gellie Duncan herself, who had, according to the confession of
another witch, Agnes Sampson (the wise wife of Keith), played a reel or
dance before the witches, as they moved in procession to meet the devil in
the kirk of North Berwick, in order that he might himself listen to this
infernal air--"who upon the like trumpe did play the said dance before the
King's majestie, who, in respect of the strangeness of these matters, took
great delight to be present at these examinations."
All these disclosures, however, it may be anticipated, were not without a
liberal application of the usual compulsitor in such cases--the torture.
The chief sufferer was a person named Cuningham, who figures in the trials
under the name of Dr. Fian, a schoolmaster near Tranent, and apparently a
person of dissolute character, although, as appeared from his conduct on
this inquisition, also of singular strength of mind and firmness of nerve.
He was put to the question, "_first_, by thrawing of his head with a rope,
whereat he would confess nothing; _secondly_, he was persuaded by _fair
means_ to confess his folly," (would it not have been as natural to have
tried the fair means first?) "but that would prevail as little; lastly, he
was put to the most cruel and severe pain in the world, called the
Boots[48], who, after he had received three strokes, being inquired if he
would confess his damnable acts and wicked life, his tongue would not
serve him to speak." Being released from this instrument of torture, he
appears, under the influence of the agony produced by it, to have
subscribed a confession, embracing not only the alleged charges of
conspiracy against the King by means of witchcraft, but a variety of
particulars relative to his own life and conversation, by no means of an
edifying character.
But the weight to be attached to this confession was soon made apparent by
what followed; for Fian, who had been recommitted to prison, and who had
appeared for a day or two to be "very solitarye" and penitent, contrived
in the course of the next night to make his escape, and on his
re-apprehension and second examination thought fit, to the great
discomposure of James, to deny the whole of the charges which he had
previously admitted. "Whereupon the King's majestie, perceiving his
stubborn wilfulnesse," prescribed the following remedy for his relapse.
"His nayles upon his fingers were riven and pulled with an instrument
called in Scottish a Turkas[49]. And under every naile there was thrust in
two needles over even up to the heads. At all which torments,
notwithstanding, the doctor never shrunke anie whitt, neither would he
then confess it the sooner for all the tortures inflicted upon him. Then
was he _with all convenient speed_ by commandment conveyed again to the
torment of the boots, where he continued a long time, and abode so many
blows in them that his legs were crushed and beaten together _as small as
might be_, and the bones and flesh so bruised, that the blood and marrow
spouted forth in great abundance, whereby they were made unserviceable for
ever."