Witches of Fife

by Stuart MacDonald

  40.

  SWHDB.

  41.

  The following information can be constructed from the data in the SBSW: 1645: Bute (1); Edinburgh (3 – including one multiple case, ‘certain witches’; Fife (4); Moray (1). 1646: Edinburgh (1); Fife (3); Lanark (1) Moray (2).

  42.

  A.E. Truckell, ‘Unpublished Witchcraft Trials’; ‘Unpublished Witchcraft Trials – Part 2.’ All of the cases in both articles involve some form of malefice.

  43.

  The continued strong belief which existed among common people and many in the elite, even during the last English witch-craft case, has been ably demonstrated through a close reading of Phyllis Guskin, ‘The Context of Witchcraft: The Case of Jane Wenham (1712)’ in Eighteenth Century Studies 15 (1981): 48. When the elite-controlled judicial machinery ceases processing witches or dealing with witchcraft as a crime then even isolated witches cannot be hunted – except by lynch mobs. Brian Levack’s investigation of the 1661–62 hunt found that many of those accused fit the traditional stereotype of the witch. Levack, ‘Great Scottish Witch Hunt’, 102.

  44.

  Geoff Quaife, Godly Zeal, 119.

  45.

  See Appendix D.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Witch-Hunt in Fife

  No regional study of a witch-hunt exists for Scotland. Instead, we have an extremely good overview of the national situation in Enemies of God, studies of particular hunts or peak years, and discussions of some of the more dramatic and famous cases. This chapter and the chapters following will attempt to remedy this situation by exploring how a witch-hunt developed over this period in particular areas of Fife. The style will primarily be narrative. This is a story that first needs to be told before we begin to analyse its meaning. In the telling, several factors will hopefully become clear. One is the central importance of the presbyteries as the local geographic unit in which most witch-hunting occurred. Only on rare occasions did hunts cross presbytery borders. We will see how these specific presbyteries functioned in publicizing information, in becoming involved in cases that came to them from the parishes, and in the process of the witch-hunt itself.1 After exploring these themes over the next five chapters, we will then summarize in chapter 8 our discussion in terms of what drove the witch-hunt in Fife and specifically the role played by judicial torture.

  One of the purposes of this section is to show the fragmentary nature of the evidence from which we must attempt to understand the events of these years. In telling the story of the witch-hunt in these particular regions the various sources of information and the nature of what we know, and in many cases do not know, will become clear. While in some circumstances we have a great deal of information, in others the paucity of detail is noteworthy. The names of those listed in commissions gives us little information; but even here we can attempt to determine what was occurring, or the links with other commissions at about the same time. The nature of the sources is one of realities with which historians need to grapple. Too often answers are demanded which simply cannot be given because of the fragmentary nature of the evidence. We do not know enough to answer questions about social class. Even marital status is rarely noted. As this is the first attempt at a regional study in Scotland, it is important to give a picture of the nature of the evidence which exists.

  The narrative form has also been chosen in order to show both the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments presented. It is possible in a thematic study to emphasize or choose the examples that support one’s arguments. By giving as complete a picture as is possible, it is hoped that this temptation will be avoided. It is, however, still necessary to tell the story in a particular way. This study will tell the story of the witch-hunt as it developed in each of the four presbyteries of Fife. Presbyteries were chosen because their boundaries, more than any other geographic feature, seems to be important in the development of the witch-hunt. One could argue that this choice ends up proving itself: or, to put it another way, because we have used sources from presbyteries and sessions, and organized the discussion around their boundaries, have we given an importance to these bodies which they might otherwise not have? This chapter will discuss the chronology and geography of the Fife witch-hunt and will make the case for the importance of presbytery boundaries. We will see how localized witch-hunting tended to be in Fife. Throughout the following five chapters, evidence will be given through the narrative of the role which church courts played in the witch-hunt – a role which has not been adequately recognised up to this point in the historical literature – and of the way in which presbyteries served as a clearinghouse for information, as well as active agents of witch-hunting

  It is difficult to give a clear picture of Scottish institutions and how they operated throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The presbyterian system of church government was not created at a particular moment. While the theory of presbyterianism was laid out in the Second Book of Discipline (1578), the actual processes by which these various courts operated were not codified until near the end of our period.2 One of the struggles of this period was over which form of church government, presbyterian or episcopalian, would be established in Scotland. Less concern was given as to how the system should operate. It is still helpful to make some generalizations about how church courts in Scotland in this period operated.

  Fife was divided into parishes. Each parish was governed by a session which was moderated (chaired) by the minister, and was comprised of other significant members of the community, such as the burgesses or the local lairds. Sessions tended to meet weekly. From their records it is clear that their main interest was church ‘discipline’ or the moral behaviour of all of the people who lived within the geographic bounds of the parish. Sessions imposed fines and penalties on those found guilty of breaking the rules of behaviour established by the church. All of the sessions in a particular geographic area were governed by a presbytery, which was made up of representatives from each of the sessions. Presbyteries also met weekly and tended to deal with the same kinds of issues as the local sessions. They too were concerned with guaranteeing that the behaviour within the bounds was moral and godly. Only ministers attended presbytery until 1638, while after this ordained elders were also permitted to attend. Witchcraft, charming, celebrating Christmas or Yule, and other activities deemed contrary to the will of God were seen as the business of these courts. This belief in the enforcement of morality on the community arose out of the kirk’s understanding of its place in the world. As Jane Dawson recently explained:

  If the Church . . . was something which could be heard, touched, and seen by everyone, then its life on earth could also be assessed and judged by the rest of the world. The earthy insistence that the corporate body of the Church was a physical reality brought with it a pronounced emphasis upon discipline . . . Since that body was real and easily identifiable, its conduct was under constant scrutiny.3

  As everyone in the community was deemed to be part of the church, discipline was a reality for all in the parish. The local secular authorities generally supported these goals, and, again in Dawson’s words, ‘the establishment of a Reformed community’.4 Advice on how certain matters should be dealt with was sometimes sought from the superior regional court, the Synod, or from the national court, the General Assembly.

  It is difficult to determine the exact processes and procedures of the sessions and presbyteries in this period. The minutes are brief and state what was done and what was decided, not always how. Still, in cases involving witchcraft the presbytery functioned similar to a pre-trial hearing. Witnesses appeared and gave testimony. Suspects were interrogated. Judgement and sentences were pronounced. Cases involving charming or slander could be dealt with entirely by the church court, and the sentence imposed in these situations usually involved some act of public repentance before the entire community. More serious punishme
nts, including the execution of a witch, were outside the jurisdiction of the church courts. In these cases a commission to put the suspect to a secular trial was required. Often the evidence, and in particular the confession, gathered by and before the session or presbytery were used to obtain a commission to put the suspect to trial.

  The Scottish legal procedures at this time were not simple. Various courts had intersecting jurisdictions. In an article on how the court system in Stirlingshire actually functioned, Stephen J. Davies describes how ten different kinds of courts intersected, overlapped and operated. Many of his conclusions seem to hold true for Fife. Davies discovered witchcraft cases before church courts, the Court of Justiciary, burgh courts, and commission of significant local individuals established by warrant of the Privy Council. He does not mention any cases appearing before Sheriff’s courts or Franchise courts.5 Most of the women we will be discussing in Fife appeared before church courts or were dealt with by special commissions which were granted by the Privy Council. There are only a few cases where the Court of Justiciary was involved. Church courts should have referred ‘very grave ‘moral’ offences such as bestiality, sodomy, incest or flagrant adultery to the civil courts as well as most witchcraft cases’ to the secular courts.6 The process in Fife was sometimes less precise. Church courts were, as Davies noted, ‘by far the most active branch of the legal system’.7

  The chronology and geography of the Fife witch-hunt

  Fife, the shire which contains the various burghs, parishes and presbyteries, lies on a peninsula north of the capital city of Edinburgh. The shire is surrounded on three sides by water: to the north by the Firth of Tay, to the east by the sea, and to south by the Firth of Forth. Water was one of the most efficient means of transport at this time, and the coasts of Fife included many busy seaports and trading burghs. The main centre of religious life in Scotland during the medieval and into the early modern period was St. Andrews, the seat of the archbishop and later bishops, as well as the home of reformers and sessions. Many of the principal martyrs of the early Scottish Reformation, men like Patrick Hamilton and George Wishart, were executed at St. Andrews and it was some of the local Fife nobility who responded to Wishart’s execution by murdering Cardinal Beaton and taking control of his castle. Fife was an area where support for the early stages of the Reformation could be found. Later there was also support for dissenters from the church which was established after the Reformation. The courts and structures of the reformed church – sessions, presbyteries, and synods – were established relatively early and effectively in this area, helped in part by the proximity to one of the great centres of education at St. Andrews University.

  Economically, Fife was a mixture of agriculture, commerce, craft and some craft industries. Trade flowed from ports such as St. Andrews, Kirkcaldy, Crail, Burntisland, Inverkeithing and Culross. Along the South coast of Fife, coal and salt were industries of note. While clearly a region, Fife was not isolated from outside events, plagues, famines, wars, or the ideas of this period. Fife was certainly not isolated from the witch-hunt. The witch-hunt began early in Fife, and lasted into the early eighteenth century. It would be helpful to be able to note the changes over this period in population, agriculture, trade, urban growth and other social and economic factors. Comparisons to other regions of Scotland would also be enlightening. While work in these areas continues, we do not at the moment have extensive or detailed information on Fife in this period.8

  Graph 2 – Cases of witchcraft in Fife, 1560–1710

  In order to effectively study witch-hunting in this region of Scotland, it is necessary to determine the communities from which the suspects came. Most of those accused of witch-craft in Fife can be placed within particular areas of the shire – if not an actual burgh or village, at least within a presbytery. There are exceptions. The Booke of the Universal Kirk notes four women delated for witch-craft in 1563 by the Superintendents of Fife and Galloway.9 Aleson Piersoun of Byre-hill was accused in 1588 and appeared before the High Court. (There is no direct evidence that she was tortured.) Her confession included the fact that she had been taken by ‘ane lustie mane, with mony mene and wemen’ to a mystical place where there was much piping and dancing and merriment. The key to her being named a witch may lie in the fact that she had a knowledge of healing, learned from an uncle. She was charged with ‘dealing with charmes, and abusing the commoun people thairwith, be the said airt of wichcraft’. Although apparently only nineteen, she was found guilty and executed.10 In 1623 Thomas Greave was also executed, after appearing before the Court of Justiciary charged with witchcraft.11 Finally, there is a notation in the Acts of Parliament during the large witch-hunt in 1649 that ‘some witches’ were executed in Fife.12 The other accused witches can be placed within a particular presbytery.

  The chronology of the witch-hunt in Fife corresponds to the chronology of the Scottish witch-hunt as a whole. While the witch-hunt in Fife occurred over a long period with cases extending from 1563 to 1709 (See Graph 2) the vast majority of the cases occurred in the seventeenth century, in particular in the fifty-year period from 1620 to 1670. The peak years were in 1649 (70 cases), 1643 (51 cases) 1644 (26 cases) and 1597 (26 cases). All of these years were years of major witch-hunts on a national scale. Fife’s most significant contribution was to the hunt in 1643 when its total of fifty-one cases represented more than half of all cases in Scotland (87). Interestingly, Fife contributed only slightly to the massive witch-hunt of the period 1658–59 and 1661–62 with a total of 37 cases, the majority (26) of which occurred in 1662. Another thing to note is the number of instances of individual cases, or small groups of cases, a pattern which continues throughout the period.13

  The geographical distribution of cases is equally fascinating (see Map 5). The intense concentration of cases in the south-west, centred on Culross, Dunfermline and Inverkeithing, with another concentration in the parishes of Kirkcaldy and Dysart, is noticeable. In sharp contrast, the Tay coast of Fife was not a major area of witch-hunting. Pittenweem, often picked out as a formidable area of persecution,14 produced 28 cases, in contrast to 51 for Inverkeithing, 44 for Culross, 39 for Dunfermline, 36 for Kirkcaldy and even 22 for St. Andrews.15 While proximity to Edinburgh may have been a factor in the concentration in the southwest of Fife, it does not explain why the parish of St. Andrews produced more witches than Wemyss, or why Collessie produced more than Abbotshall. It is also worth noting the number of parishes in which no known cases of witchcraft accusations occurred, parishes such as Kingsbarns, Elie, Cameron, and Kettle. Population density may have been a factor, although given our lack of knowledge of population distribution in this period, this is difficult to either prove or disprove. Topography does not seem to have been a factor.

  When we move away from the consideration of the pattern over time and the geographical concentration to consider the shape of the witch-hunt on a year-by-year basis, several realities come into clearer focus. The first is that while categories such as national hunt or isolated witch may be helpful, it is more difficult to effectively categorize those instances which fall in between. Witch-hunting was an irregular process. There were many years in which no accusations of witchcraft occurred in Fife. Indeed, accusations came in only 61 of 150 years in the period from 1560 to 1710, and most of these, as already noted, in the fifty years between 1620 to 1670. Witchcraft accusations were also very localized. There were many years when cases occurred in only one parish (37 of 61) or in two parishes in different presbyteries (7 of 61). Rarely did these ever involve enough individuals to be considered a ‘large panic’ as discussed in the previous chapter. Many of these incidents involved an isolated witch. To give but a few examples: Euphame Lochoir was accused in the parish of Crail in 1590 (the year of the royal witch-hunt); William Hutchen of Kinghorn, a weaver by trade, was brought before the presbytery of Kirkcaldy for charming in 1636; and, Elspeth Ki
rkland was accused as a witch by Bessie Lamb in Aberdour in 1681.16

  Fife witnessed significant witch-hunting in many of those years when major persecutions occurred throughout Scotland. The year 1649 saw more cases in Fife than any other. Next in intensity was the hunt which spanned the two years, 1643 and 1644 and involved 51 and 26 cases respectively. Fife was also dramatically affected by the witch-hunts of 1597 and 1662. What is important to note is how focused these hunts were within a particular presbytery. The hunt which took place in 1649 occurred primarily within the bounds of the presbytery of Dunfermline (see Map 6). With the exception of the cases involving Elspeth Seath, Helen Young and Helen Smith which began in Balmerino in 1648 and carried on into 1649, an isolated case in Dysart, and thirteen cases in the parish of Burntisland (which borders Dunfermline Presbytery), the remaining cases, many of them involving an undetermined number of individuals, took place within the bounds of the presbytery of Dunfermline. In other words, 55 of 70 cases came from one presbytery. Similarly, in 1597, the 26 known cases occurred in two presbyteries, St. Andrew’s and Kirkcaldy. Given the general lack of records for the 1590’s this might seem to be an exception. Yet, in 1662 a similar pattern emerged. All of the 26 cases in Fife occurred in the presbytery of Cupar with two exceptions: two cases in Forgan (St. Andrews Presbytery) which borders on Cupar Presbytery; and, an isolated case in Culross (see Map 10). The exception to this idea that the major hunts tended to have a focus in one particular presbytery, was the witch-hunt which took place in 1643 and 1644. This hunt involved three of the four presbyteries (see Map 14). While the parish of Dunfermline (18) had the most cases in 1643, Culross (9), also in the presbytery of Dunfermline, was affected. Crail (6), Pittenweem (5) and Anstruther (3 cases, each of which involved more than one individual) all from St. Andrews Presbytery were also affected. Finally, the hunt affected three parishes in the presbytery of Kirkcaldy–Kinghorn (2), Markinch (1) and Dysart (1) – and became even more intense in this presbytery the following year, 1644, with 5 cases occurring in Dysart. In no year did cases appear in all four presbyteries in Fife.