Witchcraft & Witch Trials
Witchcraft Overview
Most popular during the 16th and 17th centuries, persecution of witchcraft emerged because people believed that it offered an explanation of sudden and unexpected misfortune. For example, the death of a child, bad harvests, or the death of livestock could be blamed on witches. This is somewhat similar to when people blamed events on God's will, although employing witchcraft gave the public a specific enemy.
Legislative Action
In 1542, British Parliament passed the Witchcraft Act. This act defined witchcraft as a crime punishable by death. It was repealed but later restored by a new Act in 1562 that had similarly negative attitudes towards those accused of witchcraft. Another separate law was passed in 1604 by James I. Tis Act, as well as the 1562 Act, transferred witch trials from the church to ordinary courts.
In 1736, Parliament passed an Act repealed the laws against witchcraft. However, fines or imprisonment could be imposed upon people who claimed to be able to wield magical powers. This Act was repealed in 1951 by the Fraudulent Mediums Act. The Fraudulent Mediums Act prevented people from claiming to be psychic. This Act was repealed in 2008. Finally, we are free to practice witchcraft in the United Kingdom.
Excerpts from the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft
The Survey of Scottish Witchcraft was created by researchers at the University of Edinburgh.
The full document is located at: www.shca.ed.ac.uk/Research/witches/introduction.html
Q. How many witches were there in Scotland?
A. We have identified a total number of 3,837 people who were accused of witchcraft in Scotland. 3,212 of these are named and there are a further 625 unnamed people or groups included in our database. This is not a complete figure (see How complete is the database?), but it is probably fairly accurate.
Older accounts of the subject tended to produce much higher figures, such as 4,500 or 30,000. Sometimes these figures are still repeated, but they are based on speculation rather than detailed research. Usually they are given as figures for executions, making them even more misleading. Similarly, a figure of 9 million witches executed in Europe is sometimes given, when most scholars agree that it was about 60,000. These exaggerations are unfortunate. We think that 3,837 people accused of witchcraft is a lot.
Q. How complete is the database?
A. It is as complete as we could make it, but there are unavoidable gaps. A good deal of evidence is missing, and what survives is sometimes hard to find. We have 3,212 names of people accused of witchcraft. There are also 625 records for unnamed people or groups of unnamed people, making a total of 3,837 cases (including some groups of unknown size). This is probably most of the cases, but it is unlikely to be all of them.
There is also the question of how much information survives on each case. For most cases, we know that the accused witch existed, but not much more. In particular, we do not know whether these witches were executed (see How many witches were executed?). In most cases we have a record that a trial was authorised, but we do not know for certain whether the trial took place or what its outcome was. The number of those executed was probably much higher than those for whom we have definite records of their execution.
On the other hand, there are some very detailed cases which provide a great deal of information. There is information about the accused witches themselves, about their families and neighbours, about their working lives, and about the beliefs and practices that led to accusations of witchcraft. Early modern society's belief system encompassed ideas about religion and the supernatural, including the Devil, fairies and other spirits. It was used to explain misfortune and also as a means to rectify adversity. To find out about this, we don't need to have surviving evidence on every single case; we just need enough evidence to be able to see what was typical. The information that we have recorded will enable you to search the material for your own purposes and to build a more detailed picture of life in early modern Scotland.
Q. How many witches were executed?
A. It's hard to tell, but certainly not all. Of the 3,212 named individuals, we know the sentence of a trial in only 305 cases. 205 of these were to be executed, 52 were acquitted, 27 were banished, 11 were declared fugitive, 6 were excommunicated, 2 were put to the horn (outlawed), 1 person was to be kept in prison and 1 person was to be publicly humiliated. In addition, a further 98 were recorded as having fled from prosecution. This seems to suggest that 67%, two-thirds, were executed.
But this figure is probably not very accurate. It is based on only 305 cases—less than a tenth of the 3,212 people known to have been accused. The question is whether the 305 cases were typical, and in two ways they were not. Firstly, most of them come from trials in the central justiciary court (see What courts were involved?). This probably acquitted a higher proportion of witches than local courts—and most trials were in local courts. Secondly, however, our 3,212 people include a number whom we found being investigated by the church authorities. Probably some of these went on to receive a criminal trial, and may then have been executed; but others' cases were probably dropped before they came to trial. The first of the problems would suggest that the overall execution rate was higher than 67%; the second problem would suggest that it was lower. That does not mean that the figure of 67% is correct; it means that there is a good deal of uncertainty about it.
Q. How many were women?
A. Most, but not all: 84% were women and 15% men. The sex is not known for 1% of those accused.
Q. Were they old?
A. Based on the age of the accused that we were able to record:
7% were aged under 20
8% were between 20 and 30
22% were between 30 and 40
22% were between 40 and 50
31% were between 50 and 60
7% were between 60 and 70
4% were over 70.
Thus about half were over 40 when accused, at a time when life expectancies were considerably lower than they are today. The age of the majority of people accused is not known.
It should also be remembered that many 'witches' were defined as witches by their neighbours, through a process of gossip and quarrelling. Witches were believed to be malicious and vengeful. If someone suffered a misfortune after a quarrel, they might conclude that the other person had bewitched them in revenge. In trials involving neighbours' testimony, the accused witch is often seen to have lived with their reputation for a long time—twenty or even forty years. These witches were old when they were tried, but they were younger when they first acquired their reputation.
Q. Were they widowed?
A. It's hard to say. Of those women whose marital status was recorded the majority were married—78%. Those who were recorded as widowed accounted for 19%. But marital status is unknown for the great majority of those accused. The problem is that a married woman would be more likely to have her status recorded, because she had a husband with an interest in his wife's trial. An unmarried woman or widow did not need to have her marital status mentioned. So these figures are probably untypical, and at present we don't know how untypical.
Q. What kinds of torture were used?
A. The most common form was sleep deprivation—a very effective way of obtaining confessions, because it leads to hallucination. Before 1662 this was rarely regarded officially as torture at all. It was usually done by local authorities—burgh bailies, or elders of the kirk session—in order to get the evidence that they needed before they went to the privy council to obtain a commission to hold a criminal trial.
Q. What evidence was used in the trials?
A. Four main types were used.
Confession evidence, often extracted under torture. Typically if a suspect was interrogated they would be expected to confess to making a pact with the Devil and to harming their neighbours by maleficent witchcraft, though one or other of these was often omitted.
Neighbours' testimony. Statements by neighbours usually ignored the Devil. They usually described quarrels with the suspect followed by misfortune they had suffered.
Other witches' testimony. When witches were interrogated they were sometimes asked about their accomplices. The people they named could then be arrested and interrogated. This was an effective way of increasing the numbers of suspects; it seems mainly to have happened during short periods of intense witch-hunting.
The Devil's mark. The Devil was believed to mark his followers at the time when they made a pact with him, as a parody of Christian baptism. A physical search of the suspect's body could find this mark—either a visible bodily blemish or an insensitive spot. The insensitive spot was discovered by pricking with pins, sometimes by the interrogators themselves and sometimes by itinerant professional witch-prickers (of whom about 10 are known to have acted in Scotland).
Q. Who profited financially from witch-hunting?
A. Hardly anyone. Witches' goods were often confiscated by the courts, but most witches were too poor for this to be lucrative; only rarely would it cover the cost of pre-trial imprisonment, obtaining a trial commission, holding a court and organising an execution. Attempts to organise the prosecution of richer suspects were sometimes mounted, but these usually failed. The main people to benefit financially from witch-hunting were low-level official servants—jailers and executioners—plus a few witch-prickers. By contrast, most of the people involved in witch-hunting gave up time and money to do it. They did so because they believed in what they were doing. Witches were hated and feared, and it was important to eliminate them.
Q. Did they worship the Devil?
A. No, but they were thought to do so. Descriptions of meeting the Devil and entering a relationship or pact with him feature in the majority of our records that have detailed information. This relationship with the Devil was crucial to the church and the law in proving someone was guilty of witchcraft. 90% of those whose records show demonic features were women. Many people were tortured into confessing to Devil-worship. We have not seen any evidence of an organised witchcraft cult.
Q. How did witch-hunting come to an end?
A. The lawyers in charge of the central courts gradually became less convinced that the usual kinds of evidence could prove guilt. The validity of confessions made under torture was questioned, and pricking for the Devil's mark came to be seen as fraudulent. During some of the major panics, notably in 1661-2, there were miscarriages of justice which led to tightening up of procedures. After the Glorious Revolution of 1689 the state became more secular and no longer needed to prove its godliness by executing witches. A trickle of local prosecutions continued—the last was in 1727. The Scottish Witchcraft Act was repealed in 1736 when the British Parliament decided to repeal the parallel English act. The 1736 Act abolished the crime of witchcraft and replaced it by a new crime of 'pretended witchcraft' with a maximum penalty of one year's imprisonment.