The consequences of this authoritative recognition of the creed of witchcraft became immediately obvious with the reign of James which followed. Witchcraft became the all-engrossing topic of the day, and the ordinary accusation resorted to whenever it was the object of one individual to ruin another, just as certain other offences were during the reign of Justinian, and during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Italy. In Scotland the evil was not less busy in high places, than among the humbler beings, who had generally been professors of the art magic. A sort of relation of clientage seems to have been established between the operative performers, and those noble patrons (chiefly, we regret to say, of the fair sex) by whom their services were put in requisition. The Lady Buccleugh, of Branxholm Hall, whose spells have furnished our own Northern Wizard with some of his most striking pictures,—the Countess of Athol, the Countess of Huntly, the wife of the Chancellor Arran, the Lady Ker, wife of James, Master of Requests, the Countess of Lothian, the Countess of Angus, (more fortunate in her generation than her grandmother Lady Glammis), were all, if we are to believe the scandal of Scotstarvet, either protectors of witches or themselves dabblers in the art[43]. Even Knox himself did not escape the accusation of witchcraft; the power and energy of mind with which Providence had gifted him, the enemies of the Reformation attributed to a darker source. He was accused of having attempted to raise “some sanctes” in the churchyard of St. Andrew’s; but in the course of this resuscitation upstarted the devil himself, having a huge pair of horns on his head, at which terrible sight Knox’s secretary became mad with fear, and shortly after died. Nay, to such a height had the mania gone, that Scot of Scotstarvet mentions that Sir Lewis Ballantyne, Lord Justice Clerk of Scotland, “by curiosity dealt with a warlock called Richard Grahame,” (the same person who figures in the trial of Alison Balfour, as a confederate of Bothwell), “to raise the devil, who having raised him in his own yard in the Canongate, he was thereby so terrified that he took sickness and thereof died.” This was a “staggering state of Scots statesmen” indeed, when even the supreme criminal judge of Scotland was thus at the head of the delinquents. Well might any unfortunate criminal have said with Angelo—
“Thieves for their robbery have authority,
When judges steal themselves.”
Measure f. Measure, ii. 2.
Nor, in fact, was the Church less deeply implicated than the court and the hall of justice; for in the case of Alison Pearson (1588) we find the celebrated Patrick Adamson, Archbishop of St. Andrew’s, laying aside the fear of the Act of Parliament, and condescending to apply to this poor wretch for a potion to cure him of his sickness!
A faith so strong and so general could not be long in manifesting itself in works. In 1572 occurs the first entry in the Justiciary Record, the trial of Janet Bowman, of which no particulars are given, except the emphatic sentence “Convict: and Brynt.” No fewer than thirty-five trials appear to have taken place before the Court of Justiciary during the remainder of James’s reign, (to 1625), in almost all of which the result is the same as in the case of Bowman.
Two or three of these are peculiarly interesting; one, from the difference between its details and those which form the usual materials of the witch trials; the others, from the high rank of some of those involved in them, and the strange and almost inexplicable extent of the delusion. The first to which we allude is that of Bessie Dunlop[44], convicted on her own confession; the peculiarity in this case is that, instead of the devil himself in propriâ personâ, the spiritual beings to whom we are introduced are our old friends the fairies, the same sweet elves whom Paracelsus defends, and old Aubrey delighted to honour. Bessie’s familiar was a being whom she calls Thom Reed, and whom she describes in her judicial declaration[45] as “an honest weel elderlie man, gray bairdit, and had ane gray coitt with Lumbard sleeves of the auld fassoun, ane pair of gray brekis, and quhyte schankis gartarrit abone the kne.” Their first meeting took place as she was going to the pasture, “gretand (weeping) verrie fast for her kow that was dead, and her husband and child that were lyand sick in the land-ill (some epidemic of the time), and she new risen out of gissane (childbed).” Thom, who took care that his character should open upon her in a favourable light, chid her for her distrust in Providence, and told her that her sheep and her child would both die, but that her husband should recover, which comforted her a little. His true character, however, appeared at a second “forgathering,” when he unblushingly urged her “to denye her christendom and renounce her baptism, and the faith she took at the fount stane.” The poor witch answered, that “though she should be riven at horse-tails she would never do that,” but promised him obedience in all things else,—a qualified concession with which he rather grumblingly departed. His third appearance took place in her own house, in presence of her husband and three tailors (three!). To the infinite consternation of this trio and of the gudeman, he took her by the apron and led her out of the house to the kiln-end, where she saw eight women and four men sitting; the men in gentlemen’s clothing, and the women with plaids round about them, and “very seemly to see.” They said to her, “Welcome Bessie, wilt thou go with us?” but as she made no answer to this invitation, they, after some conversation among themselves which she could not understand, disappeared of a sudden, and “a hideous ugly sough of wind followed them.” She was told by Thom, after their departure, that these “were the gude wights that wonned in the Court of Elfane,” and that she ought to have accepted their invitation. She afterwards received a visit from the Queen of Elfane in person, who condescendingly asked a drink of her, and prophesied the death of her child and the recovery of her husband. The use which poor Bessie made of her privileges was of the most harmless kind, for her spells seem to have been all exerted to cure, and not to kill. Most of the articles of her indictment are for cures performed, nor is there any charge against her of exerting her powers for a malicious purpose. As usual however she was convicted and burnt.
This was evidently a pure case of mental delusion, but it was soon followed by one of a darker and more complex character, in which, as far as the principal actor was concerned, it seems doubtful whether the mummery of witchcraft formed anything more than a mere pageant in the dark drama of human passions and crimes. We allude to the trials of Lady Fowlis and of Hector Munro of Fowlis, for witchcraft and poisoning, in 1590. This is one of those cases which might plausibly be quoted in support of the ground on which the witch trials have been defended by Selden, Bayle, and the writers of the Encyclopédie,—namely, the necessity of punishing the pretensions to such powers, or the belief in their existence, with as great rigour as if their exercise had been real. “The law against witches,” says Selden, “does not prove there be any, but it punishes the malice of those people that use such means to take away men’s lives. If one should profess that, by turning his hat and crying buz, he could take away a man’s life, though in truth he could do no such thing, yet this were a just law made by the state, that whoever should turn his hat thrice and cry buz, with an intention to take away a man’s life, shall be put to death.” We shall hardly stop to expose the absurdity of this doctrine of Selden in the abstract, which thus makes the will universally equal to the deed; but when we read such cases as that of Lady Fowlis, it cannot at the same time be denied, that the power which the pretended professor of such arts thus obtained over the popular mind, and the relaxation of moral principle with which it was naturally accompanied in the individual himself, rendered him a most dangerous member of society. In general, the profession of sorcery was associated with other crimes, and was frequently employed as a mere cover by which these might with the more security and effect be perpetrated. The philters and love-potions of La Voisin and Forman, the private court calendar of the latter, containing “what ladies loved what lords best,” (which the Chief Justice prudently would not allow to be read in court), are sufficiently well known. Charms of a more disgusting nature appear to have been supplied by our own witches, as in the case of Roy, tried before the sheriff of Perth, in 1601[46], and in that of Colquhoun, of Luss, tried for sorcery and incest, 1633, where the instrument of seduction was a jewel obtained from a necromancer. In short, wherever any flagitious purpose was to be effected, nothing more was necessary than to have recourse to some notorious witch. In poisoning, in particular, they were accomplished adepts, as was naturally to be expected from the power which it gave them of realizing their own prophecies. Poisoners and witches are classed together in the conclusion of Louis XIV.’s edict; and the trials before the Chambre Ardente prove that the two trades were generally found in harmonious juxtaposition. Our own Mrs. Turner, in England, affords us no bad specimen of this union of the poisoner with the procuress and the witch; while the prevalence of the same connection in Scotland appears from the details of the case of Robert Erskine, of Dun, from that of the daughter of Lord Cliftonhall, Euphemia Macalzean, and still more from the singular case of Lady Fowlis.
The object of the conspirators in this last case was the destruction of the young lady of Balnagown, which would have enabled George Ross, of Balnagown, to marry the young Lady Fowlis. But in order to entitle them to the succession of Fowlis, supposing the alliance to be effected, a more extensive slaughter was required. Lady Fowlis’s stepsons, Robert and Hector, with their families, stood in the way, and these were next to be removed. Nay, the indictment goes the length of charging her with projecting the murder of more than thirty individuals, including an accomplice of her own, Katharine Ross, the daughter of Sir David Ross, whom she had seduced into her schemes, a woman apparently of the most resolute temper, and obviously of an acute and penetrating intellect; there seems reason to doubt whether she had any faith in the power of the charms and sorceries to which she resorted, but she probably thought that, in availing herself of the services of those hags whom she employed, the more prudent course would be to allow them to play off their mummeries in their own way, while she combined them with more effective human means. Accordingly the work of destruction commenced with the common spell of making two pictures of clay, representing the intended victims; but instead of exposing them to the fire, or burying them with their heads downward, the pictures were in this case hung up on the north side of the room, and the lady, with her familiars, shot several arrows, shod with elf-arrow heads, at them, but without effect. Though the Lady Fowlis gave orders that other two pictures should be prepared, in order to renew the attempt, she seems forthwith to have resorted to more vigorous measures, and to have associated Katharine Ross and her brother George in her plans. The first composition prepared for her victims was a stoupful of poisoned ale, but this ran out in making. She then gave orders to prepare “a pig of ranker poison, that would kill shortly,” and this she dispatched by her nurse to the young Laird of Fowlis. Providence however again protected him: the “pig” fell and was broken by the way, and the nurse, who could not resist the temptation of tasting the contents, paid the penalty of her curiosity with her life. So corrosive was the nature of the potion, that the very grass on which it fell was destroyed. Nothing however could move Lady Fowlis from her purpose. Like Mrs. Turner, who treated Overbury with spiders, cantharides, and arsenic, alternately, that she might be able to “hit his complexion,” she now proceeded to try the effect of “ratton poyson,” (ratsbane,) of which she seems to have administered several doses to the young laird, “in eggs, browis, or kale,” but still without effect, his constitution apparently proving too strong for them. She had more nearly succeeded, however, with her sister-in-law, her female victim. The “ratton poyson” which she had prepared for Lady Balnagown, she contrived, by means of one of her subsidiary hags, to mix in a dish of kidneys, on which Lady Balnagown and her company supped; and its effects were so violent, that even the wretch by whom it was administered revolted at the sight. At the date of the trial, however, it would seem the unfortunate lady was still alive. Lady Fowlis was at last apprehended, on the confession of several of the witches she had employed, and more than one of whom had been executed before her own trial took place. The proceedings after all terminated in an acquittal, a result which is only explicable by observing that the jury was evidently a packed one, and consisted principally of the dependants of the houses of Munro and Fowlis.
This scene of diablerie and poisoning, however, did not terminate here. It now appeared that Mr. Hector, one of his stepmother’s intended victims, had himself been the principal performer in a witch underplot directed against the life of his brother George. Unlike his more energetic stepmother, credulous to the last degree, he seems to have been entirely under the control of the hags by whom he was surrounded, and who harassed and terrified him with fearful predictions and ghastly exhibitions of all kinds. He does not appear to have been naturally a wicked man, for the very same witches who were afterwards leagued with him against the life of George, he had consulted with a view of curing his elder brother Robert, by whose death he would have succeeded to the estates. But being seized with a lingering illness, and told by his familiars that the only chance he had of recovering his health was that his brother should die for him, he seems quietly to have devoted him to death, under the strong instinct of self-preservation. In order to prevent suspicion, it was agreed that his death should be lingering and gradual, and the officiating witch, who seemed to have the same confidence in her own nicety of calculation as the celebrated inventress of the poudre de successions, warranted the victim until the 17th of April following. It must be admitted that the incantations which followed were well calculated to produce a strong effect, both moral and physical, on the weak and credulous being on whom they were played off. Shortly after midnight, in the month of January, the witches left the house in which Mr. Hector was lying sick at the time, and passed to a piece of ground lying betwixt the lands of two feudal superiors, where they dug a large grave. Hector Munro, wrapped in blankets, was then carried forth, the bearers all the time remaining dumb, and silently deposited in the grave, the turf being laid over him and pressed down with staves. His foster-mother, Christian Neill, was then ordered to run the breadth of nine riggs, and returning to the grave, to ask the chief witch “which was her choice.” She answered that Mr. Hector was her choice to live, and his brother George to die for him. This cooling ceremony being three times repeated, the patient, frozen with cold and terror, was carried back to bed. Mr. Hector’s witches were more successful than the hags employed by his stepmother. George died in the month of April, as had been predicted, doubtless by other spells than the force of sympathy, and Hector appears to have recovered. He had the advantage, however, of a selected jury on his trial, as well as Lady Fowlis, and had the good fortune to be acquitted.
Scarcely had the agitation produced by these trials subsided, when the public mind was again confounded by a new, a more extensive, and almost inexplicable scene of enchantment, directed against the life of James and his Queen, in 1591.
The first hint of those strange proceedings which were afterwards disclosed, was derived from the confessions of a girl named Gellie, or Gellis Duncan, servant to the Deputy Bailiff of Tranent. Some sudden cures performed by this girl, and other suspicious points in her conduct, having attracted the observation of her master, he, with a laudable anxiety for the discovery of the truth, “did, with the help of others, torment her with the torture of the pilliewinkis [47].” But, notwithstanding these persuasive applications, no confession could be extorted. At last it was suggested by some of the operators, that her silence was owing to her having been marked by the devil, and on a diligent examination the mark was found on the fore part of the throat. No sooner was it detected than the charm was burst: she confessed that all her cures were performed by the assistance of the devil, and proceeded to make disclosures relative to the extent of her guilt, and the number of associates, which utterly eclipse all the preceding “discoveries of witchcraft,” with which the criminal records furnish us down to this time. Thirty or forty different individuals, some of whom, as the pamphlet observes, were “as civill honest women as anie that dwelled within the city of Edinburgh,” were denounced by her, and forthwith apprehended upon her confession. Nor was this list confined to the lower classes, from whom the victims offered to this superstition had generally been selected; for among those apprehended on Duncan’s information was Euphemia Macalzean, the daughter of Lord Cliftonhall, one of the senators of the College of Justice.