[198] Wodrow’s Analecta, i. 301.
[199] Analecta, i. 106.
[200] Law’s Memorials. By C. K. Sharpe, p. lxviii.
[201] Contemporary with Kincaid flourished, in the north country, a pricker named John Dick. One named John Hay, a messenger in Tain, who had reached sixty without any discredit attaching to his name, was denounced by a distracted woman as a wizard, and immediately seems to have fallen into the hands of Dick, who, without any authority, pricked him all over his body, having first shaved his head to ascertain that there were no insensible parts in that region. He was then transferred to Edinburgh, a journey of nearly two hundred miles, and locked up in the Tolbooth. On a petition from Hay, and the exhibition of certificates of character, he was ordered by the Lords of Council to be liberated.
[202] Kincaid lay nine weeks in jail, and then petitioned for his liberty, representing that, being an old man, he had suffered much in health by his confinement, and, if longer confined, might be brought to mortal sickness; whereupon the Lords liberated him, on condition of his giving security that he would prick no more without warrant.
[203] The full confessions of Isobel Gowdie and Janet Braidhead, being perhaps the two most remarkable witch-cases on record in Scotland, are given in Mr Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials, iii. 600. From these confessions, the following narration is made up.
[204] The hiatus here supplied are a consequence of mutilation of the manuscript.
[205] Stubble.
[206] A Dismal Account of the Burning of our Solemn League and National Covenant ... at Linlithgow, May 29, 1662. Reprinted by Stevenson, Edinburgh, 1832.
[207] Wood’s Peerage, quoting Morison’s Decisions, 5626.