Part 31
On the day noted, the Council issued a commission for the trial of Isabel Johnston of Gullan, in the parish of Dirleton, who had ‘confessed herself guilty, in entering in paction with the devil, renouncing her baptism, and otherwise, as her depositions under the hands of several of the heritors and other honest men bears,’ and likewise to proceed to the trial of others in that district who might be delated of the same crime; for it was always seen that one apprehended witch produced several others. They at the same time commissioned three justice-deputes--the learned counsel Sir George Mackenzie being one of the number--to try a number of male and female wizards in the parishes of Musselburgh, Duddingston, Newton, Libberton, and Dalkeith. In this case, the judges were to have an allowance for their trouble ‘aff the first end of the fines and escheats of such persons as shall happen to be convict.’ Throughout the remainder of the year, and for some time after, the number of commissions issued for the trial of witches was extremely great. On one day, January 23, 1662, no fewer than thirteen were issued, being the sole public business of the council for that day, besides the issue of a commission for the trial of a thief in Sanquhar prison. Ray, the naturalist, who was in Scotland in August 1661, tells us it was reported that a hundred and twenty witches suffered about that time, and certainly much more than that number of individuals are indicated in the commissions as to be subjected to trial.
As a specimen of the facts elicited on the trials for the condemnation of these poor people--Margaret Bryson, ‘having fallen out with her husband for selling her cow, went in a passion to the door of the house in the night-time, and there did imprecate that God or the devil might take her from her husband; after which the devil immediately appeared to her, and threatened to take her body and soul, if she entered not into his service; whereupon, immediately she covenanted with him, and entered into his service.’ Another example--Isabel Ramsay ‘conversed with the devil, and received a sixpence from him; the devil saying that God bade him give her that; and he asked how the minister did,’ &c. Marion Scott, a girl of eighteen, serving a family in Innerkip parish, Renfrewshire, would go out in the morning with a hair-tether, by pulling which, and calling out, ‘God send us milk and mickle of it!’ she would supply herself with abundance of the produce of her neighbours’ cows. She had a great deal of intercourse with the devil, who passed under the name of _Serpent_, and by whose aid she used to raise windy weather for the destruction of shipping. One day, being out at sea near the island of Arran, she caused Colin Campbell’s sails to be riven, but was herself overset with the storm, so as to be thrown into a fever. After a night-meeting with Satan, he ‘convoyed her home in the dawing, and when she was come near the house where she was a servant, her master saw a waff of him as he went away from her,’ &c.
[Sidenote: 1661.]
The whole proceedings were usually of the most cruel description; and often the worst sufferings of the accused took place before trial, when dragged from their homes by an infuriated mob, tortured to extort confession, and half starved in jail. A wretch called John Kincaid acted as a _pricker_ of witches[201]--that is, he professed to ascertain, by inserting of pins in their flesh, whether they were truly witches or not, the affirmative being given when he pricked a place insensible to pain. Often they were hung up by the two thumbs till, nature being exhausted, they were fain to make acknowledgment of the most impossible facts. The presumed offence being of a religious character, the clergy naturally came to have much to say and do in these proceedings. For example, as to Margaret Nisbet, imprisoned at Spott, in Haddingtonshire, the person ordered by the Privy Council to take trial of her case and report is Mr Andrew Wood, the minister of the parish. There are many instances in the Privy Council Record of witches being cleared on trial, but detained at the demand of magistrates, or clergymen, in the hope that further and conclusive evidence would yet be obtained against them. Such was the case of Janet Cook of Dalkeith, who had predicted of a man who beat her, that he would be hanged--which came to pass; who bewitched William Scott’s horse and turned him furious; and occasionally healed sick people by the application of some piece of an animal killed under certain necromantic circumstances. Janet had been tried, and acquitted; yet she was kept in durance at the urgency of the kirk-session, as they were getting fresh grounds of accusation against her.
Occasionally relenting measures were taken by the Council, though it is to be feared not always with the approval of the local powers. On the 30th of January 1662, they considered a petition from Marion Grinlaw and Jean Howison, the _survivors_ of ten women and a man who had been imprisoned at Musselburgh on this charge. Some of the rest had died of cold and hunger. They themselves had lain in durance _forty weeks_, and were now in a condition of extreme misery, _although nothing could be brought against them_. Margaret Carvie and Barbara Honiman of Falkland had in like manner been imprisoned at the instance of the magistrates and parish minister, had lain six weeks in jail, subjected to ‘a great deal of torture by one who takes upon him the trial of witches by pricking,’ and so great were their sufferings that life was become a burden to them, notwithstanding that they declared their innocence, and nothing to the contrary had been shewn. The Council ordered all these women to be liberated.--_P. C. R._
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[Sidenote: JULY.]
[Sidenote: 1661.]
‘By an act of the parliament, an order is issued out to slight and demolish the citadels of the kingdom which were built by the English. This of Inverness had not stood ten years. The first part they seized upon was the sentinel-houses, neat turrets of hewn stone, curiously wrought and set up on every corner of the rampart wall, these now all broken down by the soldiers themselves. The next thing was the Commonwealth’s arms pulled down and broken, and the king’s arms set up in their place; the blue bridge slighted, the sally-port broken, the magazine-house steeple broken, and the great bell taken down--all this done with demonstrations of joy and gladness, the soldiers shouting “God save the king,” as men weary of the yoke and slavery of usurpation which lay so long about their necks. I was an eye-witness of the first stone that was broken of this famous citadel, as I was also witness of the foundation-stone laid, _anno_ 1652, in May. This Sconce and Citadel is the king’s gift to the Earl of Moray, to dispose of at his pleasure. A rare thing fell out here that was notarly known to a thousand spectators, that the Commonwealth’s arms set up above the most conspicuous gate of the citadel, a great _thistle_ growing out above it covered the whole carved work and arms, so as not a bit of it could be seen, to the admiration of all beholders! This was a presage that the Scots therefore should eclipse [triumph.]‘--_Fraser of Wardlaw’s MS. 1666._
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[Sidenote: 1661.]
The Privy Council Record, for a long time after July 1661, is half filled with the cases of ministers who had been deposed during the troubles, and who, having for years suffered under extreme poverty, now petition for some compensation. Sometimes it was a minister who gave offence by his dislike to the movement of 1638, sometimes one who had incurred the wrath of the more zealous party by his adherence to the Engagement of 1648 ‘for procuring the liberation of his late majesty of blessed memory;’ sometimes the cause of deposition was of later occurrence. For example: ‘Mr John M‘Kenzie, sometime minister of the kirk of Urray [Ross-shire], because he would not subscrive the Covenant and comply with the sinful courses of the time, [was] banished and forced to fly to England _anno_ 1639, and thereafter was sent to Ireland, and though provided there with a competency, was by the rebellion forced to retire to Scotland. After his majesty’s pacification closed at the Birks, and by the moyen of his friends, [he] re-entered to the ministry; yet, still retaining his principle of loyalty and integrity, he was therefore persecuted by the implacable malice of the violent humours of those times, and again suspended and thereafter deposed, only for refusing to preach men’s humours and passions as a trumpet of sedition and rebellion.’ Mr Andrew Drummond had been deposed from Muthill parish, ‘for no other cause but his accession to ane supplication to the General Assembly, where he with divers others, out of the sense of their duty, did declare their affection to the Engagement, _anno_ 1648,’ and had suffered under this sentence for five or six years. Mr Robert Tran, minister of Eglesham, had been deposed in 1645 for no other cause than loyalty to his late majesty. In some cases, the petitioner tells of the wife and six or seven children whom his deposition had thrown destitute, and who had gone through years of penury and hardship. The Council generally ordered £100 sterling, or, in such a case as that of M‘Kenzie, £150, out of the stipends of the vacant churches of their bounds.
[Sidenote: 1661.]
The popular writers of this period of Scottish history do not advert sufficiently to those hard measures of the time of the Solemn League which may be said, in the way of reaction or retaliation, to have led to the severities now in the course of being practised upon the more uncompromising Presbyterians. The many petitions of the persecuted men of 1638-60 for redress are only slightly alluded to in a few sentences by Wodrow, while he fills long chapters with those sufferings of proscribed Remonstrators which would never probably have had existence but for their own harsh doings in their days of power. He dwells with much feeling on the banishment passed upon Mr John Livingstone, a preacher high in the esteem of the more serious people, and deservedly so. All must sympathise with such a case, and admire the heroic constancy of the sufferer; but it is striking, only a few months after his sentence to exile (February 2, 1664), to find a Mr Robert Aird coming before the Privy Council with a piteous recital of the distresses to which he and his family had been subjected since 1638, in consequence of his being then thrust out of his charge at Stranraer, merely for his affection to the then constituted Episcopal government, the clergyman put into his place being this same John Livingstone! Aird tells us that, being then ‘redacted to great straits, he was at last necessitat to settle himself in Comray, in the diocese of the Isles, where his provision [patrimony] was,’ that being ‘so little that he was not able to maintain his family.’ During the usurpation, ‘by reason of his affection to his majesty, he was quartered upon and otherwise cruelly abused, to his almost utter ruin.’ The Lords recommended that Mr Aird should have some allowance out of vacant stipends in the diocese of the Isles. Another of the zealous clergy whose resistance to the new rule and consequent troubles and denunciation are brought conspicuously forward by Wodrow, was Mr James Hamilton, minister of Blantyre. He was compelled to leave his parish, and not even allowed to officiate peaceably in his own house at Glasgow. Much to be deplored truly; but Wodrow does not tell us of a petition which was about the same time addressed to the Council by the widow of Mr John Heriot, the former minister of Blantyre, upon whom, in 1653, ‘the prevailing party of Remonstrators in the presbytery of Hamilton had intruded one Mr James Hamilton,’ by whom the whole stipend had been appropriated, so that Heriot, after a few years of penury, had left his widow and children in absolute destitution. So impressed were the Council by the petitioner’s case, that they ordered her to receive the whole stipend of the current year. To any candid person who would study the history of this period, it appears necessary that these circumstances should be told, not in justification of the cruel and most unwise measures of the government and the heads of the new church, but as a needful explanation of what it was in the minds of these parties which made them act as they did.
While men tore each other to pieces on account of religion in Scotland, and all material progress in the country was consequently at a stand, one sagacious Scotch clergyman visited Holland, and found a very different state of things there. ‘I saw much peace and quiet,’ he says, ‘in Holland, notwithstanding the diversity of opinions among them; which was occasioned by the gentleness of the government, and the toleration that made all people easy and happy. A universal industry was spread through the whole country.’--_Burnet’s History of his Own Times._
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[Sidenote: AUG. 17.]
[Sidenote: 1661.]
This day, John Ray, the eminent naturalist, entered Scotland for a short excursion. In the _Itineraries_ which he has left, he gives, besides zoological observations, some notes on general matters. ‘The Scots, generally (that is, the poorer sort), wear, the men blue bonnets on their heads, and some russet; the women only white linen, which hangs down their backs as if a napkin were pinned about them. When they go abroad, none of them wear hats, but a party-coloured blanket which they call a plaid, over their heads and shoulders. The women, generally, to us seemed none of the handsomest. They are not very cleanly in their houses, and but sluttish in dressing their meat. Their way of washing linen is to tuck up their coats, and tread them with their feet in a tub. They have a custom to make up the fronts of their houses, even in their principal towns, with fir-boards nailed one over another, in which are often made many round holes or windows to put out their heads [called _shots_ or _shot windows_]. In the best Scottish houses, even the king’s palaces, the windows are not glazed throughout, but the upper part only, the lower have two wooden shuts or folds to open at pleasure and admit the fresh air. The Scots cannot endure to hear their country or countrymen spoken against. They have neither good bread, cheese, or drink. They cannot make them, nor will they learn. Their butter is very indifferent, and one would wonder how they could contrive to make it so bad. They use much pottage, made of coal-wort, which they call keal, sometimes broth of decorticated barley. The ordinary country houses are pitiful cots, built of stone, and covered with turves, having in them but one room, many of them no chimneys, the windows very small holes, and not glazed. In the most stately and fashionable houses in great towns, instead of ceiling they cover the chambers with fir-boards, nailed on the roof within side. They have rarely any bellows or warming-pans. It is the manner in some places there to lay on but one sheet as large as two, turned up from the feet upwards. The ground in the valleys and plains bears good corn, but especially beer-barley, or bigge, and oats, but rarely wheat and rye. We observed little or no fallow-grounds in Scotland; some layed ground we saw which they manured with sea-wreck (sea-weeds). The people seem to be very lazy, at least the men, and may be frequently observed to plough in their cloaks. It is the fashion of them to wear cloaks, when they go abroad, especially on Sundays. They lay out most they are worth in clothes, and a fellow that hath scarce ten groats besides to help himself with, you shall see him come out of his smoky cottage clad like a gentleman.’
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[Sidenote: OCT. 3.]
[Sidenote: 1661.]
Mr James Chalmers, commissioner for the presbytery of Aberdeen, came before the Privy Council with a representation that, in conformity with sundry acts of parliament, the synod had lately made diligent search within their bounds for papists and seminary priests. A list of the individuals, which the reverend gentleman handed in, is remarkable as containing many of the same names as those which we had under notice upwards of thirty years before for the same scandal. An age of the most rigorous treatment had failed to convince these people of their errors. There were the Lady Marquise of Huntly and her children, Viscount Frendraught with his brethren and children, the Laird of Gight and his children, the Lairds of Craig, Balgownie, and Pitfoddels, with many others whose names were not formerly noted, as the Lairds of Drum, Auchindoir, Monaltrie, Tullos, and Murefield. Altogether, it is a sad exhibition of pertinacity in unparliamentary opinions. Against these and many others, including several priests, the synod had proceeded with censure and excommunication; ‘notwithstanding whereof they continue in their accustomed course of disobedience and will onnaways conform to the laws of the church and kingdom, but on the contrair, in a most insolent manner avow their heretical seditious principles and practices, to the overthrow of religion, disturbance of church and state, and the seducing of many poor souls.’ It was suggested that the Council should issue letters of horning against the delinquents. The lords promised to give the subject their consideration.
Very soon after this date, the Privy Council are found dealing with the case of ‘John Inglis and William Brown, apprehended and imprisoned in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh for being trafficking papists.’ Inglis had also been guilty of distributing popish books. Brown readily gave his promise, if liberated, ‘to take banishment upon him, and never to be seen within the kingdom hereafter;’ but Inglis was more obstinate. He ‘refused to give notice of such popish priests as of his knowledge were come within this kingdom,’ and would not on any account relinquish his own profession. He was told that he must leave the kingdom within twenty days, and that if ever again found within its bounds, he would be punished according to law--that is, hanged.--_P. C. R._
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[Sidenote: DEC. 5.]
On the 5th of December, the Privy Council granted a warrant to Robert Mean, ‘keeper of the Letter-office in Edinburgh, to put to print and publish ane diurnal weekly for preventing false news which may be invented by evil and disaffected persons.’--_P. C. R._
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[Sidenote: 1662.
MAR. 13.]
[Sidenote: 1662.]
‘In the night-season, at Edinburgh, one Thomas Hepburn, a writer, being a young man, was strangled in his bed privately, and, fearing he should [have] recovered, a knife was stopped in[to] his throat. He was carried out naked by three or four persons, and laid down on a midden-head in the High Street. A young maid coming by at the time, being afraid, cried and went into the Court of Guard, and told the business; upon this, some of the guard went out and apprehended five men, drinking with a woman, in the lodging where he lay, and carried them to the Tolbooth. They all denied they knew any such thing.’--_Lam._
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[Sidenote: APR. 1.]
The late storm of popular rage against witches would now appear to have spent the worst, though not the whole of its fury. The Privy Council was become sensible of great inhumanity having been practised by John Kincaid, the pricker--who, as has been stated, took upon him to ascertain whether a woman was a witch or not by inserting a pin into various parts of her body, with the view of finding if in any part she was insensible to pain! They ordered this man to be put in prison.[202] A few days afterwards, they issued a proclamation, proceeding on the assurance they had received, that many persons had been seized and tortured as witches, by persons having no warrant for doing so, and who only acted out of envy or covetousness. All such unauthorised proceedings were now forbidden. Nevertheless, proceedings of a more legal and less barbarous character went on. Twelve commissions for the trial of witches in different districts were issued on the 7th of May; three on the 9th; three on the 2d of June; one upon the 19th; and three upon the 26th. In these instances, however, a caution was given that there must be no torture for the purpose of extorting confession. The judges must act only upon voluntary confessions; and even where these were given, they must see that the accused appeared fully in their right mind.
[Sidenote: APR.]
[Sidenote: 1662.]
At Auldearn, in Nairnshire, the notable witch-case of Isobel Gowdie came before a tribunal composed of the sheriff of the county, the parish minister, seven country gentlemen, and two of the town’s men.[203] She was a married woman; her age does not appear, but, fifteen years before, she had given herself over to the devil, and been baptised by him in the parish church. She was now extremely penitent, and made an unusually ample confession, taking on herself the guilt of every known form of witchcraft. She belonged to a witch-_covin_ or company, consisting, as was customary, of thirteen females like herself, who had frequent meetings with the Evil One, to whom they formed a kind of seraglio. Each had a nickname--as _Pickle nearest the Wind_, _Over the Dike with it_, _Able and Stout_, &c., and had a spirit to attend her, all of which had names also--as the _Red Riever_, the _Roaring Lion_, and so forth. The devil himself she described as ‘a very mickle, black, rough man.’
Meeting at night, they would proceed to a house, and sit down to meat, the _Maiden of the Covin_ always being placed close beside the devil and above the rest, as he had a preference for young women. One would say a grace, as follows:
‘We eat this meat in the devil’s name, With sorrow and _sich_ [sighs] and mickle shame; We shall destroy house and hald, Both sheep and nolt intill the fauld: Little good shall come to the fore Of all the rest of the little store.’
And when supper was done, the company looked steadily at their grizly president, and bowing to him, said: ‘We thank thee, our Lord, for this.’
[Sidenote: 1662.]