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Witch trials in early modern Scotland
Witch trials in early modern Scotland were the judicial proceedings in Scotland between the early sixteenth century and the mid-eighteenth century concerned with crimes of witchcraft. In the late Middle Ages there were a handful of prosecutions for harm done through witchcraft, but the passing of the Witchcraft Act 1563 made witchcraft, or consulting with witches, capital crimes. The first major series of trials under the new act were the North Berwick witch trials, beginning in 1589, in which James VI played a major part as "victim" and investigator. He became interested in witchcraft and published a defence of witch-hunting in the ''Daemonologie'' in 1597, but he appears to have become increasingly sceptical and eventually took steps to limit prosecutions.
An estimated 4,000 to 6,000 people, mostly from the Scottish Lowlands, were tried for witchcraft in this period; a much higher rate than for neighbouring England. There were major series of trials in 1590–91, 1597, 1628–31, 1649–50 and 1661–62. Seventy-five per cent of the accused were women. Modern estimates indicate that over 1,500 persons were executed. Most of those executed were strangled and then burnt. The hunts subsided under English occupation after the Civil Wars during the period of the Commonwealth led by Oliver Cromwell. In the 1650s and returned after the Restoration in 1660, causing some alarm and leading to the Privy Council of Scotland limiting arrests, prosecutions and torture. There was also growing scepticism in the later seventeenth century, while some of the factors that may have contributed to the trials, such as economic distress, subsided. Although there were occasional local outbreaks of witch-hunting, the last recorded executions were in 1706 and the last trial in 1727. The Scottish and English parliaments merged in 1707, and the unified British parliament repealed the 1563 Act in 1736.
Many causes have been suggested for the hunts, including economic distress, changing attitudes to women, the rise of a "godly state",〔J. Sharpe, "Witch-hunting and witch historiography: some Anglo-Scottish comparisons", in J. Goodare, ed., ''The Scottish Witch-Hunt in Context'' (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), ISBN 0-7190-6024-9, pp. 185–9.〕 the inquisitorial Scottish judicial system, the widespread use of judicial torture, the role of the local kirk, decentralised justice and the prevalence of the idea of the diabolic pact. The proliferation of partial explanations for the witch-hunt has led some historians to proffer the concept of "associated circumstances", rather than one single significant cause.〔
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