They were detained at sea five days longer than had been calculated upon; and when they arrived, Mr Williamson who should have received them was absent. Johnstoun, who had the charge of their maintenance when there, not knowing how he was to be reimbursed, and not being able to find any body to take them off his hands, nor seeing any prospect of the agent, set them ashore, and left them to shift for themselves. The English, who sympathized much with them when they learned the cause of their sufferings, afforded them every assistance; and the greater part of them returned safely home after an absence of nine months—several of them to suffer new hardships from their relentless persecutors.
Neither rank nor age were any protection against the cruelty of these men, who, careless about the mischief they inflicted, imposed upon the young oaths which they could not be supposed to understand, and ordered them to subscribe bonds they could never fulfil. The son of Lord Semple, at this time a student in Glasgow College, had a young man for his private tutor, of uncommon abilities and excellent character, to whom he was much attached. Him the council summoned to appear before them; but he, aware of the consequences, did not comply, and his pupil withdrew with him. They were both served with a charge of law-burrows. The young lord’s mother, however, who was a papist, interfered on his behalf, and represented that her son, through the neglect of those to whom he was recommended, or the corruption of the place, had been seduced and poisoned with bad principles; she therefore craved that they would recommend such persons as would watch over his loyalty and estate during his minority, and they appointed the Bishop of Argyle to provide a governor to that lord. Mr Wylie went abroad and remained at some of the foreign universities with several other pupils.
Alexander Anderson, a youth not sixteen years of age, was treated more harshly, because he would make no compliances. He was sent to the plantations. Yet he left a testimony behind him, which deserves to be remembered, dated Canongate tolbooth, December 10th, this year. In it he remarked—“That he is the youngest prisoner in Scotland; and that the Lord had opened his eyes and revealed his Son in his heart since he came under the cross; that though he had much difficulty to part with his friends and relatives, yet he had now found, that fellowship with Christ did much more than balance the want of the company of dearest relations; that though he was so very young as that he could not be admitted a witness among men, yet he hopes Christ hath taken him to be a witness to his cause. He adheres to the work of reformation from popery and prelacy to the National and Solemn League and Covenants; and witnesses against the pulling down of the government of Christ’s house, and setting up lordly prelacy, and joining with them; and adduces a good many places of Scripture which he conceives strike against this practice. He makes an apology that he who is but a child should leave any thing of this nature behind him; but says he was constrained to it, to testify that God perfects strength out of the mouth of babes. He regrets the indulgence as what upon both sides had been matter of stumbling and offence among good people; and declares his fears that a black, dreadful day is coming upon Scotland: that it is good to seek the Lord and draw near to him. He leaves his commendation to the cross of Christ, and blesses the Lord for carrying him through temptations, and enabling him, one of the lambs of his flock, to stand before great men and judges; and closes with good wishes to all the friends of Christ.”
The Justiciary Court was this year engaged in equally cruel, though, could we divest them of their horrors, we should say more ludicrous transactions. “Eight or ten witches,” Lord Fountainhall tells us, “were panelled, all of them, except one or two, poor miserable-like women. Some of them were brought out of Sir Robert Hepburn of Keith’s lands; others out of Ormiston, Crichton, and Pencaitland parishes. The first of them were delated by those two who were burnt in Salt-Preston in May 1678, and they divulged and named the rest, as also put forth seven in the Lonehead of Leswade; and, if they had been permitted, were ready to fyle by their delation sundry gentlewomen and others of fashion; but the justices discharged them, thinking it either the product of malice or melancholy, or the devil’s deception, in representing such persons as present at their field-meetings who were not there. Yet this was cried out on as a prelimiting them from discovering those enemies of mankind. However, they were permitted to name Mr Gideon Penman, who had been minister at Crichton, but deprived for sundry acts of immoralitie. Two or three of the witches constantly affirmed that he was present at their meetings with the devil; and that when the devil called for him, he asked, where is Mr Gideon, my chaplain? and that, ordinarily, Mr Gideon was in the rear of all their dances, and beat up those that were slow. He denied all, and was liberate upon caution”—certainly the only way of disposing of this case in consistency with common sense.
Yet were these poor unfortunates allowed to proceed with their confessions, which were regularly registered against them. “They declared the first thing the devil caused them do, was to renounce their baptism; and by laying their hand on the top of their head, and the other on the sole of their foot, to renounce all betwixt the two to his service. But one being with child at the time, in her resignation, excepted the child, at which the devil was very angry. That he frequently kissed them, but his body was cold, and his breath was like a damp air. That he cruelly beat them when they had done the evil he had enjoined them—for he was a most wicked and barbarous master. That sometimes he adventured to give them the communion, or holy sacrament; the bread like wafers—the drink, sometimes blood, and at other times black moss-water; and preached most blasphemously. That sometimes he transformed them into bees, ravens, and crows; and they flew to such and such remote places. Their confessions,” his lordship gravely adds, “made many intelligent, sober persons stumble much, what faith was to be adhibite to them.” How any intelligent person could hesitate a moment upon the subject, is strange; and it is humiliating and lamentable to add, that by grave, intelligent judges “nine of these women, upon their own confession (and so seemed very rational and penitent) were sentenced to be strangled and then burnt,” instead of being sent to some safe place of confinement to be dealt gently with; and five of them were accordingly immolated between Leith and Edinburgh, and other four burnt at Painston-moor, within their own parish where they had lived.
A case came before the privy council, not long after, which it is difficult to reconcile with the above, the proceedings were so diametrically opposite. Cathrine Liddel brought a complaint against Rutherford, baron-bailie, to Morrison of Prestongrange and David Cowan in Tranent, for having seized her, an innocent woman, defamed her as a witch, and detained her under restraint as a prisoner, also that Cowan had pricked her with long pins, in sundry places of her body, and bled and tortured her most cruelly. The bailie pled that she had been denounced by other witches, laboured under a mala fama, and therefore had been apprehended; and that she and her son-in-law had consented to her being “searched” for the vindication of her innocency. With regard to the pricker, he had learned his trade from Kincaid, a famed pricker; he never exercised his calling without the authority of a magistrate; his trade was not condemned by any law, and all divines and lawyers, who have written on witchcraft, acknowledge that there are such marks, and therefore there may be an art for discerning them. But the Chancellor remembered that he had formerly imprisoned the famous Kincaid in Kinross, as a notorious cheat. The lords of the privy council therefore first declared the woman innocent, and restored her to her good name and fame, and ordered it to be publicly intimated the next Sunday in her parish church; then reproved Rutherford for his rashness, and forbade him in future to proceed in such a manner, declaring that the use of torture by pricking or otherwise was illegal; and, as a mark of their displeasure, ordered the pricker to prison.
Considerable changes had taken place among the higher authorities in Scotland this year. Since the appointment of Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh to be king’s advocate, Sir George Mackenzie of Tarbet was appointed justice-general; Sir Thomas Wallace of Craigie, lord justice-clerk; the Bishop of Galloway was added to the committee for public affairs; Richard Maitland of Gogar, Sir George Gordon of Haddo, and Drummond of Lundin, admitted councillors; and the Marquis of Montrose made captain of the horse guards.
BOOK XIII.
JANUARY TO JUNE, A.D. 1679.