whether his confession was obtained by fair means or foul, it certainly
bears so startling a resemblance to that of the leading witch, Agnes
Sampson, a woman whom Spottiswood describes as "matron-like, grave and
settled in her answers," that it is hardly to be wondered at that the
superstitious mind of James should have been confounded by the
coincidence. Nothing, in fact, can exceed the general harmony of the
accounts given by the different witches of their proceedings, except the
ludicrous and yet horrible character of the incidents which they record,
and which might well extort, even from James himself, the observation he
appears to have made in the commencement of the proceedings, that they
were all "extreme lyars."
James, it appears, from his singular piety, and the active part which,
long before the composition of his 'Dæmonologie,' he had taken against
Satan and his invisible world, had been, from the first, most obnoxious to
his servants upon earth. On one occasion, when an unsuccessful attempt had
been made against his life, the fiend pleaded (though we do not see why a
Scotch devil should speak French) that he had no power over him, adding,
"Il est homme de Dieu[50]." The visit which, in a sudden fit of romantic
gallantry, he paid to Norway, to bring over his queen, was too favourable
an opportunity for the instruments of Satan to be neglected; and
accordingly it was resolved by the conclave that every exertion should be
made to raise such a tempest as should infallibly put an end to the
greatest enemy (as Satan himself confidentially admitted to one of the
witches) whom the devil ever had in the world. The preparations were
therefore commenced with all due solemnity. Satan undertook, in the first
instance, to raise a mist so as to strand the King on the English coast,
but, more active measures being thought necessary, Dr. Fian, as the
devil's secretary, or register, as he is called throughout these trials,
addressed a letter to a distinguished witch, Marion Linkup, and others of
the sisterhood, directing them to meet their master on the sea within five
days, for the purpose of destroying the King[51]. On All-hallowmas Eve the
infernal party, to the number of about two hundred, embarked, "each in a
riddle or sieve, and went into the same very substantially." In what
latitude they met with Satan is not stated, but after some cruizing about
he made his appearance, and delivered to Robert Grierson a cat, which it
appears had previously been drawn nine times through the cruik[52], giving
the word to "cast the same into the sea! Hola!" And this notable charm was
not without its effect, for James, whose fleet was at that time clearing
the Danish coast, afterwards declared that his ship alone had the wind
contrary, while all the other vessels had a fair one.
The charm upon the water being finished, the witches landed, and after
enjoying themselves with wine, which they drank out of the same sieves in
which they had previously sailed so "substantially," they moved on in
procession towards the kirk of North Berwick, which had been fixed on as
their place of rendezvous with their master. The company exceeded one
hundred, of whom thirty-two are enumerated in Agnes Sampson's confession.
And they were preceded by Gellie Duncan, playing upon the Jew's-harp the
following ditty:
"Cummer, goe ye before, Cummer, goe ye,
Gif ye will not go before, Cummer, let me!"
Here their master was to appear in a character less common in Scotland
than on the Continent, that of a preacher. Doctor Fian, who, as the
devil's register, took the lead in the ceremonies at the kirk, _blew_ up
the doors, and blew in the lichts, which resembled black candles sticking
round about the pulpit, while another of the party, Grey Meill, acted as
door-keeper. Suddenly the devil himself started up in the pulpit, attired
in a gown and hat, both black. The sketch of his appearance given in Sir
James Melville's Memoirs has something of the power and picturesqueness of
Dante. "His body was hard lyk yrn, as they thocht that handled him; his
faice was terrible, his nose lyk the bek of an egle, gret bournyng eyn"
(occhi di bragia); "his handis and leggis were herry, with clawis upon his
handis, and feit lyk the Griffin, and spak with a how voice." He first
called the roll of the congregation, to which each answered by name; he
then demanded of them whether they had been good servants, what they had
done since the last time they had convened, and what had been the success
of their conjurations against the King. Gray Meill, the doorkeeper, who
was rash enough to remark, that "naething ailet the King yet, God be
thankit," was rewarded for this _mal-apropos_ observation by a great blow.
The devil then proceeded to admonish them to keep his commandments, which
were simply to do all the evil they could; on his leaving the pulpit, the
whole congregation, male and female, did homage to him, by saluting him in
a way and manner which we must leave those who are curious in such
ceremonies to ascertain from the original indictments.
Such is the strange story in which all the criminals examined before James
and the Council substantially agree; and unquestionably the singular
coincidence of their narratives remains at this day one of the most
difficult problems in the philosophy of Scottish history. The fate of the
unfortunate beings who confessed these enormities could not, in that age
of credulity, be for a moment doubtful. Fian, to whom, after the inhuman
tortures to which he had been subjected, life could not be of much value,
was condemned, strangled, and burnt. Agnes Sampson underwent a similar
fate. Barbara Napier, another person said to have been present at the
convention, though acquitted of this charge, was condemned on certain
other charges of sorcery in the indictment; but so strongly was the mind
of James excited, that, though he had secured a conviction against her, he
actually brought the assize to trial for wilful error in acquitting her on
this point of dittay.
But the most distinguished victim connected with this scene of witchcraft
was Euphemia Macalzean, the daughter of an eminent judge, Lord
Cliftonhall, a woman of strong mind and licentious passions, a devoted
adherent to the Roman Catholic faith, a partisan of Bothwell (who was
accused by several of the witches as implicated in these practices against
the King's life), and a determined enemy to James and to the Reformed
religion. Whatever may have been the precise extent of this lady's
acquirements in sorcery, there can be no doubt that she had been on terms
of the most familiar intercourse with abandoned wretches of both sexes,
pretenders to witchcraft, and that she had repeatedly employed their aid
in attempting to remove out of the way persons who were obnoxious to her,
or who stood in the way of the indulgence of her passions. The number of
sorceries, poisonings, and attempts at poisoning, charged against her in
the indictment, almost rivals the accusations against Brinvilliers; and,
though the jury acquitted her of several of these, they convicted her of
participation in the murder of her own godfather, of her husband's nephew,
and of Douglas of Pennfrastone; besides being present at the convention of
North Berwick, and various other meetings of witches, at which the King's
death had been contrived. Her punishment was the severest which the court
could pronounce: instead of the ordinary sentence, directing her to be
first strangled at a stake and then burned, the unhappy woman was doomed
to be "bund to ane staik and burnt in assis, _quick_, to the death," a
fate which she endured with the greatest firmness, on the 25th of June,
1591. So deep and permanent was the impression made by these scenes upon
the King's mind, that we owe to them the preparation of an Act of
Parliament anent the form of process against witches, mentioned among the
unprinted acts for 1597, and more immediately the composition of that
notable work of the Scottish Solomon, the 'Dæmonologie.'
In the trials of Bessie Roy, of James Reid, of Patrick Currie, of Isobel
Grierson, and of Grizel Gardiner[53], the charges are principally of
taking off and laying on diseases either on men or cattle; meetings with
the devil in various shapes and places; raising and dismembering dead
bodies for the purpose of enchantments; destroying crops; scaring honest
persons in the shape of cats; taking away women's milk; committing
housebreaking and theft by means of enchantments, and so on. South-running
water, salt, rowan-tree, enchanted flints (probably elf-arrow heads), and
doggrel verses (generally a translation of the Creed or Lord's Prayer)
were the means employed for effecting a cure. Diseases again were laid on
by forming pictures of clay or wax, which were placed before the fire or
buried with the heads downward; by placing a dead hand, or some mutilated
member, in the house of the intended victim; or, as in the case of
Grierson, by the simpler process of throwing an enchanted tailzie (slice)
of beef against his door. It was immaterial whether the supposed powers of
the witch were exerted for good or evil. In the case of Grieve, no
malefice (to use the technical term) was charged against him, but simply
that he had cured diseases by means of charms; and the same in the case of
Alison Pearson; but both were executed. Bartie Paterson seems to have been
the most pious of warlocks, for his patients were uniformly directed, in
addition to his prescriptions, to "ask their health at all livand wichtis
abone or under the earth, in the name of Jesus." The trial of Robert
Erskine of Dun, though given as one for witchcraft, seems to have been a
simple case of poisoning, he having merely resorted to a notorious witch,
named Margaret Irvine, for the herbs by which he despatched his nephews.
The case of Margaret Wallace, towards the close of James's reign, deserves
notice as being the first where something like a stand was made against
some of the fundamental positions of the demonologists; the counsel for
the prisoner contending strongly against the doctrine that, in the case of
a person accused of witchcraft, every cure performed by her was to be set
down to the agency of the devil. The defence however, though it seems to
have been ably conducted, was unsuccessful.
Matters continued much in the same state during the reign of Charles I.
From 1625 to 1640 there are eight entries of trials for witchcraft on the
Record, one of which, that of Elizabeth Bathgate, is remarkable, as being
followed by an acquittal. In that of Katharine Oswald[54], the prisoner's
counsel had the boldness to argue, that no credit was to be given to the
confessions of the other witches, who had sworn to the presence of the
prisoner at some of their orgies; "for all lawyers agree," argued he,
"that they are not really transported, but only in their fancies, while
asleep, in which they sometimes dream they see others there." This
reasoning however appears to have made no impression on the jury, any more
than the argument in Young's case[55], that the stoppage of the mill,
which she was accused of having effected _twenty-nine years before_, by
sorcery, might have been the effect of natural causes. About one-half of
the convictions during this period proceed on judicial confessions;
whether voluntary or extorted does not appear. They are not in general
interesting, though some of the details in the trial of Hamilton[56]
differ a little from the ordinary routine of the witch trials of the time.
Having met the devil on Kingston Hills, in East Lothian, he was persuaded
by the tempter to renounce his baptism--a piece of apostasy for which he
received only four shillings. The devil further directed him to employ the
following polite adjuration when he wished to raise him, namely, to beat
the ground three times with his stick, and say, "Rise up, foul thief!" On
the other hand, the devil's behaviour towards him was equally
unceremonious; for on one occasion, when Hamilton had neglected to keep
his appointment, he gave him a severe drubbing with a baton.
The scene darkens however, towards the close of this reign, with the
increasing dominion of the Puritans. In 1640 the General Assembly passed
an act, that all ministers should take particular note of witches and
charmers, and that the commissioners should recommend to the supreme
judicature the unsparing application of the laws against them. In 1643
(August 19), after setting forth the increase of the crime, they recommend
the granting a standing commission from the Privy Council or Justiciary
to any "understanding gentlemen or magistrates," to apprehend, try, and
execute justice against the delinquents. The subject appears to have been
resumed in 1644, 1645, and 1649; and their remonstrances, it would seem,
had not been without effect, for in 1649, the year after the execution of
Charles, an Act of Parliament was passed confirming and extending the
provisions of Queen Mary's, so as more effectually to reach consulters
with witches, in regard to whom it was thought (though we do not see why)
that the terms of the former act were a little equivocal. From this time,
not only does the number of convictions, which since the death of James
had been on the decline, increase, but the features of the cases assume a
deeper tinge of horror. The old, impossible, and abominable fancies of the
'Malleus' were revived in the trials of Janet Barker and Margaret
Lauder[57], which correspond in a remarkable manner with some of the
evidence in the Mora trials. About thirty trials appear on the record
between this last date and the Restoration, only one of which appears to
have terminated in an acquittal; while at a single circuit-court, held at
Glasgow, Stirling, and Ayr, in 1659, seventeen persons were convicted and
burnt for this crime.
Numerous however as are the cases in the Records of Justiciary, it must be
kept in view that these afford an extremely inadequate idea of the extent
to which this pest prevailed over the country. For though Sir George
Mackenzie doubts whether, in virtue merely of the general powers given by
the act, 1563, inferior judges did at any time, of their own authority,
try and condemn criminals accused of witchcraft, the same end was managed
in a different way. The Court of Justiciary was anxious to get rid of a
jurisdiction which would alone have afforded them sufficient employment;
and the Privy Council were in use to grant commissions to resident
gentlemen and ministers, to examine, and afterwards to try and execute,
witches all over Scotland; and so numerous were these commissions, that
Wodrow expresses his astonishment at the number found in the Registers.
Under these commissions multitudes were burnt in every part of the
kingdom. In Mercer's Manuscript Diary, Lamont's Diary, and Whitelock's
Memorials, occasional notices of the numbers burnt are perpetually
occurring.
In every case of the kind it would appear that the clergy displayed the
most intemperate zeal. It was before them that the poor wretches "delated"
of witchcraft were first brought for examination,--in most cases after a
preparatory course of solitary confinement, cold, famine, want of sleep,
or actual torture. On some occasions the clergy themselves actually
performed the part of the prickers, and inserted long pins into the flesh
of the witches in order to try their sensibility; and in all they
laboured, by the most persevering investigations, to obtain from the
accused a confession, which might afterwards be used against them on their
trial, and which in more than one instance, even though retracted, formed
the sole evidence on which the convictions proceeded. In some cases, where
the charge against the criminal was that she was "habit and repute a
witch," the notoriety of her character was proved before the Justiciary
Court by the oath of a minister, just as habit and repute is now proved in
cases of theft by that of a police officer.
Though the tide of popular delusion in regard to this crime may be said to
have turned during the reign of Charles II., its opening was perhaps more
bloody than that of any of its predecessors. In the first year after the
Restoration (1661), about twenty persons appear to have been condemned by
the Justiciary Court, two of whom, though acquitted on their first trial,
were condemned on the second on new charges. The numbers executed
throughout the country are noticed by Lamont. Fourteen commissions for
trials in the provinces appear to have been issued by the Privy Council in
one day (November 7, 1661). Of the numbers of nameless wretches who died
and made no sign, under the hands of those "understanding gentlemen" (as
the General Assembly's overture styles them) to whom the commissions were
granted, it is now almost impossible to form a conjecture. In reference
however to the course of procedure in such cases, we may refer to some
singular manuscripts relative to the examination of two confessing witches
in Morayshire in 1662, in the possession of the family of Rose, of
Kilravock; more particularly as the details they contain are, both from
their minuteness and the unparalleled singularity of their contents, far
more striking than anything to be found on the Records of Justiciary about
this time.
The names of these crazed beldames were Isobel Gowdie and Janet Braidhead.
Two of the latter's examinations are preserved; the former appears to have
been four times examined at different dates between the 13th April and
27th May, 1662, before the sheriff and several gentlemen and ministers of
the neighbourhood; and on one of these is a marking by the Justice Depute
Colville, as follows:--"Having read and considered the confession of
Isobel Gowdie, within contained, as paction with Sathan, renunciation of
baptism, with divers malefices, I find that a commission may be very
justly given for her last trial.--_A. Colville_[58]." The confessions are
written under the hand of a notary public, and subscribed by all the
clergymen, gentlemen, and other witnesses present; as would appear to
have been the practice where the precognitions were to be transmitted to
the Justiciary, with the view of obtaining a commission to try and punish
the crime. What the result of Isobel Gowdie's "last trial" was, it is
easy, from the nature of her confessions, to conjecture.
"Non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda, e passa."
Though examined on four different occasions, at considerable intervals of
time, and undoubtedly undergoing solitary confinement in the interim, so
minute and invariable are the accounts given by Gowdie in particular, of
the whole life and conversation of the witches to whom she belonged, that
a pretty complete institute of infernal science might be compiled from her
confession. The distinctness with which the visions seem to have haunted
her, the consistency they had assumed in her own mind, and yet the
inconceivable absurdity and monstrosity of these conceptions, to many of
which we cannot even allude, furnish some most important contributions to
the history of hypochondriac insanity.
Her devotion to the service of the devil took place in the kirk of
Auldearn, where she was baptized by him with the name of Janet, being held
up by a companion, and the devil sucking the blood from her shoulder[59].
The band or coven to which they belonged consisted of thirteen (whose
names she enumerates, and some of whom appear to have been apprehended
upon her delation), that being the usual number of the covens. Each is
provided with an officer, whose duty it is to repeat the names of the
party after Satan; and a maiden, who seems to hold sway over the women,
and who is the particular favourite of the devil, is placed at his right
hand at feasts. A grand meeting of the covens takes place quarterly, when
a ball is given. Each witch has a "sprite" to wait upon her, some
appearing "in sad dun, some in grass green, some in sea green, some in
yellow." Those of Gowdie's coven were, "Robert the Jakes, Sanders the
Reed-Reever, Thomas the Fairy, Swein the Roaring Lion, Thief of Hell
wait-upon-herself, MacHector," and so on. Some of these spirits, it would
appear, did not stand high in Isobel's opinion; for Robert the Jakes, she
says, was aged, and seemed to be "a gowkit glaikit spirit." Each of the
witches too received a sobriquet, by which they were generally known[60].
Satan himself had several spirits to wait upon him; "sometimes he had
boots and sometimes shoes upon his feet, but still his feet are forked and
cloven." The witches, it appears, occasionally took considerable liberties
with his character, on which occasions Satan, on detecting the calumny,
used to beat the delinquents "up and down like naked gaists" with a stick,
as Charon does the naked spirits in the 'Inferno,' with his oar. (Cant,
iii.) He found it much more easy however to deal with the warlocks than
with the fair sex. "Alexander Elder," says the confessing witch, "was
soft, and could not defend himself, and did naething but greit and crye
while he will be scourging him; but Margaret Wilson in Auldearn would
defend herself finely, and cast up her hands to cape the blows, and Bessie
Wilson would speak crustily with her tongue, and would be bellin again to
him stoutly."
The amusements and occupations of the witches are described with the same
firmness and minuteness of drawing. When the devil has appointed an
infernal diet, the witches leave behind them, in bed, a besom or
three-legged stool, which assumes their shape till their return, a feature
exactly corresponding with the Mora trials. When proceeding to the spot
where their work is to be performed, they either adopt the shape of cats,
hares, etc., or else, mounting upon corn or bean straws, and pronouncing
the following charm,--
"Horse and hattock, horse and go,
Horse and pellats, ho! ho!"
they are borne through the air to the place of their destination. If any
see these straws in motion, and "do not sanctify themselves," the witches
may shoot them dead. This feat they perform with elf-arrow heads, which
are manufactured by Satan himself; and his assistants the elf boys, who
are described, like the Scandinavian trolls, as little humpbacked
creatures who speak "goustie like" (gruffly); each witch receiving from
Satan a certain number of these "Freischütze." A list of forty or fifty
persons is given by the witch, who had been destroyed by herself and her
companions, by these means; while she also mentions that she had made an
unsuccessful attempt against the life of Mr. Harry Forbes, minister of
Auldcarn, one of the witnesses actually present and subscribing her
confession.
Another attempt against the life of this minister is described very
graphically. The instrument employed was "a bag made of the flesh and guts
and galls of toads, the liver of a hare, pickles of corn, parings of
nails, of feet, and toes," which olio being steeped all night, and mixed
_secundum artem_ by Satan himself, was consecrated by a charm dictated by
Satan, and repeated by the witches, "all on their knees, and their hair
about their shoulders and eyes, holding up their hands, and looking
stedfastly on the devil, that he might destroy the said Mr. Harry." This
composition one of the witches, who made her way into the minister's
chamber, attempted to throw upon him, but was prevented by the presence of
some other holy men in the room. Another composition of the same kind,
intended for the destruction of the lairds of Park and Lochloy, was more
successful, as appears from the deposition of the other witch, Janet
Braidhead. Having prepared the venom, "they came to Inshock in the night
time, and scattered it up and down, above and about the gate, and other
places, where the lairds and their sons would most haunt. And then we, in
the likeness of crows and rooks[61], stood above the gate, and in the
trees opposite the gate. It was appointed so that, if any of them should
touch or tramp upon any of it, as well as that it or any of it fall on
them, it should strike them with boils and kill them, _which it did, and
they shortly died_. We did it to make this house heirless."
It is needless to pursue further these strange details, which however form
a valuable appendix to the records at that time.