During the 1500s to 1700s Europe endured a “witch craze”, and Scotland held more witch trials and executions than any other European nation. Four time more than the rest of Europe. It has been documented that several thousands of women, men, children, and even animals were tried for practicing or associating with the art of witchcraft. Those who were found guilty were often strangled and burnt at the stake.

So it wasn’t an ideal place to be, especially if you were a woman, lived alone, were elderly, or had a particular physical ailment.

A tract written by two German monks in 1490, Malleus Maleficarum, linked elements of folk belief with a conspiracy to overthrow the Church of Rome. 

Scottish Presbyterians adapted these ideas and accused Roman Catholics of using witchcraft to threaten the Reformed Church. They believed the Church of Scotland had a covenant with God, and that the witches had entered a pact with the Devil. They saw the so-called witches as the enemies of the church, state and people of Scotland.

The leading proponent of ridding the land of Satan worshipers was Scotlands own King: King James VI of Scotland and I of England.

The Scottish witch craze began in earnest in 1590, with the trial of a group of people, mainly women, from East Lothian. They were accused of meeting with the Devil and conjuring up storms to destroy James VI on his return from Denmark with his bride, Anne (witch-hunts were common in Denmark at this time).

In 1595 he wrote a book entitled, Daemonologie (Demonology) that was often cited and used to hunt down those accused of implementing the Dark Arts.

Daemonologie contains three philosophical dialogues that deal with demons, magic, sorcery, and witchcraft. The work explains why it is right that witches should be persecuted in a Christian society. Daemonologie influenced later witchfinders (and their manuals), including Richard Bernard (A Guide to Grand-Jury Men, 1629) and Matthew Hopkins (The Discovery of Witches, 1647) and possibly Shakespear's Macbeth (1606).

During the 16th and 17th centuries, it has been estimated that somewhere between three to four thousand people were put on trial, with two-thirds of those perishing at the hands of the Scottish judicial system.

Whether motivated by religious zeal or naked opportunism, witch-hunting was pursued with remarkably more fervor in Scotland than in England. According to the university of Edinburgh (reference below)

85% Women, 15% Male

Over half were under 40

Most were ‘”middle class,” some were nobility

Only about 4% practitioners of “folk medicine”

After the 1563 Berwick trials, King James became obsessed with the threat posed by witches. He subsequently believed that his cousin, the nobleman Francis Stewart, 5th Earl of Bothwell, was a witch, and after the latter fled in fear of his life, he was outlawed as a traitor. Stewart had been a rival of James as there were several disputes over the legitimacy of the Scottish and English thrones, especially following the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (James' mother and Stewart's aunt), causing Stewart to be punished by James for several plots against him.

King James eventually appeared to have become sceptical (of witchcraft influence) and eventually took steps to limit prosecutions. In 1611 he commissioned an Early Modern English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was published in 1611.

During his trial in 1649, Patrick Watson (Sept Buchanan) blamed his own wife for bringing the Devil into their home. Patrick was later strangled and burned after being identified as a witch by John Kincaid, a professional witch pricker who pricked suspects with a needle until he found a spot which did not bleed.

The University of Edinburgh have created this interactive map that lists the Residences and resting places of over 3000 people accused of witchcraft to a map of Scotland. It’s the Grand Register of Scottish Witchcraft that you never knew you needed. Including several Buchanans and Septs

This Map of Accused Witches geolocates the entries in the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft database (SoSW), which covers the period between 1563 and 1736.

Those years bookend a very specific period:

• the 1563 Witchcraft Act, the Scottish Parliament passed the Witchcraft Act, which made witchcraft a capital crime.

• the 1735 Westminster Witchcraft act, another Witchcraft Act which made it a crime to accuse others of having magical powers or of practicing witchcraft, throughout the whole of Britain (including Scotland).

Several Buchanan References (surname and Sept, plus location on Clan lands)

Torture and Death

One of the most effective and most frequently used forms of torture used on accused witches was sleep deprivation; it leads to hallucinations, which is a very helpful tool for obtaining confessions. Physical torture was relatively rare.

Only for a relatively small sample — 55 cases — are methods of torture mentioned, which included forcing the accused to wear haircloth, whipping them, binding them with ropes, hanging them by their thumbs, placing them in iron and stocks, putting them in cashielaws (aka the “warm hose.” iron leg encasings that were heated until the legs began to roast.

1722 the last witch

Women had been persecuted as witches for much longer than the period described by this map, but its end date coincides with the end of government-sanctioned witch-hunting. Executed in 1722, Janet Horne was the last person to be legally killed for witchcraft in Scotland and the British Isles.

Horne, who was showing signs of senility, and her daughter, who suffered from deformities on her hands and feet, were turned in to the authorities by their neighbors.

They accused Janet of riding her daughter to the Devil, to have him shod her like a pony. Both mother and daughter were quickly found guilty by the local sheriff, who sentenced them to be burned at the stake.

The daughter managed to escape, but Janet was stripped, tarred, paraded through town, and burned alive.

More on Janet Horne from the National Library of Scotland