Discover the Truth Behind Witchcraft Stories. William Godwin
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play before him the same tune to which Satan and his companions led the brawl in North Berwick churchyard. His ears were gratified in another way: for at this meeting it was said the witches demanded of the devil why he did bear such enmity against the king, who returned the flattering answer, that the king was the greatest enemy whom he had in the world. Almost all these poor wretches were executed: nor did Euphane MacCalzean's station in life save her from the common doom, which was strangling to death and burning to ashes thereafter. The majority of the jury which tried Barbara Napier, having acquitted her of attendance at the North Berwick meeting, were themselves threatened with a trial for wilful error upon an assize, and could only escape from severe censure and punishment by pleading guilty, and submitting themselves to the king's pleasure. The alterations and trenching,' adds Scott, 'which lately took place on the Castle-hill at Edinburgh for the purpose of forming the new approach to the city from the west, displayed the ashes of the numbers who had perished in this manner, of whom a large proportion must have been executed between 1590—when the great discovery was made concerning Euphane MacCalzean and the wise wife of Keith and their accomplices—and the union of the crowns.'132
Euphane's exceptional doom was 'to be bound to the stake, and burned in ashes quick to the death.' 'Burning quick' was not an uncommon sentence: if the less cruel one of hanging or strangling first and afterwards burning was more usual. Thirty warlocks and witches was the total number executed on June 25th, 1591. A few, like Dr. Cunninghame, may have been really experienced in the use of poison and poisonous drugs. The art of poisoning has been practised perhaps almost as extensively as (often coextensively with) that of sorcery; a tremendous and mostly inscrutable crime which science, in all ages, has been able more surely to conceal than to detect.
Two facts eminently illustrate the barbarous iniquity of the Courts of Justice when dealing with their witch prisoners. An expressed malediction, or frequently an almost inaudible mutter, followed by the coincident fulfilment of the imprecation, was accepted eagerly by the judges as sufficient proof (an antecedent one, contrary to the boasted principle of English law at least, which assumes the innocence until the guilt has been proved, of the accused) of the crime of the person arraigned. And they complacently attributed to conscious guilt the ravings produced by an excruciating torture—that equally inhuman and irrational invention of judicial cruelty; confidently boasting that they were careful to sentence no person without previous confession duly made.
But these confessions not seldom were partly extracted from a natural wish to be freed from the persecution of neighbours as well as from present bodily torture. Sir George Mackenzie, Lord Advocate of Scotland during the period of the greatest fury, and himself president at many of the trials, a believer, among other cases in his Criminal Law, 1678, relates that of a condemned witch who had confessed judicially to him and afterwards 'told me under secrecy, that she had not confessed because she was guilty; but being a poor creature who wrought for her meat, and being defamed for a witch she knew she should starve, for no person thereafter would either give her meat or lodging, and that all men would beat her and set dogs at her, and that therefore she desired to be out of the world. Whereupon she wept most bitterly, and upon her knees called God to witness to what she said. Another told me that she was afraid the devil would challenge a right to her after she was said to be his servant, and would haunt her, as the minister said when he was desiring her to confess, and therefore she desired to die. And really,' admits the learned judge, 'ministers are oft-times indiscreet in their zeal to have poor creatures to confess in this; and I recommend to judges that the wisest ministers should be sent to them; and that those who are sent should be cautious in this particular.' Another confession at the supreme moment of the same sort, as recorded by the Rev. G. Sinclair in 'Satan's Invisible World Discovered' is equally significant and genuine. What impression it left upon the pious clergyman will be seen in his concluding inference. The witch, 'being carried forth to the place of execution, remained silent during the first, second, and third prayer, and then, perceiving there remained no more but to rise up and go to the stake, she lifted up her body and with a loud voice cried out, "Now all you that see me this day know that I am now to die as a witch by my own confession, and I free all men, especially the ministers and magistrates, of the guilt of my blood. I take it wholly upon myself—my blood be upon my own head; and as I must make answer to the God of heaven presently, I declare I am as free of witchcraft as any child. But being delated by a malicious woman, and put in prison under the name of a witch; disowned by my husband and friends, and seeing no ground of hope of my coming out of prison or ever coming in credit again, through the temptation of the devil I made up that confession on purpose to destroy my own life, being weary of it, and choosing rather to die than live"—and so died; which lamentable story as it did then astonish all the spectators, none of which could restrain themselves from tears, so it may be to all a demonstration of Satan's subtlety, whose design is still to destroy all, partly by tempting many to presumption, and some others to despair.'
The trial of Margaret Barclay took place in 1613. Her crime consisted in having caused by means of spells the loss of a ship at sea. She was said to have had a quarrel with the owner of the shipwrecked vessel, in the course of which she uttered a wish that all on board might sink to the bottom of the sea. Her imprecation was accomplished, and upon the testimony of an itinerant juggler, John Stewart, she was arraigned before a Court of Justice. With the help of the devil in the shape of a handsome black dog, she had moulded some figures of clay representing the doomed sailors, which with the prescribed rites were thrown into the deep. We are informed by the reporters of the proceedings at this examination, that 'after using this kind of gentle torture (viz. placing the legs in a pair of stocks and laying on gradually increasing weights of iron bars), the said Margaret began, according to the increase of the pain, to cry and crave for God's cause to take off her shin the foresaid irons, and she should declare truly the whole matter. Which being removed, she began at her formal denial; and being of new assayed in torture as before, she then uttered these words: "Take off, take off! and before God I shall show you the whole form." And the said irons being of new, upon her faithful promise, removed, she then desired my Lord of Eglinton, the said four justices, and the said Mr. David Dickson, minister of the burgh; Mr. George Dunbar, minister of Ayr; Mr. Mitchell Wallace, minister of Kilmarnock; Mr. John Cunninghame, minister of Dalry; and Hugh Kennedy, provost of Ayr, to come by themselves and to remove all others, and she should declare truly, as she should answer to God, the whole matter. Whose desire in that being fulfilled, she made her confession in this manner without any kind of demand, freely without interrogation: God's name by earnest prayer being called upon for opening of her lips and easing of her heart, that she by rendering of the truth might glorify and magnify His holy name and disappoint the enemy of her salvation.'
One of those involved in the voluntary confession was Isabel Crawford, who was frightened into admitting the offences alleged. In court, when asked if she wished to be defended by counsel, Margaret Barclay, whose hopes and fears were revived at seeing her husband, answered, 'As you please; but all I have confessed was in agony of torture; and, before God, all I have spoken is false and untrue.' She was found guilty; sentenced to be strangled at the stake; her body to be burned to ashes. Isabel Crawford, after a short interval, was subjected to the same sort of examination: a new commission having been granted for the prosecution, and 'after the assistant-minister of Irvine, Mr. David Dickson, had made earnest prayers to God for opening her obdurate and closed heart, she was subjected to the torture of iron bars laid upon her bare shins, her feet being in the stocks. She endured this torture with incredible firmness, since she did "admirably, without any kind of din or exclamation, suffer above thirty stone of iron to be laid on her legs, never shrinking thereat in any sort, but remaining, as it were, steady." But in shifting the situation of the iron bars, and removing them to another part of her shins, her constancy gave way; she broke out into horrible cries of "Take off! take off!" On being relieved from the torture she made the usual confession of all that she was charged with, and of a connection with the devil which had subsisted for several years. Sentence was given against her accordingly. After this had been denounced she openly denied all her former confessions, and died without any sign of repentance; offering repeated interruptions to the minister in his prayers, and absolutely refusing to pardon the executioner.'133 It might be possible to form an imperfect estimate of how many