vii: In Focus
The pardoning of witches Marianne Hughes From the late 1500s through to 1727, around four thousand Scottish people were accused of witchcraft. 85% of them were women. Over two and a half thousand of them were executed. In the USA, during the Salem witch trials of 1692-93, over two hundred people were accused, thirty found guilty and nineteen executed (fifteen women and four men). These so-called witches were pardoned in 2001, in Massachusetts. Even though their trials took place a century after those in Scotland, there has been no pardon, no apology, and no national memorial for those who were executed in Scotland for crimes they did not commit. A campaign, launched on International Women’s Day (March 8th) 2020, argued that a pardon was important because it was legal process that allowed the prosecution, trial, sentencing and execution of women and men for witchcraft. In 1561, an eighteen-year-old Mary returned to Scotland from exile in France, to take up her rightful position as Queen. With her, she brought the herb Alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum) which she planted (or had planted) at Craigmillar Castle, Edinburgh— where it can still be seen to this day. This was, perhaps, one of a number of herbs she brought with her. Alexanders is a fully hardy, bitter diuretic with benefits for digestion, once also used for asthma, menstrual problems, and wounds (Bown, 2008). At the time, the use of herbs for culinary and medicinal purposes was part of ordinary life and, for poorer people, would have been the only source of healing. The power of healing, and the question of who exercised this power, became a focus of attention at the same time as Mary’s arrival back in Scotland.
The Protestant Reformation was in full swing and, as a Catholic Queen, Mary had a fine line to walk between turbulent religious, political, and land-owning factions as well as dealing with threats of war and famine. She was also under pressure to produce a male heir and, like many women of her day, was subject to speculation as to the father of her child. So, in addition to the pressures created by the Reformation, there were at least two other forces at work which impacted on the development and implementation of the Scottish Witchcraft Act of 1563: the rise of the male-dominated medical profession and its impact on folk healers, who were mostly women; and the spread of Enlightenment ideas, particularly Descartes’ new dichotomy of mind and body (‘I think, therefore I am’). There is little historical evidence to suggest the prevalence of any belief system other than Christianity at this time. The Reformation Parliament had, since around 1560, developed the Book of Discipline, dictating how Protestants should behave in order to achieve godliness. The Catholic faith was not considered ‘true’. Indeed, it was suggested that Catholics engaged in ‘magical’ practices, which did not accord with ‘God’s law’ and could, therefore, only be ascribed to the Devil. This ‘binary mindset that framed everything as a clash of absolutes’ (Mina, 2022) is likely to have strongly underpinned Parliament’s debating, in December 1562, of the Scottish Witchcraft Act. It was passed on June 4th, 1563. As Goodare (2005) comments: The Scottish Witchcraft Act was the product of a new and inexperienced Protestant regime. Once the system of kirk sessions was established in Scotland, the church authorities could monitor their parishioners’ delinquencies in a minute detail that would have been the envy of English Puritans.
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