For a few years after the Revolution, the subject rested in the quiescence which had fallen upon it some years before. But at length the General Assembly began to see how necessary it was to look after witches and charmers, and some salutary admonitions about these offenders were from time to time issued. The office of Lord Advocate, or public prosecutor, had now fallen into the hands of Sir James Steuart of Goodtrees, a person who shared in the highest convictions of the religious party at present in power, |1695.| including reverence for the plain meaning of the text, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ The consequence was, that the reign of William III. became a new Witch Period in Scotland, and one involving many notable cases.
Aug. 8.
In August 1695, two married women, named M‘Rorie and M‘Quicken, residing respectively at the Mill-burn and Castlehill of Inverness, were in the Tolbooth of that northern burgh, under a suspicion of being witches; and the Privy Council, seeing the inconvenience of having them brought to an inquest in Edinburgh, issued a commission for their being tried on the spot by David Polson of Kinmilnes, sheriff-depute of Inverness; William Baillie, commissar there; Alexander Chisholm, bailie to Lord Lovat; Duncan Forbes of Culloden; —— Cuthbert of Castlehill; and —— Duff, provost of Inverness, any three of them to be a quorum. The arrangements for the trial were all carefully specified in this commission; and it was intimated in the end that, ‘in case the said judges shall find the said panels guilty of the said horrid crime laid to their charge,’ the commissioners should adjudge them ‘to be burned or otherwise execute to death.’
In March 1696, a commission was issued in similar terms for the trial of ‘Janet Widdrow, in the parish of Kilmacolm, presently prisoner in the Tolbooth of Paisley, alleged guilty of the horrid crime of witchcraft.’ Two months later, the Lord Advocate applied to the Council for an extension of power to the commission against Janet Widdrow, as ‘it is now informed that the said Janet doth fyle and put out several others, and as there are some persons in these bounds against whom there are probable and pregnant grounds of suspicion.’ The request was complied with.
Some months later (December 3, 1696), we hear of some informalities in the process against Janet Widdrow and Isobel Cochrane, and the Lord Advocate was requested to report on the matter.[[159]]
So much for the present; but let the reader see onward under February 1697, March 1, 1698, &c.
Aug.
It is remarked by a Presbyterian historian of the popular class, that the time of the ‘Persecution’ was one of general abundance. God, he believed, did not choose to let his people suffer in more ways than one. But, not long after King William had brought days of religious security, the seasons began to be bad, and much physical suffering ensued. According to this historian, Alexander |1695.| Peden foretold how it would be. ‘As long,’ said he, ‘as the lads are upon the hills, you will have bannocks o’er night; but if once you were beneath the bield of the brae, you will have clean teeth and many a black and pale face in Scotland.’[[160]]
Nevertheless, the country was so much at its ease in the matter of food in July 1695, that the Estates then passed an act for encouraging the export of grain, allowing it to go out duty free, and ordaining that so it should be whenever wheat was at or under twelve pounds (Scots) the boll; bear, barley, and malt under eight; pease and oats, under six; provided these grains should be carried in Scottish ships.
By an act passed in 1672, it was forbidden to import meal from Ireland while the price in Scotland remained below a certain rate. And that this was a serious matter, is proved by an order of Council in April 1695, for staving the grain brought from Carrickfergus in two vessels, named the James and the Isobel, and for handing over the vessels themselves to Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbreck, who had seized them on their way to a Scottish port. It never occurred to a legislator of those days that there was a kind of absurdity, as well as a glaring selfishness, in arranging for his own country receiving while it should not give.