What in the Hell were They Thinking?   The Scottish Witchcraft Trials

Gerald Roger Clough

 

Thou shall not suffer a witch to live

--Exodus

 

The Bible teaches us that there are witches and that they must be slain

--John Calvin

 

That we should deny witches, we must deny the truth of all history, ecclesiastic and secular.

--Sir George Mackenzie

 

 

            A number of otherwise rational men were involved in what some historians call the greatest wave of judicial murder ever to sweep across a continent often noted for mass murders.   As many as 4000 terrorized women of Scotland were accused, tortured, tried and executed after being convicted for involvement in the black arts, or witchcraft.   The 21 st Century mind, accustomed to steady streams of daily illusions, may have some trouble understanding exactly why this sort of justice was administered; one must remember that the people of these lands were at this time becoming increasingly influenced by a fire and brimstone Calvinist movement that saw Satan as a far greater and far more influential force than he had been previously viewed.

 

            Two factors, according to English historian Holdsworth ( History of the English Law , Vol. 4, pp. 508-09, citing Lecky , History of Rationalism , i chap. I)   helped bolster the belief in witches: 1) by the 16 th and 17 th centuries, people had believed that “all acts and events were immediately governed by the higher powers of good and evil;” and 2) the Inquisition's horrible punishments and tortures used to “extort confessions, easily procured testimony from the heated imaginations of the terrified, of the ignorant and the superstitious.”   Those factors, coupled with the general sense of insecurity which such epidemics such as the Black Death produced, gave rise to a body of evidence as to the existence and nature of these evil agencies which made it wholly absurd to deny their existence.”

 

            Protestant as defined by Webster's Collegiate Dictionary:

 

                        “Denying universal authority of the pope ;… the primary source of the Bible as the only source of revealed truth.”

 

            The religious conflicts of the reformation tended to excite a religious fervor which increased man's consciousness of the consequences of sin and of the devil's active mechanisms.   The power that preachers held over simple rural populations should not be underestimated—Sunday after Sunday these preachers poured their fierce and eloquent sermons into the souls of their listeners—dreadful warnings and vivid descriptions of hellfires and the personal devil.   These ministers were often the same individuals bolstering the King's cases against the accused by testifying to the woman's reputation as a witch.

 

            As Lerner puts it in her article (The Process from Accusation to Execution of a 17 th Century Witch):   It is hard to overemphasize the importance of reputation in the production of a witch in Scotland .”   In what might be a nod to the “wisdom” of the common man that would later be used to make up juries, the accused's neighbors were sometimes called upon to attest to the accused's reputation, as well as specific acts of “ malefice .”

 

            When Scottish criminal law authority Mackenzie was codifying The Laws and Customs of Scotland in Matters Criminal (1678), he included a considerable section on the law's attempt to deal with the witchcraft problem.   It is evident that by the time Mackenzie was writing Laws and Customs that – though he still believed in witches—he was growing weary of the often harsh and horrible results of the witchcraft trials themselves.   Responding to what was a rash of contemporary “dilations” (formal charges) , Mackenzie was concerned that too many people were being arrested.   According to Mackenzie, “to apprehend is an act of jurisdiction;” therefore “no prison should receive any as suspect of witchcraft, until they know that the person offered to them be apprehended by lawful authority.”   The person, according to Mackenzie, should not have been apprehended “except that it appear by the event… that she lyes under either many or pregnant suspicions.   Mackenzie made no attempt in Laws and Customs to define many or pregnant.

 

            In Justiciary Proceedings —some with Mackenzie presiding as a judge—we'll find an example of what kind of basic charge would be brought against a suspected witch.   In one case, “… the lybell [was] upon the common grounds of compact with the devil, Renouncing of Baptisme , keeping meetings with the devil and accepting his mark….”    In another interesting case, a woman was convicted for an act of witchcraft when Satan showed up a “meeting” and was found to have asked the woman how the local minister was doing.

 

            Mackenzie was also concerned with the varying relevancy questions regarding the witchcraft crime as described in Justiciary Proceedings .   These relevancies included: 1) the accused made a pact “to serve the devil”; 2) the renouncing of the baptism was per se relevant; and 3) that the accused “would have accepted the Devil's Mark.”   Again showing concern regarding the often harsh results, Mackenzie decided to lay down the law.   Mackenzie's concern about the accused's pact was that the “ the useth to appear in the similitude of a man, when he desireth these poor creatures to serve him….”   Mackenzie then decreed “therefore they should be interrogat [ed] if they knew him to be the devil when they condescended to his service.   He also wrote of the traditional distinction between implied and expressed pacts, mentioning the formula for the express pact as set down Delrio :   “I deny God creator of Heaven and Earth, and I adhere to thee and believe in thee.”   Perhaps obviously, a simple promise to follow the devil was also enough to prove the pact to serve.   Implied promises to serve the devil could be also be found by rummaging through the accused's “Books or Discourse.”   The Baptism renunciation was performed by the devil and often included the act of giving to the intiated / accused “ridiculous” new names.   Mackenzie listed two of them—Red Shanks and Searjeant .

 

            Most bizarre is probably the use of the “Devil's Mark” to prove guilt.   Before Mackenzie (and in the beginning of his legal career) there was a group of men who assisted the prosecution in a peculiar way—they were witch prickers .   Concerned about the unchecked discretion and the self interests that ran rampant with these men, Mackenzie needed to discuss the issue.   First of all, the Devil's Mark was not per se relevant unless the accused confessed to accepting the mark on her own accord.   Mackenzie favorite historical source, Delrio , had previously described what to look for when searching for the Devil's Mark.   It would look “like the impression of a Hare's foot or the foot of a Rat or Spider.”   Rohrshach would have undoubtedly been fascinated.   Though some of Mackenzie's contemporaries thought it impossible that there would be insensitive spots in (and on) the body without the aid of witchcraft, he thought the devil was easily capable of such a feat.   The mark of course was found by the prickers .   Mackenzie knew the pricker trade to be a “horrid cheat.”   Though the prickers insisted the evidence was valid, Mackenzie wrote “there are many pieces of dead flesh which are insensible, even in living bodies: and a villain who used this trade with us, being in the year 1666, apprehended for other villainies, did confess all this Trade to be meer cheat.”   Though Mackenzie was concerned with what was going on, he certainly did not try to refute the fact that witches were amongst the people.   Early on in his article about witchcraft, Mackenzie discusses the various historical proofs that witches have existed for ages—tracing witchcraft problems back to the Romans and the Ancient Jews.    He was concerned about superstitious beliefs formed during the “duller ages of the world” and assured his readers that there “is now no fear since learning hath sufficiently illuminated the world, so as to distinguish between” magicians and physicians.   He was growing tired of the bizarre and desperate confessions made by women who were “starved for want of meat and sleep.”    These tortured accused were manufacturing confessions in which they were obviously imagining things that were, according to Mackenzie, “very ridiculous and absurd.”   No one could escape some of these torture sessions and states of mind that he termed “profound melancholies.”   Many of these accused people were confessing things such as transmutations of their bodies.

 

            Perhaps Mackenzie was mindful of possible facing his own heresy problems when he wrote about the feared Kirk Sessions which were used to procure confessions.   He was concerned about the “sessions” but he did not condemn them as being an invalid means of witchfinding .   He wrote: “…since there isos much weight… laid upon the depositions there emitted, Kirk Sessions should be very cautious in their procedors . [ sic ]”

           

            This was clearly a bizarre time in history—humankind was seriously beginning to think about the world around them.   There was a lot of leftover Dark Ages baggage still hovering about, enough to make this wave of “judicial murder” possible.   After examining what some of the more rational men of the times thought about ideas like witches driving people insane or casting spell inviting storms, we see the beginnings of serious doubts regarding irrational beliefs that had been in place for thousands of years.