Henderson, Extracts from the Kirk-Session Records of Dunfermline, 8.
99.
Pittenweem KS, CH28333, 242–243. It is cases like this which make clear the weakness in the arguments of apologists for church discipline such as John Di Folco, Aspects of Seventeenth Century Social Life in Central and North Fife (B. Phil diss., University of St. Andrews, 1975), iv, 87, 194–195. Sessions disciplined those who were married if the child was deemed to have been conceived prior to the ceremony.
100.
Pittenweem KS CH28333, 242 for the attempted rape. The instance of infanticide can be found in the next volume of the Pittenweem KS records, CH28334, 26–27.
101.
Di Folco, Aspects of Seventeenth Century Social Life, 87.
102.
Ibid., 131–132.
103.
Ibid., 135.
104.
Davies, ‘Scottish Legal System’, 127.
105.
John Robertson, An Orkney Anthology, 347. The author discovered no indication of a Privy Council commission for Orkney.
106.
J.A. Sharpe, Crime in Early Modern England 1550–1750 (London: Longman, 1984), 50, 85, 87, 88, 151.
107.
Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra, ‘Witchcraft in the Northern Netherlands,’ 84.
108.
Graham, Uses of Reform. Both the research in this book and in Michael Graham’s work have arrived independently at similar conclusions.
109.
John R. Hardy, The Attitude of the Church and State in Scotland to Sex and Marriage: 1560–1707 (M. Phil. diss., University of Edinburgh, 1978) includes an appendix listing prosecutions for sodomy and bestiality which begins on page 586. Hardy also discusses incest and other sexual attitudes, 103, 317–337.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Conclusion
Over the last chapters we have explored the witch-hunt in Fife. The story is both fascinating and complex. It is also a very frustrating story. Key questions cannot be answered because the data is missing. Still with the records available to us we have been able to test many of the assumptions with which we began. We can also comment on the challenges that are raised to the general stereotype of the Scottish witch-hunt.
We have seen that although the local nobility and burgh officials played a key role in the witch-hunt, the most significant group among the elite was the clergy. The church courts, in particular the kirk sessions and the presbyteries, were the major local bodies which investigated, pursued, interrogated, and on rare occasions even executed, suspected witches. Church courts encouraged the nobility to cooperate, including providing facilities within the burghs to hold the suspects. The dynamic which drove the hunt fit well into the participation of the church courts. Whereas physical torture used in a trial would have to have been applied in a secular court, it was possible for the kirk to ward and watch the suspects, and through sleep deprivation gain the necessary confessions. There were several occasions when witch-finders or witch-prickers appeared in Fife, but in several of these instances the hunts were already well underway before these individuals arrived. Sleep deprivation, not judicial torture for which there is no direct evidence, was the force that drove the persecution in this shire. Presbyteries and kirk sessions were able with the assistance of the local officials able to hold, interrogate and ‘wake’ the women suspected of witchcraft.
If the church played a key role in the Fife witch-hunt, the same cannot be said to be true of the Devil. As has been noted, there are some scattered references to the Devil, and more frequently to some form of giving oneself over to demonic service, but these certainly do not appear in all cases. The most common complaints of the neighbours of the suspects are of malefice or harmful magic. References to the Devil are more common in documents which came from the central government than they are in the minutes of sessions or presbyteries. The European elite notion of the demonic nature of witch-craft does not seem to have been particularly successful in filtering down to the level of the local clergy, let alone the common people. This is an important consideration. Two recent studies, Stuart Clark’s Thinking with Demons and Ian Bostridge’s Witchcraft and Its Transformation, have added greatly to our understanding of the intellectual idea of the ‘witch’ and its place within western intellectual thought.1 While these ideas may have affected the intellectual elites, we need to be cautious not to assume that every individual was reading or aware of these ideas. In Fife, we have seen little evidence of demonic theory being used. When Satan does appear it is relatively late in the witch-hunt and he is most commonly described in language which derives from beliefs about elves and fairies, not elite concepts of the demonic. These folk beliefs proved remarkably resilient. Nor were the sessions and the presbyteries particularly sophisticated in their use of diabolic theory. Whether individual members of the clergy were aware of this literature is beyond the scope of this study. What has been obvious is that certain instances which could have been interpreted as sabbats were not.
In part this may have been because the clergy were not particularly interested in whether witchcraft was or was not a heresy. Their concerns were with the practical application of magic, white or black, and with the imposition of church discipline on the parishes. Discipline, not diabolism, was the concern. Michael Graham has recently defined church discipline as the attempt ‘to convert reformed doctrine into practice, and to move the religious changes which were taking place from the realm of theology and worship into the realm of everyday life’.2 This ‘early example of an attempt at social engineering on a societal scale’3 was not concerned with fine distinctions between cures and curses, between magic used in healing and magic used to harm. All forms of magic, including consulting in order to be healed, were condemned. This concern to eradicate charms and witchcraft was one aspect of a broader attempt to create a godly society. Witches were not only the enemies of God, but of a godly community.
Consensus was needed in order to build this godly society. Other members of the elite, the lairds, burgh officials, nobility and judiciary, were willing – for whatever reasons – to assist in this endeavour, as long (as usually was the case) as they were not brought under the discipline of the kirk.4 When that consensus was broken, witch-hunting was no longer possible. The judiciary played a vital role in quelling the Pittenweem hunt of 1704–05. Yet their scepticism was not shared by either the clergy or the local population. The lynching which resulted, as well as the inability to effectively prosecute any of those who had taken part, demonstrates that even as the possibility of witch-hunting declined, belief in witchcraft continued. That belief continued in rural and port communities for many years.5 While the repression of witches and magic ceased to be an effective part of the program, the attempt to build a godly society also continued into the eighteenth century.
The role of the elites in witch-hunting is significant. In contrast, Robin Briggs in his new survey Witches and Neighbours has stressed the role played by the neighbours of the suspects. Healers, according to Briggs, were only a minority of those accused of witchcraft and got into trouble only as a result of disputes with their neighbours.6 He argues that witch-hunts were not managed from above. He summarizes this position as a vision in which ‘it is readily portrayed as an oppressive technique, serving selfish ends, exploited by bigoted and cynical ruling groups’.7 A few pages later he suggests that ‘the supply of victims was largely regulated by the population at large’.8 This was not the experience in Fife. While the local population knew who the witches were in their community, they took little initiative to deal with them. That initiative came primarily from the church courts, from sessions and presbyteries. Once a suspect was being held the populace might (or might not) come forward with accounts of all the evil which that particular individual had done. Larner’s contention that it was the elites who ‘controlled and manipulated the
demand and supply for witchcraft suspects’ is a more accurate description of what we have witnessed in Fife.9 Those deemed witches lived on the fringe of society. Many did dabble in curses and cures. Some were difficult and quarrelsome and ungrateful even when given charity. That they incurred the anger of their neighbours is understandable. But it was the attempt to impose a new morality, a godly society, both in terms of sexual behaviour and other attitudes which created the climate in which these women found themselves in danger.
The establishment of a godly State was a revolutionary idea. It was radical in its particulars. Michael Graham has spoken of the idea of using discipline to ‘encourage a revolution’ in the populace’s attitudes to ‘illness and misfortune’.10 The broader agenda of a godly society where actions and political beliefs could be scrutinized and punished was even more ambitious. Church discipline was not cynical. It had a goal in mind, a goal which was quite worthy. The unfortunate problem was that too many people stood in the way.
Creating a godly society meant eradicating evil in all its forms, both of thought and practice. Witchcraft was one of those forms. While other sectors of the elite may have had other reasons and beliefs which led them to persecute witches, the church was driven by its vision of what society could be. We tend not to think of persecution being the result of an attempt to achieve something ‘good’ or ‘noble’. Yet be the goal a godly society or a social paradise defined by the political right or political left, those who are perceived to be obstacles to the attainment of that goal are often brutally dealt with by those trying to create this idyllic society. The Khmer Rouge executed anyone wearing glasses, because it was feared that they might be educated and that education would corrupt the new society which was being constructed from year zero. During the cultural revolution in China those whose thoughts were seen as too bourgeois were sent to be ‘re-educated’ in the countryside. Improper thought was established as a crime, just as support of the Engagement was in Fife in the period 1649–50. Nazis wanted to build a Reich which would last a thousand years, and so built extermination camps in order to eliminate those deemed racially impure and a danger to that society. We demonize these regimes, and so miss that from the perspective of the true believer those who stand in the way of the achievement of their goal are obstacles, barriers to progress which must be overcome at any or all costs. This is what we should understand – and fear. In seventeenth century Fife, witches were seen by the godly as a threat to the building of a godly society.
Notes
1.
Clark, Thinking with Demons (1997). Ian Bostridge, Witchcraft and Its Transformation c1650–c1750. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997). Bostridge includes a discussion of the role in which witchcraft theory played in Scotland, in particular the relationship between the Calvinist covenant and the demonic covenant. The political role of witchcraft belief is a theme worth further exploration.
2.
Graham, The Uses of Reform, 1.
3.
Ibid., 2.
4.
Ibid. Graham argues that social problems such as bastardy, poverty and unrest among the poor led even the more secular nobility to offer support to the establishment of church discipline, 345–346. He places significant stress on the problem of bastardy and the strain that overpopulation placed on scarce resources. While not agreeing with this particular interpretation, the question is one that needs further exploration. Why were the secular officials willing to support the church?
5.
Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, 277, gives only one of many examples of continued belief.
6.
Briggs, Witches and Neighbours, 5–6.
7.
Ibid., 398.
8.
Ibid., 401.
9.
Larner, ‘Crimen Exceptum?’, 63.
10.
Graham, The Uses of Reform, 308.
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