Compare and contrast the prosecution of witches in Scotland and England.

The treatment of and prosecution of witches differed to a high extent in Scotland and England in the 16th and 17th centuries. Many factors played a role in the prosecution of witches in Scotland and England and the differences between the two countries such as different legal systems, differences in religious beliefs in each country and politics also played a key role. Witches were prosecuted on the basis of different legal systems that existed in Scotland and England, which judged the extent of punishment for witches. In England, witches were prosecuted through statute law whilst in Scotland, witches were prosecuted through the use of Roman law, which was more inquisitorial than the English approach. The Scottish and English process of witchcraft punishment differed as the approach taken in Scotland was a lot more vicious with the use of violent torture. This was not the case for the England method. The much less physical methods in England were likely to have stemmed from differences in religious belief between the two countries. Witches were believed to have signed a pact with the devil and as a result, the Scots, where Puritanism was highly followed, found the need to use torture to construct evidence, which would have been used in witchcraft trials. England, however, believed in Protestantism and used a different approach to witch-hunting and the building up of evidence against a person who had been accused of being a witch. The result was that witches accused in England were less likely to admit to being a witch as a result of a non-violent interrogation procedure. This was far from the case in Scotland. Politics also played a role in witch-hunting and witch prosecutions. For example, the 1563 Witchcraft Act stated that a person found guilty of being a witch and killing someone would receive a death penalty. It also stated that should a person have been wounded by a someone practicing witchcraft or if a persons animals were killed, etc, the punishment for the person responsible would be 1 year in jail while a second offence would result in a 10 year prison sentence. This essay will analyse the ways in which the Scottish and English methods of witch prosecution differed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Witchcraft was seen as a crime against the Church and the law. People who had been suspected of practicing witchcraft were found to be unfriendly neighbours with whom disagreements had taken place. Other groups in society such as the elderly and the poor were also singled out as suspected witches. People felt that neighbours, for example, cursed a family on a number of a reasons, which included the refusal of granting them food and drink, animals trespassing on their vegetables, refusal to lend the neighbour money, children mocking her, non-invitation to children’s Christenings and so on. As a result of factors such as these, witches were said to have responded by bringing misfortune towards the family in question such as illness, accidents (both of which were aimed at and affected parents and children) and crop failure, to name all but a few. The introduction of Demonology accused suspected witches of having agreed a pact with the devil who took the form of a spirit trapped in animals such as dogs, cats, toads and rats, etc. Some women (women were much more frequently accused than men) were therefore accused of practicing witchcraft solely upon a disagreement with that neighbour who places the blame for failures in health and crops upon a witch, which were more than likely to have been the result of other factors. For example, crop failure may have been the result of a change in climate and may have had nothing to do with a curse whatsoever. This occurred in both Scotland and England.

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Scotland had a much more ruthless policy towards witch-hunting and witch prosecutions than did England. The Roman law system, on which the prosecution of witches was based upon, stated that there were two forms of witchcraft. The first was ‘white witchcraft’, which was said to be the power to heal and therefore carry out good intentions whereas type of witchcraft was ‘black witchcraft’, also known as ‘Diabolical witchcraft’. This form of witchcraft was said to have been the practice of evil magic. People who had been accused of practicing ‘black witchcraft’ were tortured into admitting their felony of being a witch. The torture approach also aimed to force accused witches into naming other witches who were known to them. This was the case for Scotland but it wasn’t the case in England. Accused witches were not tortured into admitting to being a witch and as a result, many of those who practiced witchcraft, tended not to admit their plight. In England, the prosecution of witches differed from the methods used in Scotland as prosecution occurred on a local level rather than a national level. Statute law was used in England and would set a limit to the ruthless torture practices that had been seen up in Scotland (the English system would not adopt the same torture practices as Scotland had done). Witchcraft was made illegal by Statute law in 1542 and saw a high number of witches prosecuted in England. After becoming king, Edward VI, repealed the 1542 Statute law and in 1547, introduced new legislation, which stated that if a person was to be killed by the use of witchcraft, the sentence for the person who had been found practicing it was to be death. The 1547 law also stated that if a person was found to be practicing ‘black witchcraft’ in order to harm another human being, that person would be liable to a prison sentence of one year. The systems used to prosecute witches reveal profound differences between England and Scotland in this respect but with the death penalty the consequence of killing by witchcraft, the English prosecution system was moving towards one that was more in line with her Scottish acquaintances.

The interrogation of suspected witches used by the English and Scottish differ to a high extent. It can be strongly argued that Scotland had the most brutal methods of interrogation of suspected witches on the continent. Witches were tortured in a despicable fashion. For example, some suspected witches would have their fingernails torn off while others may have had their legs shattered and on some occasions, witches would experience both forms of torture plus more. Other forms of torture such as isolation and sleep deprivation were also commonly used in the interrogation process. The aim of these acts of torture in the interrogation process was to force suspected witches into confessing to being a witch as well as naming their accomplices. Once this objective had been achieved, the witch would receive the punishment of execution. If the methods named above failed in the interrogation process a consequential form of torture would occur. This would have included a number of devices. An example of which is the ‘rack and thumbscrews’, which had an objective of inflicting pain upon a number of parts of the human body.

In England, on the other hand, the interrogation process differed from that in Scotland as physical torture was forbidden in the prosecution process. Although sleep deprivation may have been used in a small number of cases, the English interrogation process was a very far way off that of Scotland in relation to the extremity of physical torture in Scotland. In England, witches were hung if they had been found guilty of practicing witchcraft and killing a person. In Scotland witches were burnt if they had received a guilty verdict of killing through the use of witchcraft. In Scotland there was a belief (religious) that had a witch been hung, the spirit of the devil would have remained inside that persons body. Therefore the only way around this problem was by burning the body of a convicted witch in order to have destroyed the spirit of the devil within the person’s body and therefore prevent it from growing and spreading. This indicates an extremely contrasting ideology towards witchcraft in England and Scotland. This was likely to have been a result of the religious view of each country. The interrogation of suspected witches in terms of physical torture and the prosecution process differed greatly between Scotland and England. In England a much less harmful form of gaining a confession from a witch was believed in, which explains why there were approximately twice as many convictions in Scotland than in England.

Religion was a key factor in the theory of witchcraft and the resulting prosecutions of witches in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Alan C. Kors and Edward Peters explain, “In many Protestant areas, the new religious fervour occasioned by the Reformation raised the fear of witches to a great pitch in areas where such phenomena had been relatively rare” It can be argued that different religious beliefs in Scotland and England resulted in the differences between the two in terms of interrogation of and the prosecutions of witches. It has been argued that the forms of Christianity that arose after the Henrician Reformation such as Puritanism and ultra Protestantism were the result of witch-hunts in acts of spitefulness against neighbours with whom they have encountered differences of opinion. Religious views of mainly Protestantism in England and largely Puritanism in England may be behind the ideology of hanging witches in England as opposed to the burning of witches in Scotland as a result of receiving a guilty verdict for killing someone through the use of witchcraft. Witches were burnt in Scotland as an ideology was held that had a witch been hung to death as in England, the spirit of the devil would live on and burning a witch to death removes this fear. In relation to politics, the legislation that was introduced in England in 1547 and the 1563 Witchcraft Act, brought the English system more into line with the Scottish in that witches who were found guilty of killing through witchcraft would receive a death penalty. This therefore indicates a similarity between the English and Scottish prosecution systems. But, although convicted witches would lose their life as a result of a guilty conviction in both England and Scotland, the manner of which they would be assassinated differed greatly, revealing profound differences between the English and Scottish systems of prosecuting suspected witches.

Under the reign of James VI in Scotland, who would become King James I in England, witchcraft was taken extremely seriously. The historian, Christina Larner states, “When James VI in 1597 added witchcraft to the royal prerogatives, he gave it the same status as treason, in that only these two crimes were exempt from delegation to regalities”

Based upon the evidence that has been gathered in this essay, it is clear that there were many differences between England and Scotland in terms of the prosecution of witches. Scotland took a much more ruthless approach to the interrogation and prosecution of witches whereas England did not go to such extreme measures. In England a different legal system was used from that in Scotland and took a much less extreme approach towards the interrogation of suspected witches. Different religious beliefs in Scotland and England may have explained the profound differences between the English and Scottish prosecution system. Although the English prosecution system was brought more into line with that of Scotland in terms of the introduction of the death penalty for those found guilty of killing through witchcraft, the manner in which witches were killed differs greatly with the burning of witches in Scotland as opposed to hanging witches in England. This indicates major differences in the extremity of the punishment in the eyes of the Scottish and the English. After the mid 1600’s, the prosecution of witches began to decline and there is little evidence of witch-hunting and witch prosecutions there after (in the 17th and 18th centuries). However, when witch prosecutions were at their peak, there were mainly differences rather than similarities between the Scottish and English approach to the notion of witchcraft and resulting witch prosecutions.

Alan C. Kors and Edward Peters. ‘Witchcraft in Europe. 1100-1700. A Documentary History’ (University of Philadelphia Press. Inc., 1972). P. 194.

Christina Larner. ‘Witchcraft and Religion. The Politics of Popular Belief’. (Oxford, 1984). P. 31.