A Brief History of Witchcraft by Lois Martin

Author:Lois Martin [Lois Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781849018043
Publisher: Constable & Robinson
Published: 2010-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

Scotland

The number of witches executed in Scotland was three times higher than that in England, a country four times Scotland’s size. Scotland’s more receptive attitude towards European ideas made the Continental stereotype of the witch more widely accepted than in England and the country’s Calvinist ministers, who sat in the General Assembly, were certainly more keen to press for the persecution of witches than their more reserved English counterparts. The Witchcraft Act of 1563 was harsher than its English equivalent and called for the death penalty for all those convicted, although a capital sentence wasn’t always carried out. Unlike in England, torture was regularly used, although often illegally. Convicted witches were usually burnt, although they were generally strangled first. In 1590 King James VI of Scotland decided to appoint royal commissions to hunt down witches but, by 1597, the year in which his Daemonologie was published, James was beginning to have doubts about the widespread prosecution of witches, over which he was able to exercise little central control, and he revoked the royal commissions. He stipulated instead that the Privy Council must first examine the evidence in all cases of suspected witchcraft before a trial could be authorised.

Probably the most famous case of witchcraft in Scottish history involved no less than King James VI himself and his ‘half-mad cousin’ Francis, fifth Earl of Bothwell. The case became known as that of the ‘North Berwick witches’ and Bothwell was accused of conspiring with them to assassinate the king. The seeds of this royal intrigue were sown many years earlier during the reign of King James V. During his marriage to Mary of Guise, James V only managed to produce one child, a daughter, later to become Mary, Queen of Scots. He fared much better however with his string of mistresses, with whom he produced three illegitimate sons, John, James and Robert Stewart. The three were eventually legitimised in 1551 and John Stewart married Lady Jean Hepburn, sister of the fourth Earl of Bothwell, who was the second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots. When the fourth Earl died insane in a Danish prison in 1576, John Stewart’s son Francis was made the fifth Earl. Francis inherited estates including Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, Lanark, Selkirk, Berwickshire and North Berwick. Very much like his father before him, he was variously described as ‘daring, powerful and unprincipled’, ‘the oppressor of honest men’, ‘a wilful murderer’ and the ‘relentless persecutor’ of James VI, whose throne he coveted.

On 10 August 1593 Bothwell was put on trial in Edinburgh:

Francis Earl of Bothwell hath been detected of witchcraft, and if any such thing may be proved against him he is here to endure the law; if not, such as have been his accusers shall be accounted as evil members and seditious persons of the commonwealth and so shall be reported.

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