Next to importance in the guidance of religious teaching and worship, and indeed closely connected with it, in the estimation of the Scottish ecclesiastical courts, came the question of witchcraft and sorcery. The annals of the country throughout the seventeenth century, together with the closing years of the preceding one, are full of stories of the trial, torture, and punishment of alleged witches; and even in the early years of the eighteenth century there are occasional instances of persons proceeded against in the Kirk Sessions for using charms, and similar superstitious practices. The unfortunate women charged with selling their souls to Satan in exchange for occult powers seldom succeeded in establishing their innocence, and juries which ventured to acquit them were themselves occasionally charged with “wilful error” for so doing. Under these circumstances it would seem that the accused, abandoning all hope of escape, frequently took pleasure in exciting the wonder and the horror of the court by the weird and marvellous tales which they invented of their evil deeds; and no tale could be too marvellous for belief. It made no difference in the enormity of the crime whether the supernatural powers ascribed to the prisoner were used for good objects or for evil; Isabel Haldane, who “cured Andrew Duncan’s bairn, by bringing water from the burn at Turret Port,” Margaret Hornscleugh, who restored Alexander Mason’s wife to health and renewed the milking powers of Robert Christie’s cow, were burnt equally with Agnes Simpson, who had raised a storm to drown King James, and Catherine Campbell, who had struck her young mistress with convulsions. Foremost in hunting down these poor deluded, or maligned creatures, were the ministers of the Kirk; and practically the only lawful excuse for absence from a public service on Sunday, or even for the omission of the service altogether, was attendance at a witch-burning.
Much time of various Kirk Sessions was also occupied, now and again, in considering cases of pilgrimage to holy wells, “turning the riddle” to discover the name of a thief, and similar matters, and in reprimanding the offenders. So late as 1709, the Kirk Session of Kilmorie summoned before it a woman accused of “the horrid sin of the hellish art of riddle-turning,” and sentenced her to public penance on three several Sundays.
More useful were the efforts, directed by the disciplinary authorities of the Kirk, to prevent such sins as drunkenness, profanity, slander, and sexual immorality. At Stirling, in 1612, a man was fined 20s. for being intoxicated; and Dunino had, in 1645, a regular scale of fines for such cases, 6s. for the first offence, 12s. for the second, and so forth. Cursing and swearing were openly punished at the market crosses, by the shame of the pillory, and by fines. Slander was met with the use of the brank, the pillory, compulsory shaving of the head, or, in extreme cases, with banishment from the district. In all these cases, a public reprimand on Sunday at the stool of repentance was usually inflicted, in addition to whatever other penalty there was imposed.
The violation of the marriage vow was made a capital crime in Scotland in 1563; but the death sentence was not actually carried out very frequently. At Glasgow, in 1586, it was considered sufficient to send the offenders to the pillory, barefoot and in sackcloth, and then to cart them through the town; but in 1643, the punishment was made more severe—the jagg, a public whipping, committal to the common jail, and, finally, expulsion from the town, being the satisfaction demanded by local justice. In the case of a minister who had admitted that he was guilty of adultery, the utmost humiliation was demanded. He had first to prostrate himself before the General Assembly, and implore their pardon in the most abject manner; he was then required to do public penance in sackcloth at the kirk door, and on the repentance-stool for two Sundays each, in three several towns, which were chosen so as to complete his degradation. Edinburgh, the capital, Dundee, his native town, and Jedburgh, the place of his ministry, were all to witness his shame. For other sins of impurity, fines, imprisonment in the kirk steeple, standing in irons at the market cross, and having the head shaved, were, one or more of them, adjudged.
Some of the cases in which the Kirk exercised its discipline were such as, it would appear to us, might have been dealt with more effectually in less formal or more private ways. When a lad failed in proper respect to his father, like the Glasgow youth who did not “lift his bonnet” on meeting him, or even like him of St. Andrews, who struck his parent, it would hardly seem to have been needful to report the matter to the Kirk, for it to deal with it; yet the Sessions at those places solemnly considered these misdemeanours, in 1598 and in 1574 respectively. Again, few husbands, now, would probably care so far to confess themselves unable to control their wives as to call in the authority of the Kirk to prevent the “weaker vessels” from abusing their lords; yet such cases frequently occupied the attention of Kirk Sessions. The brank, or imprisonment, or the pillory, was the sentence usually pronounced on these rebellious wives.
The interference of the Kirk Sessions in some matters, which they once claimed as within their sphere, would now certainly be resented. Thus, the presbytery of Glasgow forbade a marriage between James Armour and Helen Bar, in 1594, on the ground that the prospective bridegroom was “in greit debt”; and at St. Andrews, in 1579, all persons who could not recite the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Commandments were debarred from matrimony. Moreover, the Kirk undertook the regulation of the wedding festivities. At Stirling, in 1599, the Kirk Session decreed that no marriage dinner or supper should cost above 5s.; and this was an advance upon the rule passed at Glasgow, in 1583, which limited the cost to “eighteen pennies Scots.” At Cambusnethan, in 1649, the presence of a piper at a wedding was forbidden; and at Dumfries, in 1657, the number of guests was limited to twenty-four.
In too many instances the Kirk procured the information on which it acted in enforcing these decrees through spies of one kind or another. The informants, through whom cases were got up against the adherents of the unreformed rites, were often men of the worst characters, such as Robert Drummond, a twice-convicted adulterer, who finally died by his own hand. The wretches who hunted down and tested those accused of witchcraft were scarcely more respectable agents. Officers both of the kirks and of the municipalities were required to watch for and report those who did not attend divine service regularly; an espionage of the most dangerous and objectionable kind being introduced when, as at Glasgow in 1600, it was decreed that, on the “deacons” of craft-gilds informing of any remissness in kirk-attendance of their members, half the fine imposed should be given to the gild. Bailies were desired to traverse the houses on “preaching dayes” to see that the people did not stay at home; beadles were “to tak notice of those who tak ye sneising tobacco in tyme of divine service, and to inform concerning them;” others were appointed to take the names of such as were in the alehouses after eight o’clock at night; midwives and doctors were threatened with discipline if they failed to report any illegitimate birth which they attended; “searchers” were appointed to find out those who did not buy Bibles and Psalm-books; in a word the lives of the people were constantly under observation. It is perhaps the strongest proof of the strength of the Scotsman’s character that, after a century or more of such interference with his responsibility, his sturdy independence survived. Much of this disciplinary system died away when, in 1690, it ceased to have behind it the civil disabilities attendant on excommunication.