By Bill Heaney
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has offered a formal apology to people accused of witchcraft between the 16th and 18th centuries, many of whom were executed.
The first minister said she was choosing to acknowledge an “egregious historic injustice”.
It is thought 4,000 Scots, most of them women, and many of them in West Dunbartonshire and Argyll and Bute, were accused of breaking the Witchcraft Act between 1563 and 1736.
Ms Sturgeon also told MSPs that parliament could choose to legislate to pardon those convicted under the law.
The Witches of Scotland campaign had urged the government to offer a public apology, saying it would send a “powerful signal”.
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Witch hunts took place in many countries during that period, but academics say Scotland’s execution rate was five times the European average.
Confessions were regularly secured under torture, with those condemned strangled and burned at the stake.
In a statement at Holyrood, the first minister said those accused under the act “were not witches, they were people and they were overwhelmingly women”.
‘Colossal scale’
She said: “At a time when women were not even allowed to speak as witnesses in a courtroom, they were accused and killed because they were poor, different, vulnerable or in many cases just because they were women.
“It was injustice on a colossal scale, driven at least in part by misogyny in its most literal sense, hatred of women.
“On International Women’s Day, as first minister on behalf of the Scottish government, I am choosing to acknowledge that egregious historic injustice and extend a formal posthumous apology to all of those accused, convicted, vilified or executed under the Witchcraft Act of 1563.”
The Witches of Scotland group has been petitioning Holyrood to pardon those convicted under the act, with QC Claire Mitchell saying it would correct as far as possible a “terrible miscarriage of justice”.
SNP MSP Natalie Don was already planning a member’s bill extending a formal pardon, and Ms Sturgeon noted that parliament may choose to legislate in due course.
Meanwhile, it is difficult today to realise the extent to which people in the 16th and 17th century carried their belief in witchcraft.
Some women – and a few men – claimed to be able to use charms and spells and others believed them.
King James VI believed in witchcraft and wrote a book about it. He even presided at the trial of one of them, a school master who was accused of gathering a coven of witches and raising a storm to sink the King’s ship.
Witch hunts at times rose to feverish, almost epic proportions, when poor women, nearly demented by most barbarous tortures, confessed to dealings with the Devil and were finally burnt at the stake.
Dr Iain MacPhail, our local historian, tells us that in 1628, Janet Boyd, wife of Robert Neill, confessed to the provost, bailies and the minister of Dumbarton, that she had entered into a contract with the Devil, had received his mark, renounced her baptism and had carnal dealings with him, and she had “laid sundry sundry sicknesses and diseases on different people by powers granted to her by the Devil”.
Three women were accused of witchcraft and thrown in the Tolbooth. After almost a year in the jail, one Janet Donald was taken out to be strangled with a rope and then burnt at the stake.
When another so-called witch, Bessie Bargillie, was burnt in 1664, seven loads of peat, five loads of coal and two barrels of tar were used for the fire.
There was a case of one warlock, John MacWilliam, a slater, who in 1656 was convicted of witchcraft and bigamy and was strangled and burnt. Janet Mitchell of Mains of Cardross met a similar fate in 1630.
When they weren’t burning people at the stake, Dumbarton folk went to church every day at 4pm when the reader also acted as precentor at the singing of psalms.
The service on the Sabbath became obligatory and fines were imposed for non-attendance.
“Seizers” were appointed to arrest any stranger walking up and down the street while during the time of the service.
Dr MacPhail wrote: “The Kirk’s control over the people was excercised mainly by its insistence on strict moral discipline. Breaches of the Ten Commandments, especially the fourth and seventh, were punished by fines and public confessions.
“The Kirk Session records contain many references to the profanation of the Sabbath, swearing, slandering, fornication and adultery.”