Too much attention has been directed towards a singling out of the alleged censorious aspects of the Session’s work, and this it is claimed here, is often badly defined by the writers, frequently non-existent, and, if present, fully justified on sound social as well as religious grounds. It has not been possible to find evidence to substantiate the extravagant, isolated claims that discipline had a pernicious effect on the people or engendered systems of clerical espionage and we see on the other hand, proof that a spirit of reciprocal co-operation and participation was sought through various strata of society both in given parishes and further afield and that it was achieved, however modified, with minimal coercion, can only redound to the Session’s credit. One is justified, I believe, on the basis of the evidence in taking a more generous view in assessing the Sessions and their divulged social picture. Of the three courts it had the immediacy of contact and proximity that translated so much into practical reality for those it served.101
The evidence does not support such a ‘generous view’. In terms of witchcraft, Di Folco’s statement that church courts acted only ‘as an advisory and investigatory authority’ with no powers to punish is not only false, but misrepresents the significant role played by church courts.102 He also seems to misunderstand key factors in one of the few cases of witchcraft he discovered in this area, that of Elspeth Seath, Helen Small, and Helen Young. The suggestion that the presbytery’s action in enquiring of the central government if there were enough evidence for a civil trial of these suspects was ‘an effort to restrain the case’103 is to completely miss the assertive role presbytery took in trying to obtain a conviction. Church courts aggressively enforced discipline in their attempt to build a society they deemed ‘godly’.
Such an attempt was not restricted to Fife. Stephen Davie’s study of the role of the various courts within the Scottish legal system, using Stirling as an example, confirms the importance of church courts in cases of witchcraft and other ‘moral offences’. His research also discovered concern, not only with sexual offences and sabbath breach, but with a range of folk belief and customs, including ‘the use of ‘holy wells’ and the practice of resorting to ‘cunning’ men and women.’ He also notes how in some instances a case which began as simple charming, developed into ‘a fully-fledged witchcraft case’.104 In Orkney as well, sessions took an active role in cases of witchcraft and charming: ‘minister and kirk sessions frequently acted as their own court of inquiry, interviewing witnesses, receiving confessions, and formulating the charges’.105 The historian of crime J.A. Sharpe has noted the role which church courts, with the support of the government, played in attempting to create a godly society in England. There as in Scotland church courts dealt with cases of sexual behaviour, alcohol abuse, failure to attend church, even scolding, charming and formal cursing (a close cousin to witchcraft).106 Conversely, one of the distinctive differences between the Netherlands and Scotland, was that church councils in the former ‘performed nothing like the police function’ which courts in Scotland did.107 Michael Graham’s recent study, The Uses of Reform: ‘Godly Discipline’ and Popular Behaviour in Scotland and Beyond, 1560–1610, shows the centrality of church courts in the imposition of ‘discipline’ upon the local Scottish communities after the reformation.108
In seventeenth century Fife, the witch was one obstacle in the way of the creation of a godly society. Homosexuals were another, as were those who committed ‘incest’, or adultery, or had sex before they were married, or in any other ways broke the moral code outlined by the church.109 The church enjoyed the support of other elements of society in this goal throughout much of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Yet as splits developed in the elite, not only over the practical issues of how a witch might be identified but also between the various factions of the church itself leading to the various disruptive purges of the late seventeenth century, the solidarity required for witch-hunting to be effective was lost. These factors, rather than any change in beliefs, were responsible for the collapse of witch-hunting in Fife. The elites controlled the timing and supply of witches. When they could no longer agree, the hunts collapsed.
Notes
1.
Larner, Enemies of God, 22, 1, 60.
2.
Campbell, Church and Parish of Kirkcaldy (1904), 164. Andrew Young, History of Burntisland (1913), 207, states the ministers of Kinghorn and Burntisland were authorities at finding witches. James Wilke, The History of Fife (1924), 391, 394, 396. Eunice Murray, Scottish Women in Bygone Days (Glasgow: Gowans & Gray, 1930), 144.
3.
RPC 2nd ser. vol. 1, c. Also, 1st ser. vol. 14, lxxxviii; 2nd ser. vol. 2, xlii notes the clergy using the alms money to pay the costs (presumably of warding and watching witches); 3rd ser. vol. 3, xliii states the ‘clergy were as convinced as ever’.
4.
Allan Logan is portrayed as particularly zealous in John P. Hunter, ‘Witches of Torryburn: The ‘Inquisition’ of a Fifeshire Minister’ in Scots Magazine (1936), 306. Walter Bruce’s role in Inverkeithing is noted by Benson, South-west Fife, and William Stephen, History of Inverkeithing and Rosyth (1921), 439–445.
5.
Gilmore, Witchcraft and the Church of Scotland (1948), ii, 320.
6.
Harry Watson, Kilrenny and Cellardyke (1986), 37, 38.
7.
Isabel Adam, Witch Hunt (1978). Adam not only sees the laird of Bargarran as key, but defends the actions of the ministers, 234.
8.
Larner, Enemies of God, 84. Levack, ‘Great Scottish Witch Hunt’, 95, 96.
9.
Ibid., 96.
10.
Larner, Enemies of God, 85.
11.
Laing, Lindores Abbey, 223–227. A commission was sought to try her eight years later at the time of the restoration. RPC 3rd ser. vol. 1, 90. The commission notes that she had already confessed. The role played by the session in 1662 is unclear.
12.
Campbell, Church and Parish of Kirkcaldy, 166–167.
13.
Dennison & Coleman, Historic Kirkcaldy (1995), 30. The vault under the tolbooth had served as the town jail since 1566. Apparently, up to five individuals could be held at one time and repair work on this facility continued throughout the seventeenth century.
14.
Henderson, Extracts from the Kirk Session, 27. Dunfermline KS CH25921, f76.
15.
RPC 3rd ser. vol. 1, 208. RPC 3rd ser. vol. 2, 165.
16.
RPC 3rd ser. vol. 2, 246, 192.
17.
Commission against Coke and Dick, Adv.ms.31.3.10 f. 64v.
18.
Levack, ‘Great Scottish Witch Hunt’, 107.
19.
One piece of circumstantial evidence supporting the involvement of the church is the fact that Katherine Key, who had been pursued so diligently during the English occupation by the session of Newburgh, was among the first to be acted against.
20.
This hunt apparently began in Anstruther in 1643. The presbyteries own records are unclear as to who was responsible. First the presbytery appealed to the bailies to delay the execution so they can speak to the condemned (and ask who else was a witch). The court then complained to ministers that they should inform the presbytery that any witches ‘with them’ exist before they were executed. While the minister and burgh officials both were involved, it is not clear whether the accusations were first heard before the burgh court or session. STACUPR, 13.
21.
RPC vol. 5, 405–406.
22.
MacBean, Kirkcaldy Burgh Records, 108. The surviving kirk session records of Kirkcaldy begin in 1614.
23.
The complaint is found RPC 2nd ser. vol. 8, 101. The
session had been warding people has accused witches earlier in the year. Benson, South-West Fife, App. 2, 268.
24.
RPC 2nd ser. vol. 2, 142–143.
25.
Smith, Annotated Edition, 290.
26.
Benson, South-west Fife, App. 2, 266.
27.
Records of the Committee of Estates PA 118, 134v, 157r-157v.
28.
STACUPR, 90–91.
29.
David Mullan, ‘Theology in the Church of Scotland 1618c-1640: A Calvinist Consensus?,’ Sixteenth Century Journal, xxvi/3 (Fall 1995): 617.
30.
Ross, Pastoral Work in Covenanting Times, 197–198.
31.
Ibid., 225. For Bruce conforming, Fasti, vol. 5, 43.
32.
Keith Brown, ‘The Nobility of Jacobean Scotland 1567–1625,’ in Scotland Revisited, ed. Jenny Wormald (London: Collins and Brown, 1991), 68. Jane Dawson’s recent research on St. Andrews supports the idea of elite solidarity on discipline, ‘’The Face of Ane Perfyt Reformed Kyrk’: St. Andrews and the Early Scottish Reformation’, 427.
33.
A. Ian Dunlop, ‘The Polity of the Scottish Church 1600–37,’ 176. ‘Superstitioun, Sabbath breaking, absence from church, adultery, etc. etc. all provided matters to be dealt with. The presence of a magistrate or magistrates on the Session meant that warding and fining could summarily be inflicted.’
34.
Culross KS, CH2772, 64.
35.
Ross, Aberdour and Inchcolme, 325–328.
36.
PBK, 141.
37.
Smith, Annotated Edition, 222–224.
38.
‘The Trial of William Coke and Alison Dick’ in Webster, Rare Tracts, 113–114.
39.
Campbell, The Church and Parish of Kirkcaldy, 166–167.
40.
Laing, Lindores Abbey, 223–227.
41.
Laing, Lindores Abbey, 219–222.
42.
Hedderick was actually charged. Cook, Annals of Pittenweem, 49. A warning was issued, complete with the fact that those found guilty would have to do penance, during the Inverkeithing hunt. Dunfermline Presbytery CH21051, 271.
43.
STACUPR, 23.
44.
RPC 2nd ser. vol. 3, 489–490, 532. PA 119134v.
45.
Cook, Annals of Pittenweem, 49.
46.
Larner, Enemies of God, 15.
47.
William Forbes, The Institutes of the Law of Scotland, Edinburgh (1730), vol. II, 33. Forbes seems to have been stating his understanding of the Scottish legal tradition. In the Appendix to the chapter in which he discussed witchcraft, he was far more cautious, refusing to venture an opinion on issues such as the Devil’s pact or carnal copulation, only noting that these were presented ‘as Matters of Fact’ previously in courts, 373.
48.
Larner, Enemies of God, 200.
49.
Quaife, Godly Zeal, 59.
50.
The confusion on this topic is apparent in the literature. Clearly the demonic pact was one element of Scottish witch theory, indeed of elite belief. The key questions are: how extensive was belief in the demonic pact? Did this elite notion successfully influence the general populace? The answers to these questions are less that clear. Quaife, who as we have noted in the text argued that Scottish peasants accepted such demonic beliefs fairly readily, had noted earlier that the evidence presented before kirk sessions ‘differed considerably from that which Commissioners considered relevant for formal prosecution’. He noted the ‘layers of belief’ which existed, 41. See also Klaits, Servants of Satan, 58.
51.
Larner, Enemies of God, 120.
52.
RPC vol. 12, 423.
53.
Justiciary Court Records JC26135. July 10, 1649. JC214, 346–354.
54.
Torryburn KS CH23352, 135–136.
55.
Pitcairn, Criminal Trials, vol. 3, 95–98.
56.
Arnot, Celebrated Criminal Trials, 401–403. The original source of this document cited was from the Kirkcaldy area, not the central government.
57.
RPC 3rd ser. vol. 1, 141.
58.
Ross, Glimpses of Pastoral Work, 199.
59.
Larner, Enemies of God, 9.
60.
Neilson, ‘A Sermon on Witchcraft in 1697,’ 393.
61.
Torryburn KS CH23552.
62.
The importance of fairy belief was stated in 1921 by J. A MacCulloch ‘The Mingling of Fairy & Witch Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Scotland,’ 229. Carlo Ginzburg has commented on the subject in Ecstasies, 97, 108. Interestingly, much of the literature about Scottish witches include notions about fairies as well. MacKay, includes a verse from Fife which states ‘Witches in the Watergate, Fairies in the Mill.’ A.J.G. MacKay, A Century of Scottish Proverbs and Sayings: in prose and rhyme current in Fife and Chiefly of Fife Origin (Cupar, no date), 50. David Arnott’s play The Witches of Keil’s Glen, a dramatic fragment (Cupar, 1825) has both witches and fairies present.
63.
June 4, 1705. Pittenweem KS, CH28333.
64.
Larner suggested that witchcraft needed to be understood within the context of crime in her lecture on ‘Natural and Unnatural methods of Witchcraft Control’ in Witchcraft and Religion, 127–128. Given the prominence of church courts in Fife in prosecuting the ‘crime’ of witchcraft, it seems logical to examine which other ‘offences’ were part of these courts concerns. On church discipline see Leah Leneman, ‘’Prophaning’ The Lord’s Day: Sabbath Breach in Early Modern Scotland,’ History 74 (1989): 217–231; Leah Leneman and Rosalind Mitchison, ‘Acquiescence in and defiance of church discipline in early-modern Scotland,’ Scottish Church History Society Records xxv/1 (1993):19–39; and, Rosalind Mitchison and Leah Leneman, Sexuality and Social Control: Scotland, 1660–1780 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989). This chapter had been written before the publication of Michael Graham, The Uses of Reform, which follows a similar approach. The more examples we have, the better our knowledge of the functioning of church courts in this period.
65.
PBK, 279–347. In terms of fornication and adultery, the number represents each incident recorded not each individual who appeared. This was particularly confusing in the cases of adultery, where the parties were often forced to appear and do penance more than once.
66.
PBK, 292.
67.
PBK, 310. Interestingly, Orrock admitted adultery but denied the child was his.
68.
PBK, 284.
69.
PBK, 281. This incident appears in the chart as miscellaneous.
70.
PBK, 339.
71.
PBK, 294, 321–322.
72.
PBK, 333.
73.
PBK, 289.
74.
PBK, 313–314.
75.
PBK, 316, 321.
76.
PBK, 284, 338.
77.
PBK, 343, 346.
78.
PBK, 302.
79.
PBK, 316.
80.
PBK, 304. It is unclear from the text whether this was a mass suspension to take place immediately, or would apply only to those who subsequently offended. The former is not impossible. Salters also found themselves in difficulties in Dunfermline Presbytery. At times they were able to escape punishment because of the s
upport of the lairds and their employers.
81.
PBK, 306.
82.
PBK, 294, 297, 301, 295, 312.
83.
PBK, 311.
84.
PBK, 280.
85.
PBK, 280–281. Apart from the wife who refused to live with her husband, there is no evidence of anyone defying the presbytery successfully in this five year period.
86.
PBK, 289.
87.
PBK, 343.
88.
PBK, 331.
89.
PBK, 332.
90.
PBK, 332–333.
91.
PBK, 340, 338, 339, 341–2, 346.
92.
PBK, 293–294.
93.
PBK, 295.
94.
STACUPR, 24.
95.
STACUPR, 15.
96.
STACUPR, 133.
97.
SYNFIFE, 165–166.
98.
Witches of Fife Page 29
