Something Wicked: Witch Hunts in the Tudor Age

It’s 1589 in Scotland. King James VI stares out his window at a troubled, stormy sea. He married the young Anne of Denmark by proxy back in August, and he is anxious to see her. But the time for her arrival’s come and gone, and still Anne’s ships haven’t crested the horizon. And then a clamor comes: a sailor has arrived. A wayward member of Anne’s fleet, stumbling in with ominous tidings. He says a storm has put Anne’s life in peril. As the months go on, more news will come, none of it good.

Anne’s ship was turned back not once, or twice, but three times by what sailors call “baffling winds.” The third storm was the worst, they say. It seemed to wrap itself around the queen’s ship, intent on pulling it apart. A cannon broke loose on the deck, crushing eight sailors right in front of her. Mysterious, the crew will later murmur. But some will invoke other, more sinister words: intentional. Cursed. Witches. They will burrow their way into the most fearful corners of the Scottish king’s heart.

Halloween night has fallen over the Scottish coastal town of North Berwick. It’s the year of our lord, 1590. The sky is dark, the waves in the Firth of Forth restless. Something floats across them: small boats, called sieves, all of them filled with dark, huddled shapes. As the sieves pull to shore, figures emerge: hundreds of them, winding their way to St. Andrew’s Auld Kirk. There they will join hands and whisper sinister incantations. They will call to the Devil and ask him to speak. He appears in animal form, scaly and monstrous, and his witches fly around him like moths to a flame. The atmosphere is wild, erotic, malevolent. He will gift them great powers, he tells his witches, if only they will do his bidding. They must use their magic to take down the Scottish king. Later, they will dig up corpses from graveyards, pull the bodies apart, and tie the limbs to dead cats. The spell will conjure up storms, meant to drown the monarch and his Danish wife. Or so James VI, and the witch hunters around him, will come to believe in the months and years to come.

James VI: not The Exploress’s favorite monarch.

“James VI, 1566-1625,” 1604, National Galleries of Scotland, accessed October 6, 2021. This painting is based on one of John De Critz’ official full length portraits of the king. It shows James VI of Scotland after he had assumed the English throne and moved to London. 



James VI, and the Scottish clergy and nobles around him, will be responsible for some of the most intense witch hunts in Europe. The trials at North Berwick will be some of the first. The trials will run for two years, and implicate 70 to 200 people, most of them women. It is Scotland’s first major witch panic, but it will be far from the last.

Scotland’s witch hunts are part of a long and gruesome tradition whose roots spread right through England and Europe. Between 1450 and 1750, some 100,000 Europeans were tried for conspiring with the Devil. Of the three thousand women tried for witchcraft in England between 1563 and 1700, 400 of them will be hanged. Italy, Switzerland, Germany: they all see outbreaks of witch panic. They come like a pandemic: one case turns into two, and into fifty. All it takes is a spark for them to turn into an inferno, burning hot for a time before dropping, often suddenly, away.

Scotland’s witch hunts show up late to the party, but they make up for their tardiness with extreme zealousness. Between 1590 and 1662, they will see five intense witch panics. Almost 4,000 people will be accused of witchcraft. Some figures put the number of people killed for it at over 1,000 – five times the average European execution rate per capita, and double the execution rate in England. Eighty-five percent of the accused will be women.

When James VI becomes king of Scotland and England, it will mark the end of the Tudor period. Some of the most intense of the witch trials won’t come until after Henry VIII and his children are gone. But the fire that helped fuel them was kindled years before James was born, built with sticks made of fear, anxiety, and questionable law making. In this episode, we will try and understand why so many were accused of witchcraft, and see the trials through the eyes of the women they hurt. Because while some men were accused of being witches, it was almost always women: those who didn’t fit in, or threatened the order men in power so desperately wanted to create.

Please be advised that this episode has some dark themes, descriptions of torture, violence, and sexual acts.

let’s cause some trouble!

“The History of Witches and Wizards,” 1720, Wellcome Collection, accessed October 6, 2021.

my sources

books & scholarly articles

podcasts

online

“The Discovery of Witches,” 1647. British Library. Accessed October 6, 2021. The title page shown here is from infamous witch-hunter Matthew Hopkins’ 1647 book, “The Discovery of Witches,” one of the many treatises of the time on witches.

transcript

please keep in mind that 1) I chop and change a bit as I record, so this transcript won’t be 100% accurate, and 2) I like using sarcasm on my show, and that doesn’t always translate well onto the page.

***

GOOD WITCH, BAD WITCH

For much of the Tudor period in the region we now call the UK, witches weren’t seen as inherently bad. They generally believe there are good witches - those who use spells and incantations to help and heal - and bad witches. The magical and mystical itself isn’t a sin. Take the local wise woman. Armed with their herbs and tinctures, and yes, maybe a few incantations, she is a vital aid in both towns and castles, an accessible and affordable form of healthcare. Many people would rather seek them out than the trained male doctors and surgeons of the day. Midwives, also women, are an important part of all family’s lives, and responsible for one of the most fraught and mysterious of acts: childbirth. She has the knowledge to heal, and with it, also the power to hurt should she choose to. That would make her a very bad witch indeed.

Tudors are enthralled with the art of prophesying. Elizabeth Barton, also called the Nun of Kent, becomes quite famous for her divine revelations. At just 19 years old, this domestic servant has a prophecy about a child dying, and she isn’t called a witch: she is a prophetess. She becomes so well known for her uncanny predictions that she becomes a favorite of Henry VIII and his advisor, Cardinal Wolsey. She is, after all, speaking prophecies from God. Elizabeth I keeps a court astrologer, Dr. John Dee, on hand. He conjures ‘spirits’ and uses rituals, and he serves in that post for most of his life.

Good or bad, most people believe in witches. Ruling powers even write that belief into law. Henry VIII’s reign sees the introduction of the Witchcraft Acts of 1542: the first to define witchcraft as a felony, punishable by death. It defines a witch as someone who uses their magic to hurt people, get money they didn’t earn, or act badly toward the church and God. This is also where we start to see a growing paranoia about the innocent being ‘bewitched’ by someone. After all, Henry himself would come to believe that his enchanting second wife, Anne Boleyn, may just have done just that to him. Anne’s never accused of witchcraft, but still, there are whispers. After all, a woman who acts out and flirts too loudly must have some kind of wickedness on her soul.

In 1563, Elizabeth I introduces An Act Against Conjurations, Enchantments and Witchcrafts. In some ways it’s more lenient than her father’s statute, saying that witches can only be executed if they’ve seriously injured another person. But it turns out it’s fairly easy to accuse someone of witchcraft. After the laws are passed, we see a serious uptick in the number of people accused of murdering someone by means of sorcery. Of the 1,158 homicides noted in the records from this period, some 20% are suspected of being committed by witches. Compare that to just 31 cases suspected of being committed by poison. More men are tried for murder in Tudor times than women, but the ladies often get the blame for certain crimes: infanticide, poisoning, and witchcraft. Of the 157 people accused of perpetrating magical murders, only nine of them are men.

The Scottish Witchcraft Act of 1563, written into law just a few years before King James was born, makes it illegal not just to practice witchcraft, but also to consult with witches. You’d better hope your local healer doesn’t make the local cleric mad or do anything particularly witchy, is all I’m saying. If you’re a woman who doesn’t go along with society’s strict rules about your conduct, you’ll have to be more careful still.

But why does Scotland’s witch hunting fire seem to burn brighter than elsewhere? And why do women make up such a huge proportion of those accused? To understand that, we need to wrap our minds around the era’s religious Reformation, Scottish society’s view on the Devil, and King James’ personal vendetta against all things occult.

FANNING THE FLAMES

It must be said that religion, both Catholicism and the Protestant Reformation, play a role in turning witch hunts into something of a craze. Some 70 years before King James takes the Scottish throne we see the publication of a book called the Malleus Maleficarum, which translates to the Hammer of the Witches, composed by Dominican monk and inquisitor Heinrich Kramer and university man Johann Sprenger. They thought witchcraft was so serious a problem that they wrote about it to the Pope. In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII put out a papal bull condemning the rise of witchcraft, and implying that witch hunting is essentially a godly activity. It also gives these two men power to expunge it. And thus they wrote a book that would stoke the flames of witch hunting and be used to burn women for centuries to come.

Crafted by combining folklore and intense religious doctrine, it contains the following: Part 1 asserts that witches are all in league with the Devil, and that demonology is a credible thing. If you don’t believe in it, well, that’s heresy. Part 2 explains, in detail, all the things witches do for fun: mostly having sex with the devil and transvestion, or flying around on a greased broomstick. Part III, naturally, rolls right into the legal procedures one must follow to properly try a witch. Torture is fine, as long as its aim is to secure a confession. It also says that everyone, not just religious authorities, should help exterminate anyone the Devil’s taken under his wing. With the help of the Gutenberg printing press invented in Germany a few decades earlier, the Malleus Maleficarum will go through 28 editions between 1486 and 1600. And it will become the go-to misogynistic manual whipped out during witch trials.

Reforming clergy start to denounce and sometimes torture “magicians”. Suddenly, people who practiced herbal medicine without any problems in the medieval period run the risk of being seen as heretics. Before 1375 or so, witchcraft almost always meant sorcery: inflicting harm by way of spell or potion. But now witches have been turned into servants of the devil. Heresy and witchcraft have become hopelessly entwined.

The Catholics are happy to link witchcraft with Devil worship but the Protestant Reformation kicks things up harder still. It started in 1517, when a German teacher named Martin Luther challenged the Catholic Church's teachings. That opened up a door to all sorts of people who didn’t agree with the established religious order, pushing for radical changes to worship and peoples’ relationships to God. Unsurprisingly, Martin Luther threw lots of shade on witches. In 1538 he wrote that he’d been troubled by the presence of two ‘witches’ allegedly poisoning his chicken eggs as well as some milk and butter. “One should show no mercy to these (women),” he wrote. “I would burn them myself’. Witches aren’t just a threat to the community at large, he writes. They threaten to ruin traditional female roles in the family. More and more, witchcraft is being cast as heresy, and women are being put into the frame.

The Reformation creates much unrest across Europe, and then in England, when Henry VIII breaks from the Pope so he can marry Anne Boleyn. Some come to believe that the Reformation brought forth antichristian forces: forces that could threaten anyone, and take almost any form. Suddenly, clerics fear there are underground satanic conspiracies across the land, dead set on overthrowing Christianity. In this chaotic time, religious and secular authorities alike feel the pressure to restore order. Church - or rather, in Scotland, kirk - leaders start cracking down on what they see as sinful behavior, and they also start to demonize magic. All of this fear, paranoia, and propaganda coalesce into this new image of the “witch.” 

An early modern woodcut that depicts a witch sailing on a wooden plank, as one does, on the River Newbury. It comes from the front page of a pamphlet that tells the story of this particular “witch,” designed to entertain the masses.

Courtesy of the The British Library Board

THE DEVIL AMONGST US

It’s 1590, now, and King James is tired of waiting. It’s time for him to take to the seas and unite with his wife. And thus he goes, only to find his ships storm-tossed, spending 24 stressful hours thrown around in a violent storm. Finally, he makes it safely to Norway, part of the Danish Empire, and at last he and Anne are married for real. After a rest, they sail home to Scotland, and once again storms threaten to break them. To James, the whole thing is starting to feel strangely personal. Like some dark force trying to send him to his death.

Back in Copenhagen, suspicion about Anne’s failed voyage hasn’t been brushed away, chalked up to bad luck or timing. That summer, authorities hold an investigation. It starts with Christoffer Valkendorff, the city’s minister of finance, being accused of poorly equipping the queen’s fleet. No, he says, and his crew agrees: a malevolent force tampered with the winds and sent demons climbing up the mainmasts. The storms that ruined the voyage were the work of a witch.

Soon a woman is brought before authorities, tortured for a confession. But everyone knows that witches worship the Devil collectively in covens, so they torture her until they’re given names. Over the course of that summer, twelve women are led to confess that they caused the storms by means of magic. Some of those people were burned at the stake.

When word of the investigation reaches James, he finds he can’t stop mulling on it. As monarch, and the son of the ill-fated Mary, Queen of Scots, James has grown up paranoid about conspiracy. He knows that there is always someone in the shadows, trying to kill him. But now, he can’t help but wonder: are there witches in Scotland who’ve conspired to take his bride from him? Are the Devil’s minions gathering against him on his native soil?

Calvinist theology has sunk its tendrils into Scotland deeply. Calvinism is all about spiritual warfare - between God’s chosen people on this Earth, and those destined for hell. How to keep from angering God and ensuring you’re one of his chosen? You are vigilant in scanning for signs of the devil within you, but also in your community. The Scottish Calvinist is always on the lookout for sin.

In Scotland, religion is a deep-set part of the culture. Something that they live with, and see the world through. The Devil isn’t a concept: he is very real, and very present. He could be hiding behind every pew and thorny bush. Having sinful thoughts? It’s probably the Devil. Do you find your mind wandering during a sermon? That’s the Devil for sure. For all of James’ life, people have whispered that the devil lives amongst us, creeping through the land like a shadowy plague. He raises foul weather, infects livestock, spreads disease, causes impotence and miscarriage, kills children. But he doesn’t do it alone. He recruits special helpers - witches - to be his earthly agents. They make a pact with him, agreeing to be his minions if he will grant them dark magical powers. The devil needs his witches. 

It might seem strange to us now, this ready belief that all misfortune is caused not by nature, or even God, but by witches. But it’s a way to make sense of how the world works in a time when so much is a mystery, and death and crop failure is an ever-present specter. Why has my wife had three miscarriages? Why would my crops fail two years in a row? It can’t be God - after all, I’m a good Christian. I go to the kirk and do as my minister says. Perhaps it’s some external, malevolent force, reaching out to hurt me. In minds steeped in both religion and superstition, it’s all too easy to believe that someone nearby must have cursed you. And so we start looking sidelong at our neighbors, wondering who has brought this darkness to our door.

Witches can be male or female, but once people start to see them as servants of the Devil, women become the focal point. As Nicolas Remy, a judge who will prosecute many witches in the 1590s, writes, it is: "not unreasonable that this scum of humanity, i.e., witches, should be drawn chiefly from the feminine sex." They are, after all, the weaker vessel, so much more likely to be led and tempted, so much easier for the Devil to possess and control. The Malleus Maleficarum points out that women are prone to deception are most likely to give in to temptation, luring men into disaster with them. They can’t help it, really. It’s just how they’re made.

It would be easy to chalk this up to patriarchal oppression, and there’s a healthy dose of patriarchal nonsense going on. But the reason why so many accused witches are women is complex. The view on women, shared by pretty much all of this society, is that they are in many ways the weaker sex. Such notions are baked into Christianity, which is the bedrock of Tudor society. King James will reach for the Bible, specifically the book of Genesis, to explain why so many witches are female: "The reason is easy, for as that sex is frailer than man is, so it is easier to be entrapped in these grosse snares of the Devile, as was over well proved to be true, by the Serpents deceiving of Eve at the Beginning.” Much as Eve seduced Adam into eating what was forbidden to him, witches can tempt the God-fearing into dark magical sin. 

Men are accused of witchcraft, but often only because they’re linked to a witchy woman. For every seventeen women accused of witchcraft in Scotland, three men are accused alongside them. They are sometimes tortured, too, and subjected to the same horrible treatment. But they are NEVER accused of having been a slattern with the Devil.

SEX AND THE DEVIL

That’s one of the interesting aspects of views of witchcraft in this era: more and more, sexual deviance and moral looseness seems to want to sneak its way int. Expert demonologists of the day all say that in order to make a covenant with the Devil, a witch has to have sex with him. We all know MEN would never do this, but women...they’re another story. Take it from that expert source, the Malleus Maleficarum. “All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable.”

In the early 1600s, French witch hunter Pierre de Lancre writes at length about what happens at “the witches’ sabbat.” At these meetings, like the one that supposedly took place in the churchyard at St Auld’s Kirk, the devil appears to his subjects in animal form. De Lancre goes into a lot of detail about the devil’s large and...well...rather scaly equipment, and the many things he does with it. He says that first, witches report on their evil deeds (and are whipped if they haven’t been bad enough). Then they eat meals and make poisons out of murdered children. Then the witches dance naked, copulating with the Devil and each other. Witch hunters in Scotland, England, and beyond them are obsessed with the witch as a perverse sexual being. 

“Sabbat,” 1612, Folger Shakespeare Library, accessed October 6, 2021. A picture from “Tableau de l'inconstance des mauvais anges et demons,” a French witchcraft treatise by Pierre de I' Ancre depicting the demonic rituals of a witches’ sabbat. Zoom in at your peril…

The sex and sorcery connection is even written into law. Between 1574 and 1696, the Scottish Parliament passes statutes condemning blasphemy, swearing, and sabbath-breaking. They made witchcraft a felony back in 1563, at the same time they criminalized adultery. A few years later, fornication and incest are added onto the list. Black magic, sexy transgression, and swearing, all bound up in one tangled legal ball! 

In the past, many female offenders were dealt with out of court, policed by fathers and other male authority figures. But when sex is tied to witchcraft, it becomes a matter of public record. Kirk sessions become dominated by the moral policing of all these things, as well as scolding - otherwise known as being argumentative, which is a crime that really only a woman and commit - as well as infanticide, prostitution, sodomy. For the first time, women are being discussed as sexual beings in public, and it’s being used to control them. And, sometimes, to bring them down in flames.

THE DEVIL’S CHOSEN

When James decides to start his witch hunt around North Berwick, suspicion and fear are already running hot. Neighbors are starting to eye each other, wondering if the Devil has sunk his claws into someone they know. Local bailiff David Seton of Tranent has concerns about his teenaged maid, Geillis Duncan. She’s been miraculously curing a lot of people from various illnesses lately. And she keeps sneaking off under the cover of night. What is she doing with those herbs when no one’s watching? What is she hiding? David and his boys are about to find out...

Are there trends in terms of who’s being accused of witchcraft? Well, it helps if they’re poor, single, promiscuous, or a scold. The accused are often older women - over the age of 40 - and often live by themselves. Certain professions are likely to make you more likely to be accused of witchcraft. If you’re a healer or a midwife, you have to be particularly on your guard. Geillis Duncan, the first woman accused in North Berwick, is a healer. Another, Agnes Sampson, is a midwife. They play a central role in childbearing: an act that men are rarely present for, and that very often ends in the deaths of the baby, mother, or both. A midwife of this age is already being pressured by male doctors and churchmen who want to squeeze them out of the profession. She lives in fear that she will be charged with malpractice. But in these troubled times, she also fears someone might call her a witch.

The most vulnerable are the poor or anyone seen as an outcast - those who don’t fit the socially accepted female mould. I’m looking at you, sexually promiscuous ladies! This is especially true for women who exhibit angry or vengeful behavior, especially toward powerful men. Say you shout a curse at a male neighbor when he prunes your apple tree for the third time, or you accuse a local man of short changing you on rent. Perhaps he falls ill, or breaks his leg in a gopher hole, or can’t seem to impregnate his wife. Perhaps that’s YOUR fault.

Accused witches are often single, and that’s because of gender bias. People in Tudor England and Scotland can barely imagine a woman who isn’t a wife. They’re frightened by women who aren’t under the control of a male authority figure. Who KNOWS what they get up to in their woodland cottage...for all we know, she could be cursing all the local menfolk’s tackle. A girl can dream! In this era, no one likes a woman that can’t be controlled.

SHE’S A WITCH!

Geillis Duncan looks into the faces of the men around her. Her boss, his son, and his friends: she knows them all. Their eyes are hard, glinting with hatred. Metal glints in their hands. With a sinking heart, she recognizes the brank, also known as the scold’s bridle. It will be locked around her head, meant to force her to be silent. She can already imagine its humiliating embrace. But that is not the tool they hold out as one of them takes her hands roughly. It’s small, with screws: it could almost be a flower press. But as they force Geillis’s fingers between its jaws, she sees that it’s not flowers they mean to flatten. Someone turns the screws, and she feels it digging into her fingernails.

Confess, David hisses. 

No, she says. I have nothing to confess.

But that is not the answer they want from her. And so they turn the screws again. Again, and again, until she thinks her bones will shatter. And with each turn they ask. No, they demand of her: confess, confess, confess.

There are many ways of extracting a confession from someone. Many countries at this time have laws against torture, but this is different. And as far as the courts and clery are concerned, torture to extract a confession is just and justified. And, as the Mallecarum clearly states, a witch’s demonic power can help them withstand it, and thus extreme measures must be applied. 

Some techniques are meant to wear a woman down without applying physical pain. There’s the scold’s bridle, a metal cage meant to stop a woman from speaking and humiliate her in front of anyone who sees. There is also that tried-and-true favorite, sleep deprivation. Matthew Hopkins, England’s self-styled “Witchfinder General,” will write that sleep deprivation is a fine means of pulling out truths. Of one woman, he wrote, the Justice commanded that “they were to keep her from sleep two or three nights, expecting in that time to see her familiars, which the fourth night she called in by their several names.” 

Women like Geillis are also subjected to the ‘pilnie-winks’ or(thumb screws. They are essentially a vice meant for fingers and toes. Its screws are turned, putting its victim under more and more excruciating pressure. It’s strong enough to split skin and break bone.The iron ‘caspie-claws’ are leg irons meant to be heated over a brazier. And then there is the breast ripper, which is used during the North Berwick witch trials. This metal device with pronged levers is used to encase a woman’s breast and rip it off. 

A pamphlet called Newes From Scotland details Geillis Duncan’s torture. Its author, minister James Carmichael, wrote that she is subjected to: “...the tortures of the thumbscrews upon her fingers, which is a grievous torture, and binding and twisting her head with cord of rope, which is a most cruel torment also.” 

Inquisitors are always on the hunt for the tell-tale witch’s mark. An extra nipple, a port wine stain, anything that might be a mark of the Devil. These have a bizarrely sexual, even materna,l aspect to them too. The witch hunter Hopkins believes that such marks are a teat a witch uses to suckle her demonic imps or familiars. In fact, by 1604 in Scotland, it will be considered a crime: “if any person or persons shall consult covenant with, entertaine, employ, feede or rewarde any evill and wicked Spirit.” 

To find them, women are subjected to humiliating and dehumanizing strip searches, their bodies shaved bare of all hair. After all, one demonologist writes, these marks are often found on a witch’s “shameful parts.” A pamphlet written during the North Berwick trials says that the marks are caused when “the devil doth lick them with his tongue in some private part of their body, before he doth receive them to be his servants, which mark commonly is given them under the hair in some part of their body, whereby it may not easily be found out or seen, although they be searched: and generally so long as the mark is not seen to those which search them, so long the parties that hath the mark will never confess.” Some women find the prospect of such a search so horrifying that they preempt it, telling their torturers that, yes, their mark IS on their private parts. It saves them from that particular violation, but it most certainly condemns them to death.

There is a belief that such marks are insensitive to pain, and so a woman might be pricked all over, gauged with a needle until a spot is found where the prick doesn’t hurt. This will prove so popular that professional "prickers" will start appearing. It’s seen as scientific - a facts-based way to get to the truth of the matter. Well, until some of the most famous prickers are exposed as fraudulent. But that won’t be until 1662.

Sadly, some of these women come to believe in their confessions. We’ll believe a lot of things under sustained, repeated torture, and terror and sleep-deprived hallucinations. Especially when it’s applied to those who have been told all their lives that they are God’s weaker vessel, and that the Devil is everywhere, in every bad thought you’ve ever had. 

Geillis Duncan is stripped, shaved, and fully examined. They pick and poke and pierce until they find her witch’s mark. Finally she breaks, giving them the words they want to hear: yes, she made a covenant with the Devil. Yes, she was taken in by his evil charms. But on the torture goes, they want something else from her. And so she starts to give them names. Agnes Sampson, John Fian, Euphame MacCalzean, Barbara Napier. Guilt burns into her heart like a brand. Later, Geillis will say that she never knew these people to be witches or use sorcery. She only named them because she had no other choice. She will say they were lies, and beg for God’s forgiveness. But the names are out, now, and can’t be taken back.

James VI, continuing to be terrible.

Citation: “Torture Witcraft woodcut,” 1591.

This woodcut depicts King James VI of Scotland supervising the torture of witches in Edinburgh, taken from a 1591 pamphlet called, “Newes from Scotland - declaring the damnable life and death of Dr. Fian, a notable sorcerer.” The pamphlet was most likely written by James Carmichael, who later helped the King write his book, Daemonologie.

ACCUSING A WITCH

As Agnes Sampson is marched toward Holyrood Castle, she tries to catch her breath. She doesn’t quite understand how she got here. She, who is so well known around North Berick as a talented midwife, often called the Wise Woman of Keith. She’s spent years helping bring life into the world. And yet here she is, dragged in front of her king and his noble council, to answer for crimes she knows she didn’t commit. 

First, they ask her heated questions. Then those heated questions turn to blows. Some will say later that the king himself delivers some of them. For James, this isn’t just about rooting out the occult: it’s deeply personal. He’s convinced that there are witches who want him dead, and he will find them out, no matter the cost. Despite the pain, Agnes refuses to give in to them. But that is before they throw her in a cell. Her entire body is shaved, her neck half hung by a rope, just like Geillis. It’s only when they find the devil’s mark on her most private places that she confesses. Or rather, agrees, to bring the pain and terror to an end. To prove the truthfulness of her confession, it’s said she repeats the words the king said to his wife on their wedding night in Norway. Did the Devil whisper them into her ear, or one of her accusers? Either way, it’s enough to ensure she will burn.

Generally speaking, there are certain steps one must take to accuse and try a witch. First, you must take your accusation to a religious governing body: a board of church elders, or a kirk session. This period sees a watershed moment for the Scottish Reformation, in the rise of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Kirk. This assembly will make it their mission to morally police the Scottish people with a Puritanical fervor. They serve as judge and jury for crimes of “incest, adulterie, witchcraft, murder and abominable and horrible oaths.” They warned King James back in 1583 that letting such crimes go unpunished would mean that “daily sinne increaseth, and provoketh the wrath of God against the whole countrie.” 

Ministers and kirk sessions usually arrest supposed witches, torture them, and gather evidence on them. But they have no legal power to inflict the death penalty, which means they have to send them on to secular courts. If a woman hopes to find more common sense applied in secular courts, she’s bound to be disappointed. These courts don’t have a lot of oversight from a centralized body, have little training, and are apt to be swayed by the kirk and by public opinion. The clergy remain deeply involved: after all, they’re trying to create a godly society here. You can see the murky legal road this leads us down, I’m sure. But churchmen aren’t the only ones shaping the proceedings. For witch hunts to thrive, they require the might of the judiciary, which is activated by the secular ruling elite. James’ royal fervor helps inspire them to take witchcraft more seriously than they otherwise might have. Scotland’s witch craze may be kept afloat by the sincere belief of lower class stonemasons and farmers, but it’s the elite who truly fuel it. This is a time of state-building, where order is a real concern. What better way to quell chaos and impose certain behaviors on the lower classes than by punishing women who threaten the status quo?

What evidence could possibly be brought against these women? Most of it comes from demonological treatises written by men. An ambitious witch hunter has a  growing body of books to choose from, many of which are considered totally legit legal texts. There’s the Malificarum, of course. And a few years from now, there will be the Demonologie, written by King James himself. His book, the first and only demonological treatise written by a European monarch, neatly explains the way the devil operates. He should know, as he’s just presided over the North Berwick witch trials and seen it all firsthand.

It’s republished five times between 1597 and 1603, becoming one of the go-to “authorities” on the subject. James and his personal obsession with sorcery is what kills more so-called witches in Scotland than anywhere else. 

The authors of these books take great pains to appear scientific. How to do that, when you’re basically making it up as you go? You cite all of the other books on the subject, creating a supernatural echo chamber. And then you extract confessions from women backing up all of its claims. No matter that these are all gotten by way of torture and leading questions! The more women are found guilty of the crimes the books describe, the most legitimate they seem.

These books are also a huge boon to witch hunters, who hunt down sorcerers for profit.

These books give them a handy how-to for gathering evidence on someone, and these men are often instrumental in making sure a woman is found guilty. The most famous and terrible is probably Matthew Hopkins, England’s self-styled “Witchfinder General.” He will be responsible for over 300 women being executed for witchcraft. He will hang 19 of them himself at Chelmsford in a single day. Witch hunters aren’t religious crusaders: they’re mercenaries, paid handsomely to rid towns of their devils. Hopkins will be paid £6 for his trouble in Chelmsford, £15 in Kings Lynn, and £23 at Stowmarket, at a time when most people are making a few pence a day. In 1645, he will bring in one Elizabeth Clarke, and says she’s “confessed she had had carnall copulation with the Devil six or seven yeares; and that he would appeare to her three or foure times in a weeke at her bed side, and goe to bed to her.” He also says he saw her summon imps: a white dog, a greyhound called Vinegar Tom, and a huge-headed polecat. The key to telling a convincing lie, after all, is to fill it with bizarre specificity. John Gaule, a Puritan rector, sees the problem here. He writes that: “[I]t is strange to tell what superstitious opinions, affections, relations, are generally risen amongst us [. . .] since the Witchfinders came into the Countrey.” 

We rarely hear women’s voices in these trials - confessions aren’t written down in their own words, but by the men who condemn them. A special act was passed in 1591, the year King James runs his first witch trials, to allow for women’s testimony. Before then, they couldn’t be witnesses in criminal cases. How sad that they’re only allowed to raise their voices when it comes time to see a woman burn. 

THE BURNING TIMES

Some women accused of witchcraft are acquitted, sent away to do penance. Some will be exiled or run away. When a woman is found guilty, her confession is often read aloud in public, and then she is often strangled, or hung, then burned at the stake. This last is important, because burning is also the punishment for heresy. She isn’t just a witch, but an enemy of God.

By the time the North Berwick trials are over, some 70 people will be accused of trying to murder King James with magic. Gellis Duncan and Agnes Sampson will be strangled and then burned at the stake. 

There will be five major witch panics in Scotland: in 1590-1, 1597, 1628-30, 1649 and 1661-2. Between those years, you could count the number of witch trials on one hand. 

The 1597 panic starts in the same way the first did: with King James becoming convinced there is another conspiracy against him. A woman named Margaret Aitken steps forward, saying she has a special power to detect other witches, and many women will be condemned solely on her testimony. But everything will be thrown into question when she’s repealed to be a fraud. It’s partially to justify these trials that James will put pen to paper and write his work Demonology. In 1603, this paragon of patriarchy ascends to the English throne. He becomes the first king of both Scotland and England, and he takes along his witch hating ways. Shakespeare’s Macbeth, first performed in 1606, is inspired by it, giving us the famous story of a power-hungry king and the witches who help bring him to ruin. 

In 1604, James makes the laws in England surrounding witches and witchcraft even more severe. These changes are the ones that witch hunter Matthew Hopkins will use to bring so many women to their deaths. Before long, James is forced to turn away from witch hunting to root out another foe: militant Catholics. But the fire he started will continue to rage in Scotland, even after the last national panic in 1662. When you teach a people to fear and loathe harmful witches, such beliefs aren’t so easy to dispel. In the early 1700s, four women in Pittenweem confess to using witchcraft, and then later recant those confessions. Authorities in Edinborough aren’t keen to bring them to trial, so the community take matters into their own hands. Janet Cornfoot’s neighbors drag her to the beach, place a door over her body, and pile stones on top until she is crushed to death. The last execution for witchcraft will take place in Dornoch in 1727. In 1736, the British Parliament will finally repeal the 1563 witchcraft statute: too late for all the women who died in pain and shame.

Macbeth solidifies the image of the witch we still cling to: old and twisted hags, using their power to charm and poison all around them. But behind their cackling and their tattered robes lie a long line of healers and midwives, loners and misfits. Women who didn’t deserve the fate that befell them; who tried to speak, but whose voices were lost.

A special thanks to Carly Quinn, my excellent research assistant for this episode. I couldn’t have pulled it together without her!

MUSIC

The choral music comes courtesy of The Tudor Consort, a choral group in New Zealand. The rest comes from Epidemic Sound.

VOICEoverS

Paul Casselle, Nick Jones, and Chris Beattie. You can find their work over on Fiverr.com.

Kate J. Armstrongwitches