[44] Pitcairn, ‘Criminal Trials,’ i. 49-58. This chapter is mainly founded on the reports in Pitcairn.
[45] Pitcairn, ut ante, i. 192, 202, 285.
JAMES I. AND THE WITCHES.
These, and other cases of witchcraft which, as the mania extended, occurred in various parts of the country, attracted the attention of King James, and made a profound impression upon him. Taking up the study of the subject with enthusiasm, he inquired into the demonology of France and Germany, where it had been matured into a science; and this so thoroughly that he became, as already stated, an expert, and was really entitled to pronounce authoritative decisions. His example, however, had a disastrous effect, confirming and deepening the popular credulity to such an extent that the common people, for a time, might have been divided into two great classes—witches and witch-finders. That in such circumstances many acts of cruelty should be perpetrated was inevitable. So complete was the demoralization, that the most trivial physical or mental peculiarity was held to be an indubitable witch-mark, and young and old were hurried to the stake like sheep to the slaughter.
In August, 1589, King James was married, by proxy, to Princess Anne of Denmark; and the impatient monarch was eagerly awaiting the arrival of his bride from Copenhagen, when the unwelcome intelligence reached him that the vessels conveying her and her suite had been overtaken by a storm, and, after a narrow escape from destruction, had put into the port of Upsal, in Norway, with the intention of remaining there until the following spring. The eager bridegroom, summoning up all his courage—he had no love for the sea—resolved to go in search of his queen, and, having found her, to conduct her to her new home. At Upsal the marriage was duly solemnized; and husband and wife then voyaged to Copenhagen, where they spent the winter. The homeward voyage was not undertaken until the following spring; and it was on May Day, 1590, that James and his Queen landed at Leith, after an experience of the sea which confirmed James’s distaste for it.
The political disorder of the country, and the hold which the new superstition had obtained upon the minds of the people, encouraged the circulation of dark mysterious rumours in connection with the King’s unfavourable passage; and a general belief soon came to be established that the tempestuous weather which had so seriously affected it was due to the intervention of supernatural powers, at the instigation of human treachery. Suspicion fixed at length upon the Earl of Bothwell, who was arrested and committed to prison; but in June, 1591, contrived to make his escape, and conceal himself in the remote recesses of the Highlands. Not long afterwards, some curious circumstances attending certain cures which a servant girl—Geillis, or Gillies, Duncan—had performed, led to her being suspected of witchcraft; and this suspicion opened up a series of investigations, which revealed the existence of an extraordinary conspiracy against the King’s life.
Geillis Duncan was in the employment of David Seton, deputy-bailiff of the small town of Tranent, in Haddingtonshire. Unlike the witch of English rural life, she was young, comely, and fair-complexioned; and the only ground on which the idea of witchcraft was associated with her was the wonderful quickness with which she had cured some sick and diseased persons, the fact being that she was well acquainted with the healing properties of herbs. When her master severely interrogated her, she at once denied all knowledge of the mysteries of the black art. He then, without leave or license, put her to the torture; she still continued to protest her innocence. It was a popular conviction that no witch would confess so long as the devil-mark on her body remained undiscovered. She was subjected to an indecent examination—the stigma was found (said the examiners) on her throat; she was again subjected to the torture. The outraged girl’s fortitude then gave way; she acknowledged whatever her persecutors wished to learn. Yes, she was a witch! She had made a compact with the devil; all her cures had been effected by his assistance—quite a new feature in the character of Satan, who has not generally been suspected of any compassionate feeling towards suffering humanity. That she had done good instead of harm availed the unfortunate Geillis nothing. She was committed to prison; and the torture being a third time applied, made a fuller confession, in which she named her accomplices or confederates, some forty in number, residing in different parts of Lothian. Their arrest and examination disclosed the particulars of one of the strangest intrigues ever concocted.
The principal parties in it were Dr. Fian, or Frain, a reputed wizard, also known as John Cunningham; a grave matron, named Agnes Sampson; Euphemia Macalzean, daughter of Lord Cliftonhall; and Barbara Napier. Fian, or Cunningham, was a schoolmaster of Tranent, and a man of ability and education; but his life had been evil—he was a vendor of poisons—and, though innocent of the preposterous crimes alleged against him, had dabbled in the practices of the so-called sorcery. When a twisted cord was bound round his bursting temples, he would confess nothing; and, exasperated by his fortitude, the authorities subjected him to the terrible torture of ‘the boots.’ Even this he endured in silence, until exhausted nature came to his relief with an interval of unconsciousness. He was then released; restoratives were applied; and, while he hovered on the border of sensibility, he was induced to sign ‘a full confession.’ Being remanded to his prison, he contrived, two days afterwards, to escape; but was recaptured, and brought before the High Court of Justiciary, King James himself being present. Fian strenuously repudiated the so-called confession which had been foisted upon him in his swoon, declaring that his signature had been obtained by a fraud. Whereupon King James, enraged at what he conceived to be the man’s stubborn wilfulness, ordered him again to the torture. His fingernails were torn out with pincers, and long needles thrust into the quick; but the courageous man made no sign. He was then subjected once more to the barbarous ‘boots,’ in which he continued so long, and endured so many blows, that ‘his legs were crushed and beaten together as small as might be, and the bones and flesh so bruised, that the blood and marrow spouted forth in great abundance, whereby they were made unserviceable for ever.’
As ultimately extorted from the unfortunate Fian, his confession shows a remarkable mixture of imposture and self-deception—a patchwork of the falsehoods he believed and those he invented. Singularly grotesque is his account of his introduction to the devil: He was lodging at Tranent, in the house of one Thomas Trumbill, who had offended him by neglecting to ‘sparge’ or whitewash his chamber, as he had promised; and, while lying in his bed, meditating how he might be revenged of the said Thomas, the devil, clothed in white raiment, suddenly appeared, and said: ‘Will ye be my servant, and adore me and all my servants, and ye shall never want?’ Never want! The bribe to a poor Scotch dominie was immense; Fian could not withstand it, and at once enlisted among ‘the Devil’s Own.’ As his first act of service, he had the pleasure of burning down Master Trumbill’s house. The next night Beelzebub paid him another visit, and put his mark upon him with a rod. Thereafter he was found lying in his chamber in a trance, during which, he said, he was carried in the spirit over many mountains, and accomplished an aërial circumnavigation of the globe. In the future he attended all the nightly conferences of witches and fiends held throughout Lothian, displaying so much energy and capacity that the devil appointed him to be his ‘registrar and secretary.’
The first convention at which he was present assembled in the parish church of North Berwick, a breezy, picturesque seaport at the mouth of the Forth, about sixteen miles from Preston Pans. Satan occupied the pulpit, and delivered ‘a sermon of doubtful speeches,’ designed for their encouragement. His servants, he said, should never want, and should ail nothing, so long as their hairs were on, and they let no tears fall from their eyes. He bade them spare not to do evil, and advised them to eat, drink, and be merry: after which edifying discourse they did homage to him in the usual indecent manner. Fian, as I have said, was an evil-living man, and needed no exhortation from the devil to do wicked things. In the course of his testimony he invented, as was so frequently the strange practice of persons accused of witchcraft, the most extravagant fictions—as, for instance: One night he supped at the miller’s, a few miles from Tranent; and as it was late when the revel ended, one of the miller’s men carried him home on horseback. To light them on their way through the dark of night, Fian raised up four candles on the horse’s ears, and one on the staff which his guide carried; their great brightness made the midnight appear as noonday; but the miller’s man was so terrified by the phenomenon that, on his return home, he fell dead.