The king and the pricker - witch hunting in Scotland
While the English “witch
finder” Matthew Hopkins and the Salem, Massachusetts witch trials may be more
familiar to many readers, some of the most horrific witch hunts of the 16-17th
centuries took place in Scotland. Several
waves of witch hunting washed through the country, over a period of roughly 200
years, resulting in a total of some 1,500 deaths, compared to perhaps 1,000 in
England. Other estimates are that
Scotland, with a quarter of England’s population, executed three times the
number of witches as England did.
There is much speculation and
little certainty about exactly why that is so.
I’ll withhold theories, but today, I’d like to focus on two peculiarly
Scottish contributions to the history of witch hunting: first, the direct involvement of the king and
second, the phenomenon known as the “witch pricker.”
The Scottish King James VI (son
of Mary, Queen of Scots and later crowned as England’s King James I) was
obsessed with witchcraft, so much so that he authored an eighty page treatise on
the subject, Daemonologie, in
1597. Although witchcraft in Scotland had
been illegal and punishable by death since 1563, the persecution of witches did
not really take hold until the king made it a personal crusade. (Among his “contributions” to the cause was
to authorize torture.)
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| James VI Scotland/James I England |
Across a multi-year period,
from 1590-1593, the investigation culminated with the execution of around 70
witches in North Berwick. The king took
a personal interest in the trials, and even in the torture of some of the women. And interestingly, the charges included
treason as well as witchcraft, indicating that the king believed he had
personally been a target and the crime not only a religious, but a civil one. His subsequent authorship of the Daemonologie placed him firmly on the
side of those who argued that rational men could, and should, believe that such
evil existed, insisting it was possible for witches to “rayse stromes and
tempestes in the aire, either upon land or sea, though not universally; but in
such a particular place and prescribed bunds as God will permitte them so to
trouble.”
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| Pamphlet written by James VI on the North Berwick witch trials |
After he became England’s
king in 1601 and moved south, his views moderated significantly. Arguments as to why include the greater
skepticism of the English and may also include his experience with Anne Gunter,
a young woman who accused others of
witchcraft and later confessed that she had made it all up.
A footnote for those who know
“the Scottish play.” The three witches
in MacBeth are thought to have been modeled on some passages of the
Daemonologie, an attempt by Shakespeare to please England’s new king James I.
No such moderation of views occurred
in the Scotland he left behind. Witch
hunts continued sporadically, with the largest wave in 1661-62. And the methods of witch hunting in Scotland
were more brutal than those in England. Some claimed it was because of
differences in the legal system, but the torture routinely practiced in
Scotland was gruesome.
Which brings me to the other
Scottish contribution to mass witch hunts: the “witch pricker.”
These finders-for-hire
traveled the country, paid to search for witches and paid better when they
found one. And while the methods of the
English “witch finders” such as Matthew Hopkins were grim enough, the witch
pricker had a particular slant on things.
The theory was that each
witch would have a witch’s mark, given to her by the Devil. The witch pricker examined the suspected
witch (overwhelmingly, though not exclusively a female) for the mark. (Theory was that Satan, in essence, seduced
the
women, so the mark would often be found near her most private parts.) This mark was supposed to be insensitive to
pain, so that when jabbed with a sharp, brass prick, the witch would not flinch
or cry out or bleed. If the point of the
price disappeared into the mark and the witch did not cry out, the witch
pricker had then proven the suspect’s guilt.
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| Witch Pricks |
The descriptions of these
processes, often witnessed by a crowd of observers, are chilling. More chilling, however, was the discovery
that at least some of these pricks were designed with retractable points. In other words, to an observer, it looked as
if the pin penetrated the skin and came out without so much as blood on
it. In reality, the witch pricker had a
perfect scam going. How many women were
put to death because of this ruse, we don’t know. When, finally, one of the most notorious
prickers, one John Kincaid, was exposed, it marked a turning point in
Scotland. Witches were still hunted and
tried, but torture had to be authorized by national councils instead of simply
conducted by local authorities in the grip of fear and frenzy.
These “stranger than fiction” facts haunted me as I developed my next book, THE WITCH FINDER, which will be released later this month. For those who want an in depth look at the Scottish witch hunts, ENEMIES OF GOD, by Christina Larner, is a comprehensive beginning.
After
many years in public relations, advertising and marketing, Blythe Gifford
started writing seriously after a corporate layoff. Ten years and one layoff
later, she became an overnight success when she sold her first book to the
Harlequin Historical line. Since then,
she has published eight romances set in England and on the Scottish Borders,
many featuring characters born on the wrong side of the royal blanket. THE WITCH FINDER will be released in the fall
of 2013. For more information, visit www.blythegifford.com Author
photo Jennifer Girard