If we begin by looking at a specific ‘place’ and examine how the witch-hunt occurred within that place over time, the complexity of the Scottish experience becomes readily apparent. Persecutions in Haddington seem to have arisen abruptly and often involved many individuals. There are isolated cases spread out over the entire period from the 1560’s to the early 1700’s, but it is the major hunts which are so dramatically evident. The cases in Edinburgh are also focused on specific hunts (1661 in particular), although not to the same extent as was the case in Haddington. On the other hand, Fife shows a broader spread and a much lower intensity of accusations. Only one year witnessed more than fifty cases in Fife, compared to four years in Haddington. This approach works well for regional comparisons or regional studies but is not particularly helpful to our understanding of the overall shape of the Scottish witch-hunt.
The second axis, ‘time’, brings a sharper focus to our study. Several realities begin to emerge as we look at which areas were affected in any given year. For example, there is no obvious rhyme, reason, or rationale to the location of witchcraft cases from year to year in the period from 1616 to 1620, a period which witnessed no national hunt. Only in two of the years were there more than ten cases throughout the entire nation: nineteen cases in 1616; and, eleven in 1618. Orkney produced ten cases in 1616, Ayr seven in 1618, Shetland five again in 1616, but in all other shires the cases were less than a handful. This pattern of five or fewer cases occurring in any given shire in a particularly year is not restricted to this five year period. In the previous fifteen years only in one year, 1613, were there more than five cases in any shire (Perth had nine cases in that year). During the 1620’s the number of cases intensified prior to the major outbreak of persecution in 1629. It is important to stress that, to use Larner’s categories, individual witches and ‘small panics’ springing up without apparent pattern was normal throughout the course of the entire witch-hunt in Scotland.40
While many years witnessed small numbers of cases spread throughout Scotland, other years witnessed major national hunts. Maps 3 and 4 illustrate the national hunt of 1649 and 1650 respectively. To place these accusations in context, there were no cases in 1647 or 1651, and only isolated cases in different Shires in the years 1645 and 1646.41 (The years 1643 and 1644, years of national crisis, did see significant witch-hunting, 56 and 67 cases respectively; yet only one case in either year came from Haddington.) The focus of the persecutions along the Fife-Lothians axis is dramatically demonstrated by the maps. After serious persecution in this region, ‘aftershocks’ rumbled out to affect other regions of Scotland. A similar focus on Haddington and Edinburgh can be seen in 1661, with the persecution broadening to other areas of Scotland in 1662. The differences between these national hunts and other accusations of witchcraft are noticeable.
When we examine the geography of the Scottish witch-hunt on a yearly basis the difference between the great national hunts and the persecution that took place at other times becomes very apparent. Indeed, there seem to have been two witch-hunts going on concurrently in Scotland during this period; the one driven by village tensions (as in the case of Elspeth Thomson); the other by elite fears, which resulted in the persecution of otherwise harmless individuals like Andro Man. The former was erratic, unpredictable, moved from area to area, and generally involved isolated individuals (or a small group of individuals) who had already been named by the community as a witch. The accusations involved actions of malefice; the laying on and removal of illness, the interference with reproduction of humans and livestock, and other displays of hostility to one’s neighbours.42 The latter, the great hunts, were focused in particular areas and coincided with times of particular tension within the Scottish elite or times when political purposes could be served through persecution.
Map 3 – Scotland, 1649. Witchcraft cases by shire.
Map 4 – Scotland, 1650. Witchcraft cases by shire.
This neat characterization of the witch-hunt into two categories is far from perfect and at the moment is more suggested than proven. There was obviously overlap within and between these two witch-hunts: elites must always be involved even in isolated cases for witch-craft to be deemed a crime dealt with by the judicial process; those condemned as witches during the great hunts were in many cases individuals already suspected as ‘witches’ by their community.43 Still the different dynamics which seem to exist require further exploration and explanation. An intense study of one region may shed further light on the inter-relationship between the cases of isolated witches and the outbreaks of major panics.
The information contained in the Sourcebook and refined in the Scottish Witch-hunt Database can also be used to test the theory, advanced by Geoff Quaife, that there was an intimate connection between the hunts of 1649–50 and those which occurred after the Cromwellian occupation ended. As Quaife succinctly stated: ‘Military occupation suspended rather than abolished the hunt’.44 If this were the case, it seems fair to assume that we should see this reflected in the regional patterns: put simply, those in a particular area picked up in 1659 and 1661 where they left off in 1650, persecuting the same individuals. Yet, this is not at all what we see. The 1649 hunt was extremely focused, especially in Haddington (107 cases) and Fife (45 cases), and then spread through the lowlands. (See Maps 3 and 4). When cases ‘resumed’ in 1658 – ignoring for the moment that accusations against witches continued throughout the 1650’s, including a large, mysterious hunt in 1652 and a hunt in 1655 involving twelve cases in Caithness – the focus was in Ayrshire with 55 cases and Clackmannan with thirty-one. Haddington only becomes a major player the next year in 1659 with fifty-three cases. Fife saw no cases, and was only a minor player in the 1661 and 1662 hunt and, as we shall see, within the shire these involved parishes that heretofore had not been involved in any significant way with witch-hunting. Haddington was the main player in both 1661 and 1662 (93 and 99 cases respectively), but other areas not involved in the period prior to the English occupation became intensely involved.45 An examination on the national scale does not preclude that individuals accused in 1650 who escaped prosecution because of the changes brought about by the English occupation might not have been accused again once the Scottish judicial system was back in place. Such cases certainly happened. But on a national scale, the links between the hunts of 1649–50 and those which followed the English withdrawal are not as direct as one might suspect.
Our discussion of chronology and geography has shown how complex the Scottish witch-hunt was. Still, this information can help us in several ways. First and foremost, it can serve as a basic foundation for any regional study. We will only be able to understand the whole once we have come to understand the regions better; yet, we must have some tools to assist us in our regional studies as well as a sense of how the particular region we are studying fits into the whole. So, for example, studies of the witchhunt in the Highlands can now proceed with a better sense of the overall picture of the witch-hunt in Scotland. Secondly, we can use this information to critique some of the current understandings of the Scottish witch-hunt.
The patterns that we have described cast doubt on the role of judicial torture as the key determining factor in witchcraft persecution in Scotland. There is no question that it may have played a role in the major national hunts. Its role in the cases involving isolated witches or in small panics is less clear. Even in years where the hunting was at an intense, national level one would expect to see a concentration of cases greater than that in 1649 (Map 3) and far greater than that found in 1650 (Map 4). This is a subject to which we shall return in great length in chapter eight. For the moment, however, it is important to recognise that the national pattern does not support the notion that the use of judicial torture was the main driving force behind the Scottish witch-hunt. The pattern is more compatible with the notion of travelling witch-finders who may have serve
d to confirm the suspicions of local communities that particular individuals in their midst were indeed witches.
Andro Man was a victim swept up in a major witch-hunt which occurred throughout Scotland. Elspeth Thomson was someone caught in events of a more local nature. It is important that we recognise these differences. Village tensions existed throughout, and when combined with concerns and fears of the elite, produced wide-scale witch-hunting. To understand better how this occurred we will turn our attention to a particular region of Scotland, namely Fife, examine the chronological and geographical patterns and tell the story of the individual women and men who found themselves accused as witches or accusing others.
Notes
1.
MacCulloch, ‘The Mingling of Fairy and Witch Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Scotland’, 235–36. Andro Man appears as case no. 2302 in the SBSW. See also Spalding Club Miscellany VI, 117–125.
2.
Cited in A.E. Truckell, ‘Unpublished Witchcraft Trials – Part 2’ in Transactions of the Dumfries-shire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society (1976), 103.
3.
Ibid., 103–106. Elspethe Thomsone appears as case no. 588 in the SBSW. Case 838 also appears to be a reference to the same Elspeth Thomson (at a different court level). This case is very well known. The above description comes from the court records, as quoted in Truckell. Christina Larner discussed this case at length, in chapter 10 ‘Two Classic Cases’ in Enemies of God, 120–33. Innes MacLeod also refers to the case in Discovering Galloway (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1986), 173.
4.
There are several cases which have become common to the literature. Baroja, The World of the Witches discusses Bessie Dunlop, Alison Piersoun, and the North Berwick cases, 125–28. The North Berwick case has, of course, received the most extensive treatment. Margaret Murray cited many cases from Scotland. Nicholas Macleod’s Scottish Witchcraft gives a brief ‘tour’ of some cases from different regions of Scotland.
5.
Larner, Lee, and McLachlan, A Source Book of Scottish Witchcraft (Glasgow, 1977). For a detailed description of the Sourcebook and how it has been used in this thesis, please see Appendix B. The abbreviation SBSW will be used throughout the footnotes to refer to this source.
6.
Larner, Enemies of God, 61–62. Larner admits the line between a small and large panic cannot really be ‘drawn with any precision’. She suggests the line is somewhere around ten cases.
7.
Ibid., 61. The graph is good although no citation exists as to what data it is based upon; however, it is obviously based upon data from the SBSW.
8.
Ibid., 60. Chapter 6 includes an excellent discussion of elite interest and activity in all of the major hunts. In this sense the chapter does give a ‘Chronology’, as the title suggests, but primarily in terms of the major hunts.
9.
Ibid., 81. No indication is given in Enemies of God as to what information this map is based upon. However, it does seem plausible that Table 11, SBSW, 248 is the source. It is important to note that only 62% of the cases contained in the SBSW are represented in this table.
10.
Ibid., 80.
11.
Ibid., 80.
12.
Ibid., 82.
13.
Ibid., 82.
14.
Ibid., 83.
15.
Ian & Kathleen Whyte, Discovering East Lothian (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1988), 48–49.
16.
Raymond Lamont-Brown, Discovering Fife (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1988), 60.
17.
Brian Levack, The witch-hunt in early modern Europe, 2nd ed., 96. This chapter has avoided factoring in the number of individuals executed, simply because these statistics are so incomplete.
18.
Larner, Enemies of God, 82–83.
19.
Bruce Lenman’s review of Enemies of God, Scottish Historical Review (1979) 197–200; Larner, Enemies of God, 38–39; see also, Larner, ‘The Crime of Witchcraft in Scotland,’ in Larner, Witchcraft and Religion: The Politics of Popular Belief.
20.
Brian Levack, The witch-hunt in Early Modern Europe, 2nd ed., 96, uses the information from the SBSW to discuss central versus local execution rates. The NK category – fate ‘Not Known’ – is extremely large. Levack’s argument that the witch-hunt was ‘dramatically higher when unsupervised local authorities heard witchcraft cases than when judges from the central courts did so,’ seems plausible. However, this conclusion is based on only 402 cases where the fate is known out of a possible 1929 in the relevant sections of the SBSW. This is only a small sample of the 3069 cases listed in the SBSW. Given the sample size, caution needs to be taken. We simply don’t have enough data at this point to pursue this argument forcefully.
21.
Cases with no year, see SBSW, 50–53, 230–32. As the SBSW is organised chronologically according to Court Level, those cases with no geographical references are scattered throughout. They are easily accessible in the computer database created for this project. As stated in the text, at present 89% of the cases have been placed within a Shire – up significantly from the 62% represented in Table 11 of the SBSW, 248.
22.
Cases 600 & 834 in the SBSW involve an individual in Banff.
23.
The same point was made in a graph which appeared in Geoffrey Parker’s introduction to ‘The European Witchcraze Revisited’ in History Today (November 1980): 24, which compared the appearance of the witch-hunt in several different European countries.
24.
Larner, Enemies of God, 62.
25.
SBSW, case no. 2293. The original source of this information is the Chronicles of Perth.
26.
Larner, Enemies of God, 61.
27.
SBSW, 9–10, 61, 175–80.
28.
The Scottish Witch-Hunt Data Base project. The abbreviation SWHDB will be used throughout the footnotes..
29.
Larner, Enemies of God, 61; Lenman, SHR, 198. Commenting on the SBSW, Lenman wrote: ‘what is more troubling by far is the probably serious underestimate that total provides, for it must be greatly reduced by the absence of records for the period of the great witch-hunt of 1590–7 and the general lack of information in privy council records.’ It should be remembered, however, that estimates of numbers in the European witch-hunt have generally moved lower, rather than higher. Any numbers for this period must remain, until more local records are profitably mined, only estimates.
30.
Larner, Enemies of God, 60.
31.
Julio Caro Baroja, The World of the Witches, 125–28. The North Berwick case and James VI’s interest in witchcraft, of course, have received the most extensive treatment: E.J. Cowan, in The Sunday Mail Story of Scotland, Vol. 2, Pt. 15, 406; Stuart Clark, ‘King James’s Daemonologie.’ References to other works appear in the notes to chapter 1.
32.
Larner, Enemies of God, 60.
33.
No study as yet exists on the 1649 witch-hunt. It should be noted that there are a large number of cases with no specific date from both 1649 and 1650. Still, the SBSW records one case in February 1649, two in March, three in April, fifteen in May, and by June the hunt was in full course. SBSW, 13–14, 113–19, 151–52, 158–71, 195–200. (There were no witch-craft cases recorded in 1647, and only 10 in 1648.) The timing seems suggestive, to say the least.)
34.
Brian Levack, ‘The Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1661–62’, especially 93–97, 107–108, has done an excellent analysis of the events of these years.
35.
Ibid., 91, 92, 93.
36.
Quaife, 119.
37.
Ian and Kathleen Whyte, Discovering East Lothian, 48–49. Larner, Enemies of God, 80.
38.
Larner, Enemies of God, 80.
39.
Alan MacFarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England, made extensive use of cartography to demonstrate the dynamics of the witch-hunt within the county of Essex in England. By noting which particular villages produced accusations at the Essex Assizes in a given decade, MacFarlane was able to demonstrate the rise and fall of prosecutions and which particular villages were affected. Gábor Klaniczay, ‘Hungary: The Accusations and the Universe of Popular Magic,’ in EMEW, 225, 231 takes a slightly different approach. He includes a standard chronological graph, but then notes when the particular counties of Hungary experienced the first witch-trials. Klaniczay’s approach is interesting but would produce some odd conclusions for Scotland: Moray (1560), a shire with only a moderate level of witch-hunting would appear at about the same time as Haddington (1563), the shire with the highest number of cases. Edinburgh, another area of very intense witch-hunting, did not have its first case until 1572, four years after Forfar, another area of only moderate persecution. Antero Heikkinen and Timo Kervinen ‘Finland: The Male Domination,’ EMEW, 325 show the different incidents of witch accusations in three different periods in Finland, while in the same collection Bengt Ankarloo ‘Sweden: The Mass Burnings (1668–76)’, EMEW, 301, maps the spread of indictments in a particular area of Sweden over a two year period. There are similar maps in Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 34, 84, 85, 95, 118, 127, based upon and adapted from the work of other historians of the Salem witch-hunt. This list is by no means exhaustive. These different approaches illustrate the reality that there is no set pattern or approach to the entire topic of the chronology and geography of the witch-hunt in any given region or throughout Europe.
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