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,
00:00:08.740and we're bringing you this podcast because we want to tell you
00:00:11.580about 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.
00:00:26.720The campaign Witches of Scotland wants three things.
00:00:29.580Firstly, a pardon for all those convicted of witchcraft.
00:00:33.120Secondly, an apology for all those who were accused as witches.
00:00:37.420And 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.
00:00:55.160Welcome to episode five of Witches of Scotland.
00:00:58.240This week we have part two of Professor Julian Goodyear's chat with us.
00:01:01.680But before we start, we want to thank a couple of people who got in contact this week.
00:01:05.660Firstly, we'd like to thank Fiona Musk, who used to be the archivist at Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives,
00:01:11.820who got in touch to send us links to transcripts of documents relating to the Aberdeen witchcraft trials of 1596 and 1597.
00:01:20.160We're reading through the fascinating papers.
00:01:22.760We also want to give a shout out to those who helped getting the podcast up and running,
00:01:26.240most especially Claire's brother David Mitchell who is our fantastic sound engineer
00:01:30.920and Zoe's son Luca who has composed the great music for us for the show
00:01:36.520we've also decided that each week what we should do is pick out the names of a couple of women
00:01:41.740from different parts of Scotland who were accused convicted and executed as witches
00:01:46.760unfortunately we don't know much about them other than their names but we thought it might be a good
00:01:51.500idea to remember the women that we are talking about I think it's really important that we think
00:01:56.220about the women and men who were executed and who went through this absolute horror. We think of
00:02:02.080them as individual people because there was round about 2,500 that were executed and I think it's
00:02:07.960important that as far as we can we try and think of them as separate people. So who are the people
00:02:12.180you've come up with this week to have a look at? So I've looked at three different people and as I
00:02:17.400say we've got very little information on them Zoe. The first one is Beatrix Leslie. She was a woman
00:02:25.180from Delkeith. We know that she was a widow and she was tried, convicted. She went to trial at
00:02:31.880the High Court of Justiciary on the 3rd of August 1661. That is, I think, all that we have recorded
00:02:40.720about her. Wow, that's amazing. The second person that you've come up with is Nick Neving. She was
00:02:46.080one of the earliest recorded, is that right? It's noted that she was executed as a witch in 1563
00:02:52.020And the reason I looked that one up was that was the year that the Witchcraft Act came into force.
00:02:57.360So they weren't hanging about when the Witchcraft Act came into force.
00:03:01.320People were being accused and going through trial and being convicted that very year.
00:03:07.280And the only other thing we know about Nick leaving as one of the earliest recorded people convicted of witchcraft was that she was unmarried.
00:03:15.280That was the other thing that was noted.
00:03:16.840But it's funny that the things that they noted about people were their names, where the trial was and whether or not they were married.
00:03:24.620It's a strange only factor that's considered important.
00:03:27.820I don't think that is strange because I'd be really interested to see a breakdown.
00:03:32.520I know it's not possible to have a complete breakdown of this because of the scan records.0.96
00:03:36.300But I'd like to have a breakdown of how many women were executed that were married.
00:03:40.860you know how many of these women were in fact without a man by their side and therefore possibly
00:03:45.980seen as suspicious or dangerous or weird or you know it's something that marked them out as being
00:03:51.760separate even as well just not having some support in the community you know not having a man to speak
00:03:59.360for yes would be a vulnerability absolutely because if you didn't have anybody to stand by
00:04:04.020you i mean who's going to stick up for you because i've already talked about that the absolute the
00:04:08.220the climate of fear that there must have been that if you were then you know to mark yourself
00:04:12.740out as somebody that was friendly with somebody that had been accused as a witch did that mean
00:04:15.960that you were then going to get brought into it as well so that's actually something quite
00:04:20.380important about the witchcraft acting we maybe should do a podcast or part of a podcast about
00:04:24.540the actual words of the act itself and what it actually what it actually means do you know any
00:04:29.640do you know any legal experts that we could get into one or two legal experts not too far from
00:04:36.840marvelous but to pick up on what you just said there what's interesting was that you could be
00:04:43.620convicted under the witchcraft act and executed not only if you were a witch but if you'd gone
00:04:49.680to a witch for help so so coming to the aid of somebody who was accused of being a witch and
00:04:57.120saying i don't think she's a witch is my friend would be placing you closer to that person and
00:05:03.540obviously nearer to the suspicion to start that you would somehow be obliged to that person or
00:05:10.520beholden to them because they'd helped you or something so it was really really dangerous to
00:05:15.800come to anybody they must have been so isolated and shunned just absolutely horrific really horrific
00:05:21.820yeah and the third woman that we've got for for this week she was also a widow wasn't she
00:05:26.880she was she was indeed agonist henry from curis i thought it was a good idea to pick someone from
00:05:35.300curis because of the fact that we've already spoken about the tory burn witch lilis ade and
00:05:42.040we've actually been to curis we went down there to see the witch's trail there that was very
00:05:47.060interesting and there's a very active community there that have been pushing for memorial for a
00:05:51.620long time yeah we're hopefully going to get councillor kate stewart on in a future episode
00:05:57.780to talk about that she is part of remembering the accused witches of scotland and it would
00:06:03.680be really great to hear a bit from them absolutely yeah that'd be great what we know about agnes
00:06:09.780henry just the full details is that she was again a widow who went to trial on the 9th of july
00:07:42.740We go on to our talk with a professor that we left last week on a cliffhanger, where Claire asked Julian,
00:07:49.980Why Scotland? Why out of the whole of Europe did we surpass every other country in looking for and finding witches?
00:08:00.460And Julian gave us a very interesting answer.
00:08:03.200Scotland is still just a sort of case study of a European phenomenon.
00:08:07.200And belief in witchcraft is a pan-European thing.
00:08:11.240I have to begin this by talking about things that you would find anywhere in Europe.
00:08:16.360I suppose the two things that you need to think about are, firstly, the beliefs of the common people and the practices of the common people,
00:08:25.000their magical beliefs and their idea that people could harm someone else by magical means.
00:08:32.440There are magical practitioners in the early modern period who cure people, foretell the future, find lost or stolen goods, conduct love magic to try and get somebody to acquire a partner or reacquire a partner.
00:08:47.640there's various types of services that these people provide. And, you know, it's not all
00:08:52.840straightforwardly magic, and they probably won't use the word magic. But nevertheless,
00:08:56.580sort of rituals and sort of verbal charms that we would regard as magical are their stock in trade.
00:09:03.240So they legitimate magic on a sort of everyday level. And, you know, if you can have good magic,
00:09:09.560you can have bad magic. These magical practitioners on the whole are not the witches, if you see what
00:09:15.020Some of them are. You could imagine a sort of Venn diagram, you know, the circle of magical practitioners, circle of witches.
00:09:21.160There'll be some overlap, but not very much.
00:09:23.960And some of the magical practitioners will also be involved in witchcraft not as being accused,
00:09:29.940but as actually identifying witches or detecting witches as part of their healing practice.
00:09:36.520They may well suggest that their clan has been bewitched.
00:09:39.800Ah, that someone has put a spell on them, and what they were doing is they were healing them with their magic.
00:09:46.280Yeah, conducting sort of anti-witchcraft practice.
00:09:49.220So these kinds of discourses feed into village beliefs, and then we have actual quarrels and curses.
00:09:58.120And probably the single most common time when somebody will believe that somebody else is a witch is if you have a quarrel with that person, and then something bad happens to you.
00:10:09.260you think, why did that bad thing happen to me? Well, you know, could it be that that person I
00:10:14.280had a quarrel with is getting their revenge by magic? And in the trial records, we see time and
00:10:20.640again, neighbours testifying that they had a quarrel with so and so and then this bad thing
00:10:26.040happened to them. So the easiest attribution in its earliest days is you have become sick,
00:10:33.680you might go to a person to help you get better with magic now those persons men women equally
00:10:40.480split usually a woman i think it's about two-thirds women okay so two-thirds women so you'd probably
00:10:47.040go to see a woman and they would heal you with magic but suggest that maybe bad magic had been
00:10:53.080used upon you yeah you know it's not their everyday stocking trade they won't be diagnosing bewitchment
00:10:58.600every day but you know from time to time or you could work it out yourself you don't you don't
00:11:02.280have to go to a magical practitioner, you can
00:11:04.300simply think, I had that screaming0.94
00:11:05.980row with old Mrs So-and-so and she0.95
00:11:08.240cursed me. And then something happened0.97
00:11:31.920people right that is a very good question that follows on from that because these sort of village
00:11:39.060neighborly interactions you know as far as we can tell they've been going on for centuries they
00:11:43.360don't start in the 16th century when witchcraft executions people have been falling out with one
00:11:49.260another for centuries is that what we're saying that's right and and the normal the default thing
00:11:54.460for them to do is to go to the supposed witch and try and negotiate a reconciliation we see those
00:12:01.420time and again in the documents you know the stories that these neighbours tell is you know
00:12:05.780I had a quarrel with so and so and then I became ill or my cattle became ill or whatever and then
00:12:12.300I went to her and tried to sort it out and we had a drink together and I got better. Well that would
00:12:17.340have been nice if that's the way the story of witchcraft ended but sadly not. Yeah the reason
00:12:22.520those stories were written down is then something else happened to somebody else or things got worse
00:12:27.500and the person gets caught up in the legal system for some other reason and then inquiries are made
00:12:33.980and all these stories come out you know that's why those stories were written down these quarrels
00:12:38.860accusations of bewitchment reconciliations they have been happening for centuries beforehand
00:12:43.700and they continue to happen after executions have stopped they continue to happen now
00:12:48.540yeah i mean owen davis is the scholar who's looked at this most i think says that they have largely
00:12:55.700stopped in britain and i think he hasn't found any cases in late 20th century britain but they are
00:13:02.140the norm in the witch hunting period so you know the the common folk believe in witchcraft in the
00:13:08.800sense that they believe that there are people who can work harmful magic so you know witchcraft is
00:13:14.220a bad thing you know there are no good witches right that's a sort of background factor it's
00:13:18.920essential it's vital we see it in many many cases but it's not what causes the panics it's not what
00:13:24.740causes the criminal justice system to become involved and what happens there is as you say
00:13:28.940it's the witchcraft act it is the authorities and it is the elite educated idea of witchcraft which
00:13:36.760is the idea that somebody has sold their soul to the devil and the devil is the sort of driving
00:13:42.560force of it in their minds and the intellectual idea of a witch arose in the 15th century it's
00:13:49.380constructed from a number of things but the idea that there is a sect of people many of whom are
00:13:57.000women who secretly worship the devil this is something that various inquisitors and people
00:14:02.540trying to deal with heresy start to convince themselves that this sect exists and various
00:14:07.640treatises are written about it it starts to become persuasive and you then start interrogating people
00:14:15.180and asking them if they're members of this sect and you know if you interrogate even a few people
00:14:19.200under torture you start to get evidence. Surprisingly people start confessing to things
00:14:24.260you want them to confess them to when you're torturing them. Yeah I'm afraid it's in some
00:14:29.580ways as simple as that but this then sort of fits in with the belief systems and in the 16th century
00:14:35.640we have the Protestant Reformation you know a huge political and religious movement challenging
00:14:41.080the authority of the Catholic Church and in Catholic countries you have what historians
00:14:46.300called the Counter-Reformation, which is a movement within Catholic countries to reassert
00:14:51.140Catholic orthodoxy and to prove that they're right and the Protestants are wrong, and to
00:14:56.140enforce Catholic orthodoxy on the population. And these two clashing religions, each of0.95
00:15:03.520them is trying to prove that they're more godly than the other. Each of them is trying0.90
00:15:09.120to spread correct Christianity to the population.
00:15:13.480They're aware that the population doesn't have the details of correct belief.
00:15:19.540The Protestants particularly, because it's completely well understood by them
00:15:24.100that the Catholic Church has led people astray for centuries,
00:15:27.240but we now have the correct faith, so we now have to spread it to the people.
00:15:30.800So they're not surprised when they find that people have the wrong beliefs.
00:15:33.980Were both groups vying to be more godly then?
00:15:37.280Was that part of the reason behind this, that they were trying to prove that they were the ones that were able to identify or flush out the witches?
00:15:47.980Yes. And, you know, if they can deal with witches, you know, that proves that they're on God's side because, you know, this really is God versus God.
00:15:57.080So the more witches they found, the more godly they were.
00:16:00.020Yes. I mean, they're not running numbers to say, let's see how godly we are this week.
00:16:04.520but yeah in a nutshell yeah yes that's right and they can even say to themselves you know the devil
00:16:10.960is attacking us particularly aggressively and we find all these witches because the devil is so
00:16:17.220active in scotland because of the success of the reformation you know this has stirred up the devil
00:16:22.860and made the devil more angry and so no doubt it's upsetting that you find all these witches
00:16:27.960because they don't really want witchcraft but the fact that they do find it and that they're dealing
00:16:32.560with it successfully sort of further validates their belief that they're correct that the devil
00:16:37.700is out to get them if the devil's out to get you you must be right was there a very literal view
00:16:42.640of the devil as being like a person as being somebody who literally would be abroad they0.76
00:16:47.580really did genuinely think women were dancing with the devil and so on and slightly more intimate0.74
00:16:52.800communication with the devil they really did genuinely believe that yes time and again in
00:16:57.580confessions, you get the details of how this witch met the devil and what she or he did when she or
00:17:03.400he met him. In a nutshell, a confession is a negotiation between the witchcraft suspect,
00:17:09.140who is mostly an uneducated member of the common folk with popular ideas about the devil,
00:17:14.820and the interrogator who probably has many of the educated ideas of the elite. And so the educated
00:17:23.920elite tend to think more of a sort of spiritual devil, of a devil who is a tempter, the devil who
00:17:29.380is inside your head. And the common folk tend to think more of the devil as a sort of external
00:17:34.640force and as a black man. One of the people that we've been speaking to already, Mary Kidd, told
00:17:40.580us about that example of the identifying a black man, the racism that was involved in it. Was that
00:17:46.700what it was? We're not thinking about ethnic difference here. I'm still actually not sure
00:17:52.140what they mean by the black man. I don't think it's about clothing. It may be something to do
00:17:56.680with hair colour. One thing that the elite will certainly recognise about the devil is that he is
00:18:02.820a fallen angel, and as such, he is a spirit. So, you know, there has had to be quite a lot of
00:18:09.480theological work to understand how a spirit can appear as a man. The spirit doesn't have a body.
00:18:16.540Was there a lot of writing about that, explaining how that could come to be?
00:18:21.300Yes, I mean, that's mostly been written about in the Middle Ages. This has already been established by the early modern period. But we're looking at people like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. But yeah, the orthodox elite idea is that that's not a real person, you know, and it's not a real body. And it's made of condensed air. The logical corollaries of that is because it's made of condensed air, it has no blood. And people in those days assume that body heat comes from the blood. And so that the body of the devil will be cold.
00:18:49.960how interesting and many witches are asked about that so people were being tortured and as people
00:18:57.060who like to extract confessions from people usually have they've got a set idea about what
00:19:02.220they want to extract from them now i understand that in scotland and i do want to come back to
00:19:09.760speak a wee bit more about how the whole thing particularly took off in scotland but i understand
00:19:14.900that in scotland one of the favored way of extracting confessions was sleep deprivation
00:19:21.940is that correct yes so what would happen was people would simply be denied sleep and they
00:19:29.700would be asked questions by people wanting certain answers so they would presumably be posing the
00:19:37.380questions like was the devil cold over and over again yeah and then eventually the person will
00:19:43.480repeat back to them, I touched the devil, he was cold. Yes, that's right. It's tricky because,
00:19:50.600of course, the interrogators have to convince themselves that that really is coming from the
00:19:55.940suspect themselves. And so they have to convince themselves that they haven't simply fed the
00:20:01.160suspect the answer. And I'm not an expert on modern interrogations, but the little that I know
00:20:07.460does indicate that, in fact, interrogators can convince themselves that that really did come
00:20:13.180from the suspect they don't realise how far
00:23:50.860I'm reluctant to attribute too much to him.
00:23:54.820You know, much of it or all of it perhaps would have happened without him.
00:23:58.200Certainly in the early stages, he is directly involved. And the first of the big panics, the so-called North Berwick Panic of 1519-91, which is sort of centred around an alleged gathering of which is in North Berwick Church, is about conspiracy against the king.
00:24:17.640All of the story that comes out in interrogating these suspects is about conspiracy against the king, and he is personally involved in some of the interrogations.
00:24:25.680So this legitimizes and politicizes witchcraft prosecutions and gives them a high profile. And that's just something that happens for a few years. The Second Panic of 1597, James is also involved in that, and he seems to have interrogated some of the witches in person again.
00:24:45.680the 1597 panic is much less well documented than the North Berwick one so we know less about his
00:24:52.300role but the legitimization that James gives to witchcraft persecution is very hard to quantify
00:24:58.860it probably is worth something and James also writes a book about it called Demonology which
00:25:05.060interestingly coins the word demonology he's the first person to use that word but various other
00:25:10.560writers use it then afterwards which is a sort of introduction to witchcraft and the devil and the
00:25:18.380relationship between the witch and the devil and why witches need to be executed so you know James
00:25:24.400is an intellectual and you know he explains this in you know reasonably sophisticated theological
00:25:29.640terms he gives the appropriate biblical references and you know sort of unpacks it in a more or less
00:25:34.660logical way you've got important and you've got the state the church i should say the churches
00:25:40.700are trying to show how godly they are to weed out the witches you've also got the state in the form
00:25:47.220of the king is it the combination of those two things that made scotland have higher numbers
00:25:53.880or are there other factors as well yes no that is the key thing that that gives scotland the high
00:25:59.520numbers and i mean i use the phrase the godly state because you know the church is not simply
00:26:05.060something that happens on sunday morning in a building religion is about the whole of people's
00:26:10.840lives on every day of the week and you know the king has to be godly too the privy council has
00:26:16.200to be godly too the king's foreign policy has to be godly too and if it's not the ministers will
00:26:20.560have a work with it the king knows that and the king you know has bought into that and one of the
00:26:25.900ideologies of this period is the idea of the divine right of kings and that's another thing
00:26:30.280that James VI is notable for is his promotion as a king and as an intellectual of the intellectual
00:26:37.840idea of the divine rights of kings which is that God has personally appointed the king you know we
00:26:44.020still see this on the coinage the letters DG on the coinage Dei Gratio by the grace of God if that
00:26:50.340means anything. It means that God has appointed the present queen to rule. But, you know, this
00:26:56.220really has political force in the early modern period. And preachers will emphasise that you
00:27:04.180must obey the king, you must obey the powers that be. And the powers that be is a phrase from Romans
00:27:10.40013 in the New Testament. And, you know, the obedience to the powers that be gets hammered
00:27:16.300home in sermon after sermon. And the king is in charge of that. And one of the things James says
00:27:21.680in his book is, which is, should and must be tried by the lawful godly authorities, by God's
00:27:28.640appointed magistrates, because he's been appointed by God. The judges in the courts have also been
00:27:33.800appointed by God, and they are the agents that can deal with this threat from the devil. So this is
00:27:40.960a contest between the devil and James and his government as divine rulers. So religion is in0.95
00:27:48.760with the bricks of that ideology. So witches are tried not in the church courts, but in secular
00:27:53.780criminal courts, the ancestors of the High Court of Justiciary today. So it is the authority of
00:28:00.140the crown, the state, if you like, that is ordering their executions. But the courts of the church,
00:28:06.840the Kirk sessions, the presbyteries, are also involved at a sort of lower level or at a
00:28:12.820preliminary level. They're often the ones identifying, which is in the first place,
00:28:17.920conducting the interrogations, doing the torture, yeah, you know, they may well have secular
00:28:24.260figures in aiding them. But the intensity of the Scottish witch hunt is linked to the intensity
00:28:30.920of the Scottish Reformation, where they have a Kirk session in every parish, at least in the
00:28:35.860Lowlands. And so, as well as the minister, there is a dozen lay elders whose job it is to promote
00:28:43.880godliness. The Kirk Session does not just organise the coffee rota and the flower rota. It's a court.
00:28:49.740If you do something ungodly, you can be hauled in before the Kirk Session and interrogated,
00:28:55.140punished, made to do penance. It's mostly dealing with relatively minor offences. But if it finds a
00:29:00.860case of witchcraft, it will pass it up the line and get it dealt with. The intensity of the way
00:29:06.960in which the coaccession penetrates into the lives of the common folk, we don't see that everywhere
00:29:12.740in Europe. You know, England, for example, does not have an equivalent institution. England is
00:29:17.960also Protestant. But, you know, the English vestry, the committee that runs the parish church in
00:29:23.240England, isn't quite so active as a court as this Scottish coaccession. And the way in which people's
00:29:30.180Lives are being affected by this, and everyone is having to sign on the dotted line to this.
00:29:36.700Everyone is having to cooperate with this.
00:29:38.320Everyone is having to come to church from time to time, or at least not to do anything outrageous on the Sabbath.
00:29:44.160Everyone is having to learn the appropriate texts.
00:29:47.260And the more godly ministers will say, for instance, you can't get your baby baptised until you've learned the appropriate texts.
00:29:54.840The Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Catechism.
00:29:58.480So people were really being policed in that way. I mean, there would be absolutely no possibility of someone popping up one day and saying, I just don't believe in God. That would just not be acceptable.
00:30:13.060Yeah, I mean, there isn't really the intellectual apparatus for people to say, I don't believe in God. It's a sort of hypothetical construct, really. And all these people regard themselves as Christians, which is one of the reasons Margaret Murray was wrong, by the way.
00:30:27.660That they didn't regard themselves as pagans, they didn't regard themselves as Christians, yeah.
00:30:32.500They regarded themselves as Christians, they'd never heard of any pagan gods, they certainly didn't worship the devil, and they certainly didn't worship any pagan gods.
00:30:39.780This is a world in which Christianity is a very active thing, and it is under threat from the devil, and there is sin around us, and the ministers are routinely denouncing all sorts of sins, and the Kirk Session is punishing all sorts of sins.
00:30:55.620And so when you get these extremely serious sins of witchcraft, you know, they want to deal with it. And it completely fits within a much broader picture. So, you know, these pyres and these stakes that are burning people at the stake, they're a small part.
00:31:12.340they're the most dramatic and gruesome part but they're a small part to the ministers of a much
00:31:19.200much broader agenda which is to make everyone into an active godly christian and to stamp out
00:31:25.300ungodliness these people are sincere in what they're doing they're terrifying yes well i can
00:31:30.220imagine certainly that having that effect i mean it's an extraordinary picture you paint i don't
00:31:35.960mean picture in the sense that it's not true but it's an extraordinary way that we simply do not
00:31:41.120think of I suppose a religious experience in the modern world that it pervades all part of your
00:31:46.680life it's all seeing it's controlling it's your neighbor watching you it's your person in the
00:31:53.300Kirk telling you what to do it sounds oppressive and in those sorts of circumstances you can truly
00:31:59.100imagine what it was to be called a witch and the terror of being called a witch
00:32:11.120well thanks for listening to episode five if you enjoyed the show please subscribe and rate us
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