00:00:00.160Hi, I'm Clare Mitchell QC. Welcome to the Witches of Scotland podcast.
00:00:05.220I'm a lawyer who specialises in miscarriage of justice cases and we're bringing you this podcast
00:00:10.120because we want to tell you about the women who were accused, prosecuted, convicted
00:00:15.240and ultimately executed as witches in Scotland.
00:00:18.780I'm Zoe Vendetotsi and I'm a writer who's always had an interest in the witches
00:00:22.780and I feel that this dark mark against Scotland needs a reckoning.
00:00:26.500The campaign Witches of Scotland wants three things.
00:00:29.600Firstly, a pardon for all those convicted of witchcraft.
00:00:33.240Secondly, an apology for all those who were accused as witches.
00:00:37.460And finally, a national monument in recognition of all those who were affected by this terrible miscarriage of justice.
00:00:44.420Over the forthcoming weeks, we'll be talking to a whole host of experts about the history and the modern day connections to the witches of Scotland.
00:00:54.560Hello and welcome to the Witches of Scotland podcast.
00:00:57.420this week we are on episode 39 of as Claire said earlier of six because obviously those that have
00:01:05.820been listening to us for a while know we were only ever intending to make six episodes however
00:01:09.960we just keep finding more and more interesting guests to speak to and this week is no different
00:01:15.200this week we're speaking to a fantastic historian but before we get on to who we're talking to
00:01:19.460today and what we're talking about Claire just wondering is there anything happening in the
00:01:23.680world that relates to the witches of Scotland in some way? It's strange you should ask in that
00:01:28.620entirely unscripted and unprompted question there Zoe. So casual. So casual and casually I shall
00:01:35.800simply respond yes something actually really important has happened this week in relation
00:01:41.880to witchcraft and that is that the Human Rights Council the General Assembly of the United Nations
00:01:48.920has passed a draft resolution in respect of elimination of harmful practices related to
00:01:56.740accusations of witchcraft and ritual attacks. So the Human Rights Council has said that guided by
00:02:04.200the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, reaffirming the fundamental
00:02:10.780principles of equality, non-discrimination and human dignity. They have passed this resolution
00:02:19.540in respect of current day witchcraft accusations. What they've essentially done is they've said
00:02:29.200taking into account all that we stand for effectively, all that we stand for anti-discrimination,
00:02:35.560treating people equally, that they express their concerns over the harmful practices related to
00:02:42.980witchcraft accusations and ritual attacks which have resulted in forms of violence including
00:02:48.860killing, mutilation, burning, coercion and trafficking persons, torture and other cruel
00:02:56.320and human and degrading treatment, particularly for persons in vulnerable situations including
00:03:03.140women, children, persons with disabilities, older persons, persons with albinism and saying that
00:03:11.560these forms of violence are often committed with impunity. It expressed its concerns also at the
00:03:19.340existing widespread discrimination, stigma, social exclusion and forced displacement experienced as
00:03:26.560a result of witchcraft accusations and ritual attacks and it urges the states involved in the
00:03:32.980UN to condemn harmful practices related to accusations of witchcraft and ritual attacks
00:03:39.120that result in human rights violations and urges those states to take all measures necessary
00:03:45.980to ensure the elimination of harmful practices amounting to human rights violations related to
00:03:52.120accusations of witchcraft and ritual attacks and to ensure both accountability and the effective
00:03:58.380protection of all persons, particularly persons in vulnerable situations. And it calls upon states
00:04:06.060to ensure that no one within their jurisdiction is deprived of the right to life, liberty or
00:04:11.620security of person because of religion or belief and that no one is subject to torture or other
00:04:17.360role in human integrating treatment or punishment or arbitrary arrest or detention on that account
00:04:23.040and to bring justice to all perpetrators of violation and abuses of these rights
00:04:28.280in compliance with international law. And it invites states in collaboration with relevant
00:04:34.520regional and international organizations to promote bilateral, regional and international
00:04:40.180initiatives to support protection of all persons vulnerable to harmful practices amounting to human
00:04:46.840rights violations and while noting that providing protection, attention to local context is
00:04:54.220critical. It invites states to draw attention to this issue and it also says the state should be
00:05:00.600careful to distinguish between harmful practices amounting to human rights violations relating to
00:05:06.160accusations of witchcraft and ritual attacks and the lawful and legitimate exercise of different
00:05:12.560kinds of religions or belief in order to preserve the right to freely manifest a religion or belief
00:05:18.760individually or in a community with others including for persons belonging to religious
00:05:25.080minorities. So I could go on at length about that Zoe but there's a number of really interesting
00:05:32.480things that I think we can pull from that. First of all the UN acknowledges that the people who
00:05:40.460are being accused of witchcraft around the world are those vulnerable groups that we have identified
00:05:45.920through history really as the same vulnerable groups. The only additional set of people in
00:05:52.340the vulnerable groups I saw was people who had albinism. What's also very interesting about that
00:05:57.160was not only is it great that the United Nations has come forth and said that and said we are
00:06:03.320effectively requiring states to go and do something about this to put things in place and report back
00:06:08.960to us on it but also it's identified as the Scottish government did in the response to our
00:06:14.280petition the way that people are being dealt with in a discriminatory way those vulnerable people
00:06:21.620are subject to these more than anyone else so if you're not in a vulnerable category you're less
00:06:28.100likely to be accused of that and again it's women it's children and it's older people the exact same
00:06:34.240as it was in Scotland what's really interesting is that they've made it clear that what they're
00:06:41.240not saying is there's any problem with people having their own religion or their own belief
00:06:47.720system that's absolutely fine those people have to be protected and a balance has to be struck
00:06:54.060between the rights of people to go about their lives as they want and their religious beliefs
00:06:59.540as they want also the right to be protected from the abuses which we talked about there so
00:07:05.980it's been described as a historic resolution by the United Nations the first of its kind
00:07:12.860and I went on to Leo Agui's Facebook page just to check to see what they'd said about it and he
00:07:20.700welcomed it but also said and it's something that reflected in what we talked about him before
00:07:26.440the words are great but they need actions behind them i mean you know i'm sure a great deal of work
00:07:32.480went into making up the statement and so on there and there's been research and things but if it's
00:07:37.320not actually carried out into communities with people like leo igway on the ground who know
00:07:43.640what's happening and and who can say right this is where it's happening it's such a thorny issue
00:07:48.680for people out with the continent of africa or out with india or out with whatever these different
00:07:54.160pockets of of accusations are happening to say oh I'm gonna sort of binge in here and get involved
00:08:00.820in this situation it's a difficult one as a person that's not from that country because you don't want
00:08:05.280to feel like you're coming in as like the you know the kind of the white colonial thing saying
00:08:09.360oh no that's not how we do it kind of thing but if people go back and listen to Leo's episode way
00:08:14.920way back in oh I don't know that was quite an early one wasn't it so round about episode maybe
00:08:20.940nine eight something like that quite a while ago anyway he really lays out and says you know we
00:08:26.600need people out with these countries to say no look this is no longer acceptable it's not it's
00:08:31.980not civilized to treat people like this and to hurt people like this and he really needs the
00:08:37.000pressure of sort of the international community because it's a tricky one i think but at the end
00:08:41.400of the day we're talking about the same sort of things as you've pointed out claire that happened
00:08:45.140here it's people that are vulnerable for different reasons that are being picked on and othered
00:08:50.280and there's lots of psychological reasons obviously for that but that doesn't mean it's
00:08:54.320any more acceptable so I really hope that this does help and that some real thought is put into
00:08:59.220how it's going to practically translate into action. Yeah I mean it does the resolution does
00:09:05.480put an obligation on states to do something now there are lots of obligations and states to do
00:09:11.800lots of things so it's only one of many but it does mean that someone will have to report back
00:09:17.040and someone will have to talk about these things.
00:09:19.760But I absolutely agree that it requires the people
00:09:22.340from within the country itself to address these things.
00:09:26.720And just to let our listeners know that Zoe was only 20 episodes out,
00:09:30.320seeing it was number nine, it's episode 29 that Leo...
00:09:46.360yeah you're on a broomstick well okay so that's that's all really great to hear that's really
00:09:55.340promising and hopefully that'll translate into good actions that's good today we're going to go
00:10:00.040away obviously from the present and we're going to go right back talk to our guest today so what
00:10:05.820I'm going to do is I'm going to introduce our guest and then we're going to do the witches of
00:10:08.760today because that relates to who our guest is in his area of study can I say Zoe yes you always
00:10:14.720keep it secret who the guest is all the way through because it's exciting yeah but the thing
00:10:21.700is see when I'm uploading it to the internet I yeah that's true I type their name as as like
00:10:27.380listen Claire Claire I'm I live in the moment okay and the moment that I'm in is is a tumbling
00:10:36.060morass of horror and I just try to keep my head above water and I've just a moment yeah you're
00:10:42.360right though because everybody knows fine well who the guest is okay so as you know today's guest
00:10:49.060is Dr Alan Kennedy who is a lecturer at Dundee University in the History and Archives and
00:10:55.580Information Studies Department in the School of Humanities so Dr Alan Kennedy is an interesting
00:11:02.260fellow because one of his particular areas that he's interested in he talks about this at the
00:11:06.040beginning of the podcast is about criminality which I think is is criminality the right word
00:11:11.760claire what's that word if i just made that up no study of study of crime looking into scottish
00:11:16.620criminal justice so for me that's particularly fascinating but of course in that he's looked
00:11:21.880at the witch trials and various sort of issues there so one of the things that i think it's
00:11:26.860worth noting as well is that dr kennedy is also consultant editor of popular magazine history
00:11:33.580scotland which some of our readers may know and if you don't know this is good to know
00:11:37.360one of their recent issues was all about witchcraft and the witches in Scotland we even
00:11:42.540got a wee mention in the magazine so I think I just wanted to mention that there so that people
00:11:47.060could go and find the magazine and have a wee read of it so I think that covers some really
00:11:50.960interesting aspects so he wrote about these witches or accused witches in his blog that's
00:11:56.960on the centre of Scottish culture which is a University of Dundee site and we'll put a link
00:12:01.980up to that it's well worth going and having a detailed read of the article and I'm just going
00:12:06.500to highlight some things some aspects here to name women as witches. Okay so in 1662 at the height of
00:12:14.780the largest of the four witch panics in Scotland in the great witch hunt of 61-62 the horrors of
00:12:20.920witch persecution came to the tiny county of Kinrosshire and in particular to the Crook of
00:12:27.460Devon which is a wee place roughly equidistant between Perth, Stirling and Dunfermline. Those
00:12:32.900accused of witchcraft included 13 people so there was Agnes Murie, Bessie Henderson, Isabel
00:12:39.980Rutherford, Robert Wilson, Bessie Neal, Margaret Lister, Janet Payton Elder and Younger, Agnes
00:12:48.900Brew, Margaret Hogan, Janet Brew, Christian Garvey and Agnes Pittendree. The allegations against
00:12:56.740them included that they had cast evil spells causing people who had wronged them to suffer
00:13:00.680the falling sickness and that they had rendered someone mute by offering him enchanted snuff
00:13:05.880which is quite interesting and captivating and i'm sure would be quite useful if that was such
00:13:12.800a thing i had asked you zoe if you'd read the book um dr norell and mr strange or is it we were
00:13:19.000talking about that yesterday weren't we no i've got it in the house but i need to read it there
00:13:23.400was a world where enchanted snuff was a thing then the gentleman would definitely have enchanted
00:13:28.080snuff thing oh interesting so these people were accused or some of them were accused of rendering
00:13:34.120someone mute by using enchanted snuff they also and this is something that we're very familiar
00:13:39.660with they also renounced their baptism to be baptized by the devil Alan records that Margaret
00:13:45.140Hoggan described the baptism as you put an of your hands to the crown of your head and the other to
00:13:51.520the sole of your foot and delivered all in between to Satan's service so we've talked about this
00:13:57.360before haven't we the idea of the devil putting his hand on the head and foot and how they change
00:14:02.980a little bit in different tellings. Yeah that's so interesting to me because it shows that there
00:14:08.440was a narrative but it wasn't it wasn't kept clear it's like when people are told one story
00:14:13.940and then it passes through lots of people the story changes so we have and I'm not sure
00:14:19.840you know which of these came first but as we've said before one of the reasons that people had
00:14:26.340to um renounce the baptism is you couldn't be baptized and have the devil um do do sorry
00:14:35.980david sorry one of the reasons that that they had this symbolic baptism with the devil is you
00:14:43.500obviously wouldn't be a baptized christian person and do that so you obviously had that had to be
00:14:48.500interrupted in some way and you had to instead of giving your life over to god give your life over
00:14:53.260to the devil so there's this symbolism of putting the hand on the head and the foot and all in
00:14:59.680between belonged to the devil the difficulty is we cannot tell from the various different stories
00:15:05.720the confessions always doing the inverted commas with the bunny ears when we see it
00:15:10.720the confessions move about depending on which person it's either the devil who puts his hand
00:15:17.720on a person's head and a person's foot and then the person renounces their christian baptism and
00:15:23.080gives themselves over to the devil or in other stories the person puts their own hand on their
00:15:29.300head or on their foot and renounces it so it just shows you that people were no doubt being asked
00:15:35.600about the same things like did you renounce your baptism what did what did he do did the devil put
00:15:40.840his hand upon you did you do something and the people in answering have slightly changed the
00:15:46.460story so what we might call in a court of law Claire leading questions or leading the witness
00:15:53.740absolutely Zoe LA law it paid off in my teens can I just record for the general public because
00:16:01.760Zoe and I can see one another who are recording Zoe looked very pleased with herself after
00:16:06.640myself any opportunity I get to pretend that I am a lawyer in court in LA in my mind I'm happy
00:16:14.580it is true though you know we're not pushing it too far to see that it looks like there would be
00:16:19.460particular lines of questioning there's a shape that the narrative takes you know and that these
00:16:24.520these things will as you said will have passed to different communities and people will have known
00:16:29.080kind of what a confession should sound like yeah I mean this was their tv this was their radio
00:16:35.160this was this was everything to them this was both horror and both what shaped their narrative
00:16:40.500in conversations what shaped the gossip everyone knew what it was that a witch was said to have
00:16:47.020done or you know and as we know people when they're being asked about this in a state of
00:16:52.500some distress and possibly sleep deprived as well are likely just to recount these sorts of things
00:16:58.660I know it's horrible anyway so back to this awful awful situation so all the people that
00:17:06.260were accused confessed and again heavy heavy quotation marks around the word confession
00:17:11.640to being in a coven with each other and all but two were as history records strangled to the death
00:17:18.780by the hand of the hangman and thereafter their bodies to be burnt to ashes so horrible and it
00:17:25.320again brings me to this point and i know that i'm a wee bit fixated on this but the method of
00:17:30.840execution it actually says there is the hand of the hangman does that mean literally his hands
00:17:37.120around their neck or does that mean done just is work done by the hangman from what the experts
00:17:42.540have told us so far it appears to have been done with some kind of rope or something like that yes
00:17:48.540yeah it's just it's too awful when you contemplate it and it's i know i've said this a million times
00:17:55.180on here but it's one thing to just sort of have this kind of knowledge floating around in your
00:17:59.340mind but when you bring it out and you look at it and you really think about what that meant
00:18:03.360in reality to these people I mean it's a small community there's all these people the 13 people
00:18:09.640that are accused they all confess the situation they're all supposedly in a coven together
00:18:14.280and then the community knows and is probably largely I would suppose would be would be
00:18:20.640approving of this the people that they knew from their community were then strangled to death and
00:18:25.300their bodies were burnt it's just completely crazy when you think about it but of course they would
00:18:30.400be wanting it to happen because they were absolutely terrified that those people yeah
00:18:34.500those people were working for the devil yeah so crazy so of the 13 margaret hoggan actually
00:18:41.720escaped the hangman because she died before they could try her so i mean she didn't escape she just
00:18:47.340left this mortal coil she's 80 so it's really pretty elderly i would think for those days as
00:18:53.400well yeah so sorry to interrupt there and again that is somebody who if we got a pardon wouldn't
00:19:00.280be affected by the pardon because she was never convicted but she died having been tortured
00:19:04.740and she was 80 she was of a good age particularly for that time that would have been a good age
00:19:11.220perhaps not the same now and that's why we want an apology as well to apologize to her yeah to
00:19:16.940cover those people that weren't under that first area yeah and then another of the accused agnes
00:19:22.520was pregnant so she wasn't executed so there is this idea Claire that you've mentioned that
00:19:28.880there's a term in English law called pleading your belly or pled her belly um do you know
00:19:35.160anything about that in Scotland? I don't actually and would invite any scholars or anyone with an
00:19:40.240interest in it to get in contact with us I have not seen that pled as a plea in Scotland that
00:19:47.640doesn't mean it wasn't done it just means I haven't come across it because when I'm looking
00:19:52.200up the history of pleas that can be taken for example a plea to insanity or such a plea I am
00:19:59.820looking for specific links to the modern day now because we don't have was that execution as a
00:20:07.860sentence anymore I'm never looking up books to see how people were executed in the past and what
00:20:13.500their defences were so please if anyone does know about that get in contact there's a lot more
00:20:18.360information about it online in relation to English common law and if you just google plead your belly
00:20:24.780a lot comes up on it one of the particular things that I saw when I looked at it there were what
00:20:31.140were called a juror of matrons so a group of women who assisted in childbirth or who knew
00:20:39.780things about childbirth were assembled in order to be able to identify whether or not a woman0.95
00:20:46.940was pregnant and effectively certify them as being pregnant because of course perhaps for
00:20:52.920many months although a woman would think herself to be pregnant or was pregnant you wouldn't be0.96
00:20:57.920able to tell and if a woman was going to be executed and she inverted commas played her belly
00:21:04.900unless there was obvious proof of that to the eye as it were unless it could be visibly seen that0.99
00:21:10.640she was pregnant these um women had to get together and decide whether or not she was pregnant and0.99
00:21:16.240to me every time I think about it when I was reading about it it was it was just handmaid's
00:21:21.000tale I mean I've not yeah I've not seen a scene like it and in fact I can't actually watch the
00:21:26.440handmaid's tale because yeah just find it too alarming quite frankly um it's very distressing
00:21:34.580i i'm watching it with my daughter just now and we are watching it really slowly because we just
00:21:38.820can't can't knuckle down to watch it because it's just too stressful it's too awful but i think
00:21:44.120there you know we've talked about this before obviously in the past about the handmaid's tale
00:21:47.980and about how margaret atwood at the time said that she didn't write anything in the original
00:21:52.320book that hadn't actually already happened so that everything was taken from life um so I think that
00:21:58.460there's definitely echoes of that and I suppose they would have to prove that she's pregnant
00:22:02.300because any any sort of fertile aged woman could say she's pregnant to get out of it but
00:22:06.340not really sure how they how they did that it sounds really horrifying probably best not to
00:22:11.120linger on that so yeah so that's what happened there in 2012 the witch's maze was unveiled at
00:22:19.320tully bowl castle as a memorial to those indicted at crook of devon the website fifewalking.com
00:22:25.440describes a short walk you can do near crook of devon which takes you to the site of tully bowl
00:22:30.120castle witch's maze which was constructed by lord moncrieff of tully bowl castle as a memorial to
00:22:35.660the innocent witches it says like that's a quote who were executed i don't know i'm a bit i think
00:22:42.360it's i think it's nice that there's something they're marking it um and i've not been there
00:22:46.340so I don't know how it's done it could be done really tastefully but I don't know it just it's
00:22:51.200just a bit strange to do something for your sort of amusement and you know entertainment
00:22:57.920I totally understand yeah I totally understand what you mean on one view I think it's very good
00:23:03.780that there's a marker so that people go oh what's this about and perhaps it's worth doing something
00:23:11.180um there may be for all we know a plaque or a sign there has any of our listeners been there
00:23:17.640um if they have please do let us know please let us know if there's a a plaque or a sign that would
00:23:24.260be interesting and i think that would so yeah it would be interesting if anyone has actually
00:23:28.940been there or gone for that walk to let us know or if they decide to do so now that they can get
00:23:33.520out and about and walking please report because we do people do send us um photographs of different
00:23:38.600places that they've gone to so would be great and then we share them if we're able to share them so
00:23:43.060that would be interesting it's not that far clear maybe we should do a wee road trip
00:23:46.740we should we've now got so many people to go and see and thanks for joining us today our podcasts
00:23:53.260are available on all the usual social media areas including we probably need a a longer road trip
00:24:00.480well okay so going on to today's guest who has already been revealed so um our guest today
00:24:08.340our guest today drumroll is um is historian dr alan kennedy
00:24:14.040hello hello very nice to be here thank you for inviting me so um it's really nice to have you
00:24:26.100on i'm wondering if first of all if you can tell our listeners what what you do what your area of
00:24:31.140interest is please certainly um well i am lecturer in history at the university of dundee and i
00:24:37.580specialize in in early modern scotland which is obviously the period of the the witch hunts and
00:24:42.720i should put my hands up straight away and say that um unlike some of the speakers you've had
00:24:46.600on here i'm not an expert in witchcraft and witch hunting specifically my expertise is it is more
00:24:52.880broadly in sort of social and political history in early modern Scotland and I'm particularly
00:24:57.040interested in crime and punishment of crime of which of course witchcraft is part it's considered
00:25:03.600one of the most serious crimes in early modern Scotland and early modern Europe more generally
00:25:08.160so that's how I come at this topic not as a witchcraft specialist particularly but as
00:25:14.980somebody who's interested more broadly in crime and punishment and has been sucked into the witch
00:25:20.580as a result of that yeah can i say alan very was very generous when we contact him because i think
00:25:26.920we met on twitter and you were very generous uh when we spoke to you and said i am not a specific
00:25:33.740expert and then gave us a list of contacts of specific experts many of whom we've already got
00:25:40.300contact with some of whom we hadn't so that was really really kind of me to do that but
00:25:45.380we enjoy your interactions on twitter and particularly we enjoy the fact that sometimes
00:25:50.880you just come on and just quash some of those myths that seem to go around i mean twitter's
00:25:57.660a great place for it but we like your style on twitter just cutting to the chase and saying nah
00:26:02.960things like that didn't happen so i certainly enjoyed that very glad as claire and i've said
00:26:09.340before in the in the podcast earlier we initially bonded over our love of true crime and definitely
00:26:14.540think that the witch trials do kind of fall underneath the umbrella it's not immediately
00:26:18.480obvious but I think the the fact that people get into this and then start researching it and look
00:26:23.920at all the details and of course it's through the kind of the legal side of things that people
00:26:27.780actually discover things what was it that brought you particularly to be interested in the crime
00:26:33.400element of this period of time well I wish I could give you a sort of deeply intellectual and
00:26:38.640philosophical answer but really it's just because the material is so interesting I mean I sympathize
00:26:44.340entirely with people who spend their leisure time reading about true crime and watching documentaries
00:26:48.940because there is something inherently fascinating about transgression and about the way society more
00:26:55.100broadly responds to transgressive behaviour and also how it defines transgressive behaviour because
00:27:00.020of course that's a movable definition. Witchcraft is a great example of that. We don't consider it
00:27:05.660a crime anymore for I think very sensible reasons but they emphatically did in the early modern0.88
00:27:09.940period. So I think the thing that drew me into crime and witchcraft more generally is just0.96
00:27:15.860because it is fundamentally interesting. But from that basis, you can, I think,
00:27:20.880use it to tell you quite a lot about the values of any given society and about the tools that
00:27:27.080that society has available to it to control people's behaviour and to try and enforce
00:27:31.680those norms of behaviour. So I think crime as a historical topic is actually a really powerful
00:27:37.900one for for unpacking the society you're interested in as well as being something that's that's just
00:27:44.160interesting we all we all like sort of peering through the net curtains and seeing what people
00:27:47.740are getting up to um that they shouldn't be getting up to and i think that's that's the
00:27:52.280thing that drew me in um aside from the significant intellectual use of the topic you said that the
00:28:00.720crime of being a witch and of witchcraft is one of the big crimes what else was sort of similarly
00:28:06.320sort of seen as being like a biggie at that point it probably won't surprise people to know that the
00:28:12.680big crimes in the early modern period witchcraft aside are the same as the big crimes today and
00:28:17.780in particular we have to think about the so-called four pleas of the crown and these are the four
00:28:22.400offences which are reserved to the jurisdiction of of the crown and the central criminal court
00:28:28.480so they can't be tried by some sheriffs or justices of the peace or whatever they're regarded
00:28:33.180as the four most serious crimes and have to be tried by the most senior courts so those are
00:28:37.800murder um rape uh willful fire raising and robbery robbery in this case just meaning um usually a
00:28:45.980form of theft that is either targeted on on animals um which are regarded as really significant item
00:28:52.000or is exacerbated by by excessive violence or some other factor and so those are the four if you like
00:28:58.520most serious crimes in the sense of being reserved to central criminal jurisdictions there's also
00:29:02.780other ones like treason as well for example which is not one of the four pleas but is is obviously
00:29:07.180a serious crime is usually tried um by by central courts often by parliament as well parliament
00:29:12.860um is still a a law court and steps in sometimes to try to try treason um and witchcraft is is
00:29:19.420there as a sort of not quite a one of the four pleas but um we might get into this later it has
00:29:25.420a it has this kind of strange um procedure for trying witchcraft it is unique to witchcraft
00:29:30.540which sort of sets it apart as a very serious crime but kind of also what its own because of
00:29:35.020the nature of it because it is a unique offence and so those are I suppose the the cluster of
00:29:40.380offences which if you were to look at the most serious crimes that are tried in Scotland by that
00:29:45.340I mean look at the central criminal courts and see what they are dealing with it's going to be
00:29:49.260some combination of those four or five offences again and again. And were all those capital
00:29:55.020offences Alan? Yes they were capital offences and I mean the thing is technically speaking a lot of
00:30:01.860things are capital offences in the early modern period things that we would regard as not being
00:30:06.240crimes that they're likely to attract to death penalty are on paper capital offences so things
00:30:10.820like adultery see various forms of adultery and fornication are on paper capital offences now
00:30:17.200in practice they are almost never treated as capital offences they you're very unlikely to
00:30:22.880be executed certainly for fornication in fact you're very unlikely to be tried in a civil court
00:30:26.860for fornication you tend to be pulled up before the quirk session um similarly with forms of
00:30:31.380adultery so-called notorious adultery which is particularly kind of flagrant um or or repeated
00:30:37.240or public forms of adultery again that's supposedly a capital offense in practice you're
00:30:42.720probably going to be fined or banished or some other kind of punishment but that doesn't apply
00:30:47.060to the four pleas and to to witchcraft and treason they are capital offenses and they are
00:30:51.360almost always attract to the death penalty unless there's particular extenuating circumstances which
00:30:57.440there almost never are so yes these are capital offenses and and unlike some other capital
00:31:01.300offenses are treated as capital offenses can i just ask you a quick question about banishment
00:31:06.260each episode we try and name several people that were accused as as witches to try and kind of
00:31:12.380give them their identity back sort of thing so people think of them as being people rather than
00:31:16.740this just sort of lump number but we've occasionally come across somebody that was banished like i
00:31:22.260think maybe two or three times what really did that mean i think of it in fairy tale terms but
00:31:28.000what what did it mean in the sort of the practical like real life in scotland there are two levels of
00:31:34.180banishment i suppose that the first one is just simple banishment and that is an order usually to
00:31:39.020leave the kingdom sometimes to leave a particular locale within scotland and never turn so you'd
00:31:43.260banished from edinburgh for example you're told never to come back to edinburgh more usually it's
00:31:47.980banishment from the kingdom or sometimes the king's dominions which i think can possibly be interpreted
00:31:53.020as even more than just scotland because of course the king um at this time um is king of england and
00:31:58.700ireland and made his colonies as well so that's just a simple order leave the kingdom and you
00:32:03.020usually have to give a promise that you will turn up on the shore of leith or whatever on a given
00:32:07.740day and take ship sometimes though banishment is coupled with an order for transportation
00:32:13.020not just leave the kingdom it's you will be transported to the colonies overseas usually
00:32:17.820that's to to north america and that would involve you you know being sent to a particular ship
00:32:23.300usually and or a particular captain undertaking to transport you um overseas and so what it means
00:32:31.160essentially is that you have to leave and you're not allowed to come back usually under pain of
00:32:34.660death um occasionally there will be other potential punishments if you come back you might be fine for
00:32:40.460example but usually it's under pain of death it's a lighter punishment in the sense that you you
00:32:45.980still live but in an age when a lot of people when when moving a large distance is a significant
00:32:52.000undertaking um it's still a very significant penalty to have imposed upon you i came across
00:32:59.020one um verdict which say and i've only ever seen it once it said half guilty have you ever seen
00:33:07.040that before no i've not seen that that terminology i mean you often see in criminal cases somebody
00:33:12.420will be convicted of a sort of a lesser crime than the one they are initially indicted for
00:33:17.660so you know if if if they're um indicted for a classic example is infanticide if a woman is is
00:33:24.860is indicted for an infanticide she might be cleared of the infanticide but
00:33:29.500convicted of concealing the pregnancy or convicted of fornication or adultery or something
00:33:34.680like that so but I've not seen that terminology of half guilty that's that's that's really
00:33:40.220interesting I'd love to know I just saw it once I'll send it to you but what it might be is half
00:33:45.480guilty of half of the libel or something like that could well be that's maybe they're not over
00:33:50.680And you just mentioned there as well something that we might come to, which is the procedure for witchcraft trials.
00:33:59.900Now, of course, that absolutely fascinates me. So sitting with my full glasses, wig and silks on, please do tell us about the procedure of prosecuting and defending a witch.
00:34:12.840It develops quite a unique procedure, certainly by the early 17th century.
00:34:16.020it's a bit different in the 16th century it's particularly in the 1590s when witchcraft is
00:34:20.080beginning to to take off as an offence if you like it's it's a little chaotic at some points
00:34:25.260but from the early 17th century onwards we developed this this quite distinctive procedure
00:34:29.440and which is similar to the procedure for for um trying other offences but also different and
00:34:35.020important ways and what sets that apart is the requirement to have a so-called commission from
00:34:40.640the Privy Council now your listeners may well have heard of this what this means is an order
00:34:45.420from the Privy Council for a trial to take place usually for the the trial of named witches so
00:34:51.780it's not usually a couple of times there are examples of this but it's not usually for
00:34:56.460you know go and try all the witches in East Lothian or something like that it's usually
00:35:00.540there are specific people that have been accused of witchcraft and we are the Privy Council is
00:35:05.420commissioning a trial either in the locality so that they will appoint a panel of local people
00:35:10.520to act as one-time judges on this trial, or they will commission a trial to take place in the
00:35:17.660central criminal courts, the Court of the Justice General, later the High Court of Justiciary. Now
00:35:21.740obviously in order to get to that point of a commission being granted, some legwork has to
00:35:25.620have been done. You have to present the Privy Council with evidence that there is a reasonable
00:35:29.620case to answer. So what tends to happen therefore is that you get all sorts of activity going on
00:35:35.180at the local level before an application is made for a commission. So usually, the procedure is
00:35:40.860usually broadly along these lines, that an accusation will emerge, usually within the
00:35:45.820context of a parish or sometimes a borough or some other local unit, but an accusation will emerge
00:35:52.060somehow. Then an initial investigation will take place, often as it's the auspices of the local
00:35:57.180church, the minister in the Kirk session, sometimes borough authorities if it's in a town, sometimes
00:36:01.900other local officers, but it's usually the church, it seems. They will do things like collect witness
00:36:07.020statements of the activities that the witch is supposed to have, the alleged witch is supposed
00:36:11.580to have performed. They will also try and extract a confession, because that's regarded for most of
00:36:16.860our period as the most important form of evidence. Theoretically, those confessions should be
00:36:21.920extracted freely. So, you know, the witch will freely confess. In practice, there are ways and0.64
00:36:26.980means of persuading shall we say which is alleged which is to confess now theoretically torture is
00:36:33.480legal of course throughout this period unless specifically sanctioned by central but there
00:36:38.040are ways and means around that you can for example the classic procedure is to keep the alleged
00:36:42.320witch awake for a long period of time to stop them from sleeping and that is quite a significant
00:36:48.040form of torture but it doesn't leave external marks so you can sort of pretend that you didn't
00:36:53.320torture this witch. I think there are some examples of more physical, more violent tortures being
00:36:58.140imposed, but these are technically not allowed. They didn't happen, but they're technically not
00:37:02.480allowed. So once you have constructed your case, once you've got your witness statements and your
00:37:07.400confession, if you've got one, you will then apply to the Privy Council for this commission,
00:37:12.000this one-time trial of the named witch or witches. And the Privy Council will either grant or not
00:37:18.480grant that commission if it does then you'll go to trial and if you get to that point if you're
00:37:23.820an accused witch and you get to the point of a trial taking place that's probably curtains for
00:37:29.320you because there's quite a lot of evidence that earlier in the process potential cases will
00:37:33.980collapse there won't be enough evidence the pretty council will reject the request whatever but if
00:37:38.700you actually get to trial most witches at that point are from that point are convicted and then
00:37:45.380obviously you'll get to the point of sentencing and it's usually the same sentence that will be
00:37:49.180imposed on on which is certainly from the early 17th century onwards which is strangulation at
00:37:53.660the stake followed by burning of the body and so very rarely live burning usually burning after
00:37:59.880strangulation and that procedure of collecting evidence in the locality from start to finish
00:38:05.360from the Privy Council and then trial and execution from from the early 17th century onwards that is
00:38:11.060pretty much the standard procedure that nearly all Scottish witches will go through two questions
00:38:17.460for you first of all why did they need to get commissions was there a particular reason why
00:38:23.340commissions were required and secondly is the privy council the precursor of the privy council
00:38:31.160which sits down in London now is it the same port yeah and well to take the first one first
00:38:39.600why they need commissions. People like Julian Goodyear have written about this and various
00:38:45.100other scholars as well. And the best explanation seems to be, or a couple of explanations,
00:38:50.040one is possibly because witch hunting becomes bound up with the process of state formation.
00:38:55.600The government perceives there to be a need to have some control over the trial, the prosecution
00:38:59.680of witches as a kind of state forming tool. That's one explanation. The other is that the
00:39:06.360Privy Council kind of steps in and requires these commissions to be won largely as a reaction
00:39:11.520against the chaos of the 1590s, particularly the witch hunts right at the end of the 1590s,
00:39:16.500which had been quite sprawling and a little bit chaotic. So there's some suggestion that perhaps
00:39:22.440this is an attempt to stop that chaos of just sort of multiplying witch hunts, repeating the
00:39:29.420future. I mean, it doesn't particularly work because there are significant bursts of witch
00:39:33.960panic later on in the 17th century. But those, I think, certainly those are the explanations I've
00:39:39.080come across that are most persuasive, that it's a sort of state forming issue. It's also a sort
00:39:44.400of public control and keeping the judicial system functioning in a reasonably orderly way. And the
00:39:50.740Privy Council itself, it's the current Privy Council, the UK Privy Council is, as far as I'm
00:39:55.520aware, more in evolution of from the English Privy Council than the Scottish one. The Scottish
00:40:00.280Privy Council was abolished in 1708. And by that point had developed, I think, a slightly more
00:40:06.920significant role in Scottish life than the English Privy Council had by that point in modern
00:40:12.520government. The best way to think about the Scottish Privy Council is it's the closest
00:40:16.740thing there is to the cabinet. It's not a perfect analogy, but what the Privy Council does is it's
00:40:22.320effectively the executive body in Scotland, because the king's not there. I think we can
00:40:27.420make a case for the Privy Council having quite a lot of leeway in day-to-day government of so the
00:40:31.640Privy Council is really responsible for implementing policy and in some cases formulating policy as
00:40:37.320well theoretically under the guidance of of the Crown but the Crown's not there after 1603 so
00:40:42.620Scotland and witch hunting and the control of witch hunting comes within that remit I think
00:40:48.020so no a bit different I think from the current UK Privy Council which is more an offshoot of the
00:40:52.260English one. Can I ask as well when you mentioned there that the the method of execution was
00:40:57.680strangulation I've asked this from a couple of people is it strangling by hand or is it hanging
00:41:04.440or garroting? As far as I'm aware it's usually garroting other scholars might correct me on this
00:41:09.920but as far as I understand it the procedure is you're tied to the stake ready for burning but
00:41:14.480then before the pyre is lit you're garroted from I think from behind I think the idea is that you
00:41:18.300put a loop over the head from behind and garrote um but it's it's definitely not hanging because
00:41:23.860they would tell us if it was hanging so as far as i know it's it's strangling by with a garrote i
00:41:28.900don't think it'd be strangling by hand because that would be quite a demand on the executioner
00:41:32.220not an easy thing to do so i think garroting is probably what we're seeing happening it's still
00:41:36.240it's still sort of a peculiarly intimate method of execution isn't it it's because you'd have to
00:41:41.280be relatively close to the person who brought them i'm imagining yeah no absolutely it is and
00:41:46.940it's it's it's not unique to witchcraft but it's almost unique to to witchcraft isn't it as a form
00:41:52.340of execution there are i can't remember precise examples but i'm sure i've come across in a few
00:41:56.640other instances where people are sentenced to be to be strangled but it's it's very strongly
00:42:02.160associated with um with witchcraft and there are some other crimes as well where you see particular
00:42:07.240execution methods becoming associated with them i mean the obvious one for example in the late
00:42:12.44017th century is execution by drowning which becomes associated with religious non-conformity
00:42:17.500particularly as committed by women it's never as widespread as as executions for witchcraft
00:42:23.400which obviously cover a longer time period as well were they done in the norlock in edinburgh
00:42:28.920then is that why there's confusion claire i'm just thinking back to what you said before about a lot
00:42:33.580of people have this idea that wrong idea it's erroneous that the women were when they were
00:42:39.840accused of being witches in edinburgh they were drowned there but that's not true so is that more
00:42:44.940likely to be where it was a religious crime possibly i mean the executions for religious
00:42:50.620non-conformity are more associated with places other than edinburgh so the southwest
00:42:54.560fife there are definitely some examples of drowning of execution by drowning in the norloch
00:43:00.220not as you say of witchcraft as far as i'm aware but i've certainly come across one and again the
00:43:04.740details elude me at the moment um it was a man actually who was sentenced to drowning in in the
00:43:09.520Norloch so that can be used as a form of execution but not for witchcraft as far as I'm aware
00:43:15.580Humans are just endlessly horrifying I mean like why presumably people just couldn't swim0.98
00:43:21.380so they just threw them in water thinking they couldn't get out I don't it's really weird why
00:43:26.000would somebody that occur to them as a murder method at some point why does somebody go right
00:43:30.260we need an execution method I know let's drown somebody well I think the the thing to remember
00:43:35.800is that there's all there's usually a reason for for these decisions being made and quite often
00:43:39.720you will come up with unusually theatrical methods of execution in order to send a message so the
00:43:45.740classic example for example if if um if you're a robber if you're going around stealing people's
00:43:52.260cows or whatever you'll usually be executed but sometimes if it's a particularly notorious robber
00:43:57.340or bandit you'll see that being embellished so for example there might be an instruction that
00:44:01.360there to be hung on a be hanged on a particularly high gibbet and they're there to have the right
00:44:06.580hand cut off before execution or something now that's not just wanton cruelty I mean it is some
00:44:11.980I'm sure there's an element of that you want really want to make this person suffer but it's
00:44:16.520also to send a message that this person's offences were particularly beyond the pale and have been
00:44:22.560punished as such so you lot better watch out don't do what they did otherwise this this horrible
00:44:27.260thing is going to happen to you the same kind of thinking brings is what brings you to burning of
00:44:32.640a witch's body and also burning of the bodies of certain other particularly serious criminals the
00:44:36.920idea there is to completely purge the world of the evil that this is contained in this body which
00:44:43.400is why for example in cases of bestiality which of which there are a rather uncomfortable number
00:44:48.900in early modern Scotland you usually have the person committing it almost always a man of course
00:44:54.820is executed but then the animal is also put to death and their body is burned and that's the
00:45:00.700reason it's not because the animal is judged to be guilty it's because their body has been defiled
00:45:05.080and polluted and it's now a vessel of evil and needs to be purged from the world by burning to
00:45:10.680ashes and that's the same sort of thinking i think that that um that feeds into the burning of
00:45:16.480witches bodies after they have been strangled it's because we need to purge and we've been told
00:45:22.020as well that it's because there was a fear and i don't know if this was consistent across the
00:45:26.040entire range of the witch trials or if it was a particular point but there was a fear that the
00:45:30.940devil might reanimate the corpse and you know wreak wreak havoc in these have you ever come
00:45:38.440across that they did with the ashes because we haven't found anybody that that has a good idea
00:45:43.160of what happened to the ashes no i must say i'm not sure i'm not sure what i mean my assumption
00:45:47.200was just that ashes are left to scatter to the to the four winds but maybe there was something more
00:45:52.560formal done on them i certainly not come across any specific indications in judicial records for
00:45:57.400example that you know in order to collect the ashes and bury there or anything like that
00:46:01.000the story just seems to end with burn the body to ashes that's what we've heard is nobody seems to
00:46:07.440have any any further so it would make sense that it was just it was rubbish at that point just let
00:46:11.460it go i don't think it's very sensible if it was me i'd be gathering the ashes up if it was that
00:46:16.560fearful i'll be putting them in some sort of a locked box if i was that superstitious i i don't
00:46:23.360understand why they thought at that point the bad sort of magic that was around it would be gone
00:46:27.800odd i think i think so they hadn't had a training in horror films of
00:46:33.260you know so that's why yeah a burned body is a destroyed body so that what they're after is the
00:46:40.160destruction of the body and ashes are no longer a body so i suspect that's the thinking there that0.73
00:46:44.920at that point you've purged the world of evil i think that zoe has a very very vivid imagination0.71
00:46:52.160and it's thinking why why if the devil can actually reanimate somebody could he not just do0.94
00:46:58.700it from dust i often think that as well i often think if the devil is going to wreak revenge
00:47:03.180on his person on earth being called a witch and going to be put to death surely it would be more
00:47:09.220convenient to do that before you've killed them you know surely giving them the power to come back0.93
00:47:15.480and reap revenge would be more helpful at an earlier stage but all these people were just
00:47:21.480left for themselves it's terrible one of the things we spoke about um online and i saw you
00:47:27.360speaking about online was the fact that in the modern day people kind of think that the people
00:47:34.040that lived a few hundred years ago were somehow different from us um and zoe spoke about this
00:47:39.900recently on a on one of our podcasts so you had an example didn't you um about about how we view
00:47:47.640um people from the past as being very different to us one one way in which that it just kind of
00:47:52.220a light bulb went on for me a wee while ago during i can't remember which podcast it was recording
00:47:56.240but i just suddenly had this kind of realization i think it was also running alongside the fact
00:48:00.780I've just read the book quite recently Hamlet by Maggie O'Farrell that's about Shakespeare and
00:48:06.680particularly about the death of his son Hamlet who inspired then the play presumably Hamlet
00:48:11.880because apparently the name Hamlet and the name Hamlet were completely interchangeable so that
00:48:17.340the two names are the same but anyway I was thinking about that and I was thinking about
00:48:21.360that often on historical programs that I've watched you know I've picked up on the fact
00:48:25.860that you know then in those days people might have like eight nine ten eleven children and quite a
00:48:31.000lot of them would die and i'd never really thought particularly about the fact that you know each
00:48:35.900death would be a horrific death just as it would be if something happened to one of my children
00:48:40.160i just thought of them as a kind of a factory of of workers that you would just popping out these
00:48:45.460kids you know and you know expect them to die so you wouldn't be too invested and then i had this1.00
00:48:49.960kind of light bulb moment of zoe you idiot you know obviously that would be horrific it would1.00
00:48:54.080be awful it'd be you know just as bad as it would be as it would be in the modern day and i think1.00
00:48:58.420it's something that it's really easy to fall into of thinking people in the past as being i don't
00:49:03.400know like shadow figures or not quite human in the way that we are and of course that's complete
00:49:08.320nonsense do you find that in your work that you have to you have to say to people well actually
00:49:13.940they're not really any different to us yes yeah absolutely and i completely agree and then the
00:49:20.300child death thing is a really good example because there was a long-standing assumption
00:49:25.220that, you know, until you were a child at the age of five or something, that most parents
00:49:29.420didn't really care very much, didn't invest anything, which is just not true. You can
00:49:33.120see that if you look at letters or diaries or whatever, usually of more elite people
00:49:37.540because these are the people who believe diaries and letters, it's very clear that they react
00:49:44.840badly and with huge amounts of sadness when when young children die um and so yeah people are
00:49:53.220i think fundamentally similar to us and you're right that we have to avoid falling into that
00:49:58.360trap but people do but what's different of course is the world they live in the belief systems that
00:50:04.600they have and that means that if you're if you're looking from the outside sometimes their behavior
00:50:09.140can look very strange which hunting is a perfect example why on earth would you believe that people
00:50:14.040had magic powers and the devil would appear to them and invite them to these witch's sabbaths
00:50:19.520and all. It looks just crazy. The point is, of course, that makes perfect sense within the belief
00:50:24.360system of the time. So these are not people who are sort of much more credulous than us, who are
00:50:28.960much less intelligent than us, who aren't as sophisticated as us or anything at all. It is
00:50:33.720people who are just like us or very similar to us, but live in a different world and have different
00:50:39.020ideas about how the world works have different understandings of everything around them and I
00:50:44.960think once you get once you grasp that it becomes much easier I think to understand the phenomena
00:50:50.700you're dealing with but it also alerts you to the fact that you can't be just sort of arrogantly1.00
00:50:55.420dismissive of all these idiots who are doing stupid things because you have to be much more1.00
00:51:00.040empathetic to these people and try and understand that they are fundamentally the same as us but1.00
00:51:06.340they are responding to a different set of circumstances a different intellectual framework
00:51:11.600different cultural framework as well so yeah I think I think there is a tendency to forget that
00:51:17.200and to kind of laugh almost at people in the past for believing daft things but that's not helpful
00:51:21.800and it doesn't help you understand something like the witch hunt which is a much more
00:51:28.120internally logical phenomenon than it might first appear. What do you make to the sort of the modern
00:51:34.820And I think it's a kind of a rewriting of history that at the time the women, like, you know, the majority of them obviously being women, obviously it wasn't all women that were convicted or accused of being witches, but that the women that were involved were mostly kind of healers and midwives and they were pagans and that people didn't really understand their religious, you know, their set up, they were against the church, whatever.
00:52:23.600Ordinarily, the best predictor, I suppose, of being accused of a witch is not charming or healing.
00:52:30.100It's what's called scolding, scolding, a practitioner of verbal violence, if you like to put it in a euphemistic way.
00:52:36.580So basically, a woman who is regarded as not behaving in public in a sufficiently kind of demure way,
00:52:43.940or a woman who has a reputation of arguing or swearing at people, that is the best predictor of being accused of witchcraft.
00:52:51.700Now, that doesn't mean, of course, that any woman who, you know, argues in public with somebody is going to get pointed at and people are going to scream witch.
00:53:00.060That's not how it works. But if you're looking for a predictor of somebody who is going to be accused of witchcraft, that is a much better predictor, a kind of long history of that kind of behaviour.
00:53:11.020that's a much better predictor than healing or charming because usually what happens in Scotland
00:53:15.460is that people who are who are known as as healers who are reputed to have the ability to
00:53:20.900or to know about charms they are either going to be caught up by the Kirk session and given
00:53:27.880punishments that are to do with repentance so you know go and stand in sackcloth before the
00:53:33.560congregation for several Sundays in penance for your your heathenistic practices your
00:53:39.780superstitious practices or they're going to to be allowed to just kind of put along in the community
00:53:44.980and not really be be bothered these people are not generally regarded as proto-witches or
00:53:50.740certainly in scotland are not generally regarded as people who are practicing witchcraft they have
00:53:55.780a much um less sort of um frightening niche in society so if they are punished at all it's
00:54:04.060probably going to be by the kirk session or the presbytery and it's probably going to be through
00:54:08.020public repentance they're unlikely to be caught to be accused of witchcraft it's much more likely1.00
00:54:14.460that women who are regarded as transgressing feminine norms and in other ways are going to
00:54:21.500be caught up in witch trials so i think there might be other parts of europe where the charmer
00:54:26.300and the healer is more likely to be to be caught up in the witch trials but in scotland that doesn't
00:54:31.200seem to be a typical pattern if they are punished at all it's probably going to be by the kirk
00:54:35.900session or the presbytery and it's probably going to be through public repentance we heard a great
00:54:41.540phrase a great description which i've added to my twitter bio i think it was mary craig who does a
00:54:47.340lot of reading of records and um she said that she'd seen the word come up again and again
00:54:52.280quarrelsome dame which makes you think of a 1950s james cagney movie rather than 17th century
00:54:59.860scotland but i absolutely love the phrase but it's so sad that that seems to be the phraseology
00:55:05.180that was used for people that was effectively one of what she called the four proofs one of
00:55:11.220the first types of tests to see whether or not you might be a witch was identifying it as a0.98
00:55:17.100quarrelsome dame yeah i mean that that word quarrelsome or quarreling that that is intimately
00:55:23.360bound up with with witch hunting because it's that that you often see cropping up in indictments of
00:55:29.500which is, or in witness testimonies about delights,
00:55:33.120which is, it's an unfeminine behaviour,
00:56:23.120I don't think that they're entirely the same thing,
00:56:24.840But it's very clear, it seems to me, that a big part of the witch hunt is to do with grappling with what femininity is and how you can, how you, what role women play in society, what proper feminine behaviour is and how you police that.
00:56:38.720I think witch hunting seems to be very clearly bound up with that.
00:56:43.180And that goes for sexual behaviour as well, of course,0.51
00:56:45.080because it's a big part of the witch hunters,
00:56:47.800is the fear that women are giving themselves in body to the devil,
00:56:53.080which seems to very clearly map onto fears about female promiscuity,
00:56:57.520about the dangers of unbounded female sexuality.0.84
00:57:02.420And it's all part of this strong focus that's bound up in the witch hunt0.81
00:58:05.960But yeah, I mean, that's a very long standing thread in Western Christian thinking.
00:58:11.720It seems to be very clearly about the witch hunt as well.
00:58:14.680This is absolutely fascinating. And I think, you know, it's not just the fact that it was sort of 85 or so percent of those accused were women.
00:58:23.360I think that draws women to be so involved with that.
00:58:26.840I think and in the current sort of the fight to have women pardoned and memorialised and so on.
00:58:32.920i think it's the fact that we don't really seem to have moved on that far you know like obviously
00:58:37.140women aren't being grotted and burned anymore in our country but i am i think there's still this
00:58:42.540idea about being a quarrelsome dame i mean now obviously it's been kind of reappropriated whereas
00:58:47.400i think a lot of women get a kind of a like kind of a dark humored enjoyment of of identifying
00:58:53.320themselves as being a quarrelsome dame you know but i do i do think that it still strikes a chord
00:58:58.060because there is still a problem there that we're we're not people the way that we would hope to be
00:59:02.040by this stage you know so many hundreds of years later but I think I think what's really interesting
00:59:07.220is once you start thinking of the people that were accused as being real people and individuals with
00:59:13.200families and jobs and lives and struggles and they were just doing the best they could in a chaotic
00:59:18.200in some ways kind of environment it doesn't feel a million miles away you know like we're in a
00:59:22.520situation now where where many people don't really have an awful lot of confidence in our government
00:59:27.600and in the choices that they make and we're kind of following along with different things that are
00:59:32.340happening but feeling like we've been duped in some ways so i can see that there's absolutely
00:59:36.520parallels where people are just trying their best to survive and get through a difficult patch
00:59:41.600and i'm just glad that we don't we don't um necessarily kill people these days at this stage
00:59:48.520who knows what's happening with what's happened in the last couple of years things could still
00:59:53.540go horribly horribly wrong we're doing quite a good job of killing ourselves at the moment though
00:59:57.580i i would say you're not taking care of uh of the pandemic side of things yeah that's what's so
01:00:05.600scary i think um when alan was talking about um we're the same people it's just the circumstances
01:00:12.200that change the belief system around change and and if the belief system around change could change
01:00:18.280again then women could still find themselves in a very vulnerable situation and that's really part
01:00:25.500of why i think it's really really important to ensure that we go back and address this period
01:00:30.940of time in history now alan we'll put you on the spot because we know not all historians agree with
01:00:37.740the idea of going back and addressing history in a way such as a pardon do you have any views on
01:00:45.360whether or not it's good or not and don't just say it's all right we don't need you to agree with us
01:00:49.720Just because you're on the show, feel free if you don't think it's appropriate to tell us.
01:00:54.020Well, I mean, it is definitely important to go back and look critically at these issues
01:01:02.260and try and figure out what was underpinning it and try and make sure that we recognise
01:01:09.340the tensions and issues and that we address those.
01:01:12.900I mean, obviously, we're seeing that happening very strongly with Black Lives Matter movement
01:01:17.760with questions around Britain's involvement in slave trade and in slavery.
01:01:24.420So I think it is really important to address these.
01:01:28.240I mean, the issue of a pardon, I'll leave that to others
01:01:32.220who are more sort of conversant in the use of this as a kind of judicial tool.
01:01:39.840I mean, I think it's, one thing I would say is that
01:01:43.460whether it's entirely sort of necessary, I'm not sure,
01:01:47.240because we all kind of know that these women were innocent um we know that they were they weren't
01:01:52.020witches um and i think possibly the danger in just a straight pardon is that you end up
01:01:57.720not addressing the other issues that are bound up with which i mean it's not just that these
01:02:02.860these women were convicted of witchcraft but there were lots of other things that led to that
01:02:07.180there are issues like we've talked about misogynistic um views about like women we've
01:02:11.700talked about um or we could talk about um the other things that lead to um to panics about which
01:02:18.340ideas about the devil for example it's regarded a very real physical presence um so if we were to
01:02:24.760go down the the line of pardoning which i think would be important to um to not see that as the
01:02:30.340end of the process not see that as right we we've done it now we've sorted it all out um we we the
01:02:36.620the justice has been done we can now wash our hands of this issue because there's so much more
01:02:41.020and so many more problematic issues bound up in the witch hunt
01:02:44.460than simply the fact that these women were executed for a crime
01:02:47.640which we now know, or are fairly confident at least, does not exist.
01:02:52.940So I think something would have to be used carefully, I think, is my response.