CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



iheedlessness or malice, these averments decided 

 Fian's fate. He was seized, and after being ' used 

 with the accustomed paine provided for those 

 -offences inflicted upon the rest, first, by throwing 

 of his head with a rope, whereat he would confess 

 jiothing ;' and, secondly, being urged ' by fair 

 meanes to confesse his follies,' which had as 

 little effect ; ' lastly, hee was put to the most 

 severe and cruell paine in the world, called the 

 bootes, when, after he had received three strokes, 

 being inquired if he would confesse his actes and 

 wicked life, his tongue would not serve him to 

 speake ; in respect whereof, the rest of the witches 

 willed to search his tongue, under which was 

 founde two pinnes thrust up into the heade ; 

 whereupon the witches did say, now is the charme 

 stinted, and shewed that those charmed pins were 

 the cause he could not confesse anything ; then 

 was he immediately released of the bootes, 

 "brought before the king, and his confession was 

 taken.' Appalled by the cruel tortures he had 

 undergone, Fian seems now only to have thought 

 how he could best get up a story that should 

 bring him to a speedy death. He admitted him- 

 self to be the devil's ' register,' or clerk, who took 

 the oaths from all witches at their initiation, and 

 avowed his having bewitched various persons. 

 In proof of the latter statement he instanced the 

 case of a gentleman near Saltpans, whom he had 

 so practised upon, he said, that the victim fell 

 into fits at intervals. This person, who seems 

 to have been either a lunatic or afflicted with St 

 Vitus's dance, was sent for, and ' being in his 

 majestie's chamber, suddenly hee gave a great 

 scritch, and fell into madnesse, sometimes bend- 

 ing himself, and sometimes capring so directly 

 up, that his heade did touch the seeling of the 

 -chamber, to the great admiration of his majestic.' 

 On these and other accounts, Dr Fian was sent to 

 prison, but he contrived soon after to escape from 

 it. ' By means of a hot and harde pursuite,' he 

 -was retaken, and brought before the king, to be 

 examined anew. But the unfortunate man had 

 tad time to think, and like Cranmer under some- 

 what similar circumstances, resolved to retract 

 the admissions which the weakness of the body 

 had drawn from him, and to suffer anything 

 rather than renew them. He boldly told this to 

 the king ; and James, whom these records make 

 us regard with equal contempt and indignation, 

 ordered the unfortunate man to be subjected to 

 the following most horrible tortures : ' His nailes 

 upon all his fingers were riven and pulled off 

 with an instrument called in Scottish a turkas, 

 -which in England are called a payre of pincers, 

 and under everie nayle there was thrust in two 

 needles over, even up to the heades ; at all which 

 tormentes, notwithstanding, the doctor never 

 shrunk a whit, neither would he then confesse it 

 the sooner for all the tortures inflicted on him. 

 Then was hee, with all convenient speed, by 

 -commandement, convaied again to the torment 

 of the bootes, wherein he continued a long time, 

 and did abide so many blowes in them, that his 

 legges were crusht and beaten together as small 

 as might bee, whereby they were made unservice- 

 able for ever.' Notwithstanding all this, such 

 was the strength of mind of the victim, or, as 

 King James termed it, ' so deeply had the devil 

 entered into his heart,' that he still denied all, 

 and resolutely declared that ' all he had done 



4*6 



and said before was only done and said for fear 

 of the paynes which he had endured.' As, accord- 

 ing to this fashion of justice, to confess or not 

 to confess was quite the same thing, the poor 

 schoolmaster of Saltpans was soon afterwards 

 strangled, and then burned, on the Castle-hill 

 of Edinburgh (January 1591). 



Before the close of James's reign, many men of 

 sense began to weary of the torturings and crema- 

 tions that took place almost every day, in town or 

 country, and had done so for a period of thirty 

 years (betwixt 1590 and 1620). Advocates now 

 came forward to defend the accused, and in their 

 pleadings ventured even to arraign some of the 

 received axioms of Dcemonologie laid down by the 

 king himself in a book bearing that name. The 

 removal of James to England moderated, but did 

 not altogether stop, the witch-prosecutions. After 

 his death, they slackened more considerably. 



As the spirit of Puritanism gained strength, 

 however, which it gradually did during the latter 

 part of the reign of Charles I., the partially 

 cleared horizon became again overcast, and again 

 was this owing to ill-judged edicts, which, by indi- 

 cating the belief of the great and the educated 

 in witchcraft, had the natural effect of reviving 

 the frenzy among the flexible populace. The 

 General Assembly was the body in fault on this 

 occasion, and from this time forward the clergy 

 were the great witch-hunters in Scotland. The 

 Assembly passed condemnatory acts in 1640, 1643, 

 1644, 1645, an< i *649, and with every successive 

 act the cases and convictions increased, with even 

 a deeper degree of attendant horrors than at any 

 previous time. ' The old impossible and abomin- 

 able fancies,' says the review formerly quoted, ' of 

 the Malleus were revived. About thirty trials 

 appear on the record between 1649 and the 

 Restoration, only one of which appears to have 

 terminated in an acquittal ; while at a single 

 circuit held at Glasgow, Stirling, and Ayr in 

 1659, seventeen persons were convicted and burned 

 for this crime.' 



It must be remembered, however, that the 

 phrase ' on the record' alludes only to justiciary 

 trials, which formed but a small proportion of the 

 cases really tried. The justiciary lists take no 

 note of the commissions perpetually given by the 

 privy-council to resident gentlemen and clergy- 

 men to try and burn witches in their respective 

 districts. These commissions executed people 

 over the whole country in multitudes. Wodrow, 

 Lamont, Mercer, Whitelocke, and other chron- 

 iclers, prove this but too satisfactorily. 



The popular frenzy seems to have exhausted 

 itself by its own virulence in 1661-62 ; for an 

 interval of six years subsequently elapsed without 

 a single justiciary trial for the crime of witchcraft, 

 and one fellow was actually whipped for charging 

 some person with it. After this period, the dying 

 embers of the delusion only burst out on occa- 

 sions, here and there, into a momentary flame. 

 It is curious that as something like direct evidence 

 became necessary for condemnation, that evidence 

 presented itself, and in the shape of possessed or 

 enchanted young persons, who were brought into 

 court to play off their tricks. The most striking 

 case of this nature was that of Christian Shaw, a 

 girl about eleven years old, and the daughter of 

 Mr Shaw of Bargarran in Renfrewshire. This 

 wretched girl, who seems to have been an accom- 





