‘The whelk ye freely confessed’ : The Witch Trials in Crook of Devon 2

Now and then a glimpse of the harshness of 17th century life shines through the language of the court proceedings. Agnes Murie, as told in a sworn statement by Janet Millar, was helped by Henry Anderson, Janet’s husband, who was sowing barley. Agnes remarked that ‘Henry shuik the sheet (sowing aid) well enough yesterday but he could not do it this day’. Poor Henry ‘lost the power on ane of his sides’ and was unable to talk for fourteen days. Now we would recognise these events for possible symptoms of a stroke, but in the 17th century a serious and mysterious affliction like that was a very strong indication of witchcraft. Life was very precarious for most people. There was no guarantee that you would still be healthy the day after next.

The thirteen accused were not the first in the Fossoway area. In 1643 John Brugh, living in the Fossoway Parish, was accused of being a warlock. He had been curing people and animals for some time in the wider area, using a charmed stone, put in the drink of a patient. The use of charms seems to have been acceptable well into the Reformation period. However, when this method of healing was accompanied with incantations it was definitely considered to be witchcraft. John was working together with a witch from Kinross, Neance Niclerith. He was tried in Edinburgh and executed. He may have been related to Agnes Brugh or Janet Brugh. One of the surest ways to catch the eye of the authorities was to be related to a witch.

A reputation was the first step in being noticed by the authorities and at some point it was considered serious enough for a formal accusation. The first point of call would be the Kirk Session. After the Reformation, the Kirk Session (the minister and his elders, usually a group of well-to-do and influential locals) became an important fact of village life. The Kirk Session was the dominant force in the drive to make Scotland a ‘Godly Society’. The Session kept an eye on the community, making sure everyone went to church on Sundays and keeping a check on transgressions such as adultery, fornication, blasphemy and prohibited activities on the Sabbath. They could dole out punishments such as fines, banishment and public humiliation. However, they could not deal with a witch, at least not in 1662, as the Kirk Session could not hand out the death penalty.

The Witchcraft Act was passed in 1563 in the reign of Queen Mary, herself a staunch catholic. The Reformation was only a few years old when the Fifth General Assembly debated what kind of legislation to put forward. Most of the proposed legislation dealt with moral discipline: ‘horribill vices, such as adultery, fornication, oppin horedome and blasphemy’. Legislation was deemed necessary to aid the infusion of Protestant ethos to create a Godly society. The Witchcraft Act was passed in this framework. Part of it was certainly to root out Catholic ‘superstition’, such as Catholic rituals, pilgrimages to Holy wells and the cult of the Saints. Neither the Demonic pact nor malefice featured in the Act but superstition was explicitly mentioned. However, we must not read the modern concept of superstition in this word. With superstition early-modern contemporaries referred to false and dangerous beliefs, practices without divine (protestant) sanction.

Anentis Witchcraftis.

Forsamekill as the Quenis Majestie and thre Estatis in this present Parliament being informit, that the havy and abominabill superstitioun usit be divers of the liegis of this Realme, be using of Witchcraftis, Sorsarie and Necromancie, and credence gevin thairto in tymes bygane aganis the Law of God: And for avoyding and away putting of all sic vane superstitioun in tymes tocum: If It is statute and ordanit be the Quenis Majestie, and thre Estatis foirsaidis, that na maner of persoun nor persounis, of quhatsumever estate, degre or conditioun thay be of, tak upone hand in ony tymes heirefter, to use ony maner of Witchcraftis, Sorsarie or Necromancie, nor gif thame selfis furth to have ony sic craft or knawlege thairof, thairthrow abusand the pepill: Nor that na persoun seik ony help, response or cosultatioun at ony sic usaris or abusaris foirsaidis of Witchcraftis, Sorsareis or Necromancie, under the pane of deid, alsweill to be execute aganis the usar, abusar, as the seikar of the response or consultatioun. And this to be put to executioun be the Justice, Schireffis, Stewartis, Baillies, Lordis of Regaliteis and Rialteis, thair Deputis, and uthers Ordinar Jugeis competent within this Realme, with all rigour, having powar to execute the samin.
(Records of the Parliament: Text of the Witchcraft Act of June 1563)

Punishment for those convicted either of being a witch or consulting one, was death. Other punishments were officially not available after the passing of the Act in 1563. However, this Act did not immediately result in a steep rise of witchcraft accusations and trials. The first real witch hunt was under the reign of James VI, who believed that he and his Danish bride had been under attack from witches while attempting the crossing from Denmark to Scotland. His book Daemonologie, was published in 1597. When he also became King James I of England one of his first acts as king in England was to tighten the English Witchcraft Act. In England, witches only stood to be executed if someone had died as a result of witchcraft. James changed that to the death penalty for any form of witchcraft regardless of the outcome.

In Scotland, when there was a suspicion of witchcraft in a community, the Kirk Session took initial action, knowing that they would have to pass over the case to a higher court. In fact,
to get the Privy Council to grant a commission to try the witch, there would have to be a substantial body of evidence. The Kirk Session knew very well which type of evidence was needed and generally set about to get that evidence. The process would start when a group or an individual went to the Kirk Session to complain about a witch. It could be a neighbour with a grief, or the impetus may have come from the laird or the minister. The session would collate statements about malefice, evil doings, such as unexplained illness, cattle dying or crops failing. During this time the accused may have been imprisoned in the toll booth, the Kirk steeple or in a barn.

A reputation alone was not enough to convict a witch, even if it were a longstanding one. Some women had had a reputation for up to thirty years before anything came from it. Once the accused was imprisoned, the minister and his elders would interrogate the suspect, often on several occasions. Janet Brugh was interrogated on the 5th of May, on the 10th of June and again a day later, on the 11th of June. Her trial was on the 21th of July. The main aim was to obtain a confession about a pact with the devil, which was the defining evidence that witchcraft was in play.

The following ‘proof’ played a role in the accusation and conviction of witches: a reputation, evidence (sworn dittays) from neighbours, the discovery of the witches’ mark and of course the ‘free’ confession of the witch.

Interestingly, in criminal law women did not exist. In 1591 a special act had to be passed to allow women to be witnesses in witchcraft cases. In the Crook of Devon witch trials the first three, Agnes, Bessie and Isabel named several others, who were then investigated and brought before the Court. It is easy to see how this could spread out to others, like circles in the water.

The use of torture is a very emotive issue in writing about witchcraft. In Scotland, torture (the use of implements to inflict pain) was strictly prohibited unless a specific licence for judicial torture was granted by the Privy Council or the Parliament. Between 1563 and 1689 only two such warrants were granted. However, from surviving documents it is clear that torture was used illegally in many cases. The Privy Council would not grant a commission for a trial unless there was a confession and often, (illegal) torture was used to obtain such a confession. Though the rules for judicial torture were very strict, we must not forget that those who ended up in prison were subject to a very harsh regime. Isolation, minimal food, no heat and no light; those circumstances may have brought the unfortunate to confess. There is some evidence that some confessed because their lives would have been miserable after being identified as a witch; they would rather die.

There are two practices in particular that were used in Scotland and were, up to a certain point, allowed: pricking the witch, and waking the witch. When witches renounced their baptism and agreed to a pact, the devil often gave them a mark by nipping or biting them. This mark was supposed to be senseless, numb and would not bleed when pricked. Sir George Mackenzie did believe in this, despite being sceptical. He describes it as a coloured spot, caused by a nip or pinch. Mr John Bell, minister of Gladsmuir, wrote in 1705: ‘The witch's mark is sometimes like a blow spot, or a little tet, or reel spots like, flea biting; sometimes also the flesh is sunk in and hollow, and this is put in secret places, as among the hair of the head or eye brows, within the lips, or under the armpits’ (Rogers, 1884).
So finding the witches’ mark was one way of gathering material evidence for the pact. Often a professional ‘witch-pricker’ was employed to look for the mark. One of the more notorious ones, John Kincaid, worked in this area. There is no evidence that he pricked the witches in Crook of Devon but is some anecdotal evidence that he was imprisoned in the Tolbooth in Kinross in 1662, around the same time as the trials in Crook of Devon. Kincaid worked throughout Scotland and was even employed in Newcastle in 1649, to prick witches there. He was paid a considerable sum for every witch he discovered and he is said to be responsible for the conviction of more than 200 women. He was later executed himself for trickery. There were several prickers throughout Scotland (even two who purported to be male but turned out to be female) and sometimes the accused themselves naively called upon their services, to prove they were innocent. In areas where prickers were active, the number of executions for witchcraft was considerably higher than in other areas.
The pricker would stick needles (called ‘brods’) of up to 5 cm long into the body of the accused, looking for areas that were a bit different: bumps, lumps and moles. Officially this procedure was not a form of torture, but we can all too well imagine how the accused, having to undergo this humiliating and painful experience, being naked in front of several men, felt about it. Apart from getting a fee, the pricker could get a bonus if a witch was discovered so it doesn’t take much imagination to understand that the procedure was very much open to fraud; some prickers have been found with retractable needles. Despite growing unease with pricking, the practice must have been used in the Crook of Devon trials, as several of the dittays mention the devil’s mark being found. Isabel got the mark but it was painful for a few days afterwards; Robert Wilson got his mark by the devil hitting his shoulder and Janet Brugh also got a mark but said it wasn’t very sore.

The other questionable procedure to obtain a confession was watching and waking. In a way it made sense to watch an accused witch. He or she may, after all, change shape and escape. However, there is evidence that waking the witch entailed a round-the-clock system of keeping the accused awake for several days. As is well known –even in the 17th century- sleep deprivation can cause hallucinations and makes a person extremely sensitive to suggestion. This, combined with leading questions, may have led to all full ‘free’ confessions which provided the main proof against the accused.

The problem in the Crook of Devon trials was that while the court, the judge and the Assize (jury) were working according to the legal rules of the time, there seems to have been a pre-trial, during which some of these more questionable practices may have been used in order to obtain confessions. There have been precedents elsewhere. A zealous minister could be very keen on getting confessions before the trial would start. This seems to have happened in Rhynd, near Perth, where four women were executed after having confessed to a pact with the devil. However, a few months later it turned out that the local minister had imprisoned the women, and by pricking, waking and other illegal means had obtained their confessions. The minister in Crook of Devon, Alexander Ireland, also seems to have been very active in his bid to rid the area of the ‘horrible crime of witchcraft’.

Alexander Ireland was no stranger to controversy. A son of the Manse himself, he studied at St Andrews and started his ministry in Fossoway in 1659. He got married in April 1662 (so around the time the witchcraft trials started) to Anna Drummond. In 1676 he punished a parishioner for attending a conventicle; the unfortunate parishioner had to stand in front of the congregation wearing white sheets. There seem to have been more episodes of unpleasantness and controversial happenings during his ministry in Fossoway and Tulliebole. His brother Thomas, also a clergyman, joined the Anabaptists and was suspended from his presbytery of Weem in 1660. Alexander Ireland left for Ireland where he died in 1689. He, together with the then Lord of Tullibole, William Halliday, have been instrumental in orchestrating the witch hunt in the Fossoway area.