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 8 th ) 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 4 th , 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.

The Big Brother-type surveillance that followed allowed ideas of ‘ungodliness’ to be attached to anything at all. For example, the idea grew that there was a ‘devil’s mark’ that would be visible on any witch’s skin. As scars, skin irregularities or similar marks were more likely to grace older women, it was often poorer, single, older women who were targeted as a result (more than 50% of accused women were over the age of forty). The incitement to punishment and persecution of witches led, among other practises, to ‘witch-pricking’. In Scotland, witch-prickers would travel to towns and villages offering to ‘unmask’ witches. Women who had businesses also tended to be targeted; their independence gave them power and they were often accused by those who disagreed with them or held grudges against them. Goodare (2005) notes:

By the use of power against unorthodoxy, witch-hunting did much to point ordinary people towards orthodoxy (one that operated within a framework of Protestantism).

Mary Queen of Scots’ son, later James VI of Scotland and James I of England and Ireland, was removed from her as a child and raised as a Protestant. From the age of seven, his views were heavily influenced by John Knox, who had frequently harangued Mary. Knox, a Scottish minister and theologian, was misogynistic and anti-Catholic, and held considerable power in Scotland. From 1454 onwards, the adoption of the printing press throughout the western world had given rise to a new form of ‘social media’. As in our own times, this was used to spread propaganda, misinformation, and to seed fear. James would later publish a best-selling treatise— Daemonologie (1597) — on demons, magic, and signs of witchcraft. Even before this publication, in 1590, James had accused women in North Berwick of using witchcraft to delay the ship transporting his Danish bride, Anne— leading to one of Scotland’s first major witch-hunts (Fagan, 2022).

Yet James also spent time at Falkland Palace, Fife, where John Parkinson worked as his apothecary. As a result of this patronage, Parkinson was able to publish his work on herbal medicine, gaining status as an author and an apothecary. James supported Parkinson in founding The Worshipful Society of Apothecaries in 1617 (apothecaries were precursors to pharmacists). The formalising of power through the Society ran in parallel with the evolution of another powerful group of men who, throughout the 1600s, applied for a Royal Charter. This was granted in 1681, and The Royal College of Physicians was formed in Edinburgh. By the late 1600s, therapeutic practices— of obstetrics in particular —had begun to pass from the hands of local women and monks who tended physic gardens, into the hands of Physicians (who did not allow women to enter the profession). Coupled with the spread of Enlightenment thinking— divorcing mind, body, and spirit/emotions — these developments began to profoundly shift how people were viewed and treated when they fell ill. The policing of women’s bodies and behaviours shifted fundamentally, reaching extremes during the Scottish witchcraft trials.

Lest we become complacent, Chollet (2022) reminds us that the trend continues to this day. She cites our cult of youth, the widespread use of cosmetic surgery, and the lack of value placed on the experience of older women; pressures relating to reproduction and the resurgence of antiabortion movements (particularly in the Evangelical churches of the USA); and the continued use of violence to suppress and oppress women. As with many movements for change, such as Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, it seems any gains must be continually defended and the campaign for genuine equality remains apposite.

So, supporting the campaign to remember and honour those women and men falsely accused of witchcraft, tortured, and executed in Scotland is perhaps not so retrospective, after all. They were just folk, like us.

Image

The sundial memorial for those executed forwitchcraft, Orkney. Inscription: They were justfolk.

References

Bown, D. (2008) Encyclopaedia of Herbs. Royal Horticultural Society, Dorling Kindersley: London

Chollet, M., (2022) In Defence of Witches: Why women are still on trial. Picador: London

Fagan, J. (2022) Hex: Darkland Tales. Birlinn: Edinburgh

Goodare, J. (2005) The Scottish Witchcraft Act, www.cambridge.org/core [accessed 9.1.2022]

Mina, D. (2022) Rizzio. Birlinn: Edinburgh McGreevy, N. (2022) ‘Scotland considers Pardon for Thousands of Accused ‘Witches’, in Smithsonian Magazine, Jan 6th

See also:

The Life and Afterlife of Mary Queen of Scots:www.futurelearn.com

Witches of Scotland podcast www.witchesofscotland.com/podcast