Series 5 > Miscellany [of the Scottish History Society] XIII

WITCHCRAFT CASES, 1630-1642
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The later drop in known cases is easily explained by the beginning of
the civil war period when the authorities would have more pressing
matters on their minds. The mini-peaks seem to be explained by local
panics either in the north of Scotland (in Orkney, Ross and Sutherland)
or in East Lothian and Berwickshire (two significant outbreaks in the
fishing ports of Dunbar and Eyemouth). No commissions for Orkney
are included in the register, as it was a special case.1 Witchcraft trials in
Orkney were authorised by the sheriff of Orkney and not by the privy
council.
The geographical spread of prosecutions differs little from the panic
years of 1629-30.2 Clearly witch-hunting had reached all parts of
Scotland which were accessible to the system of granting privy council
commissions. There were cases in Lewis, Caithness, Sutherland,
Inverness, Ross and Cromarty and Bute, yielding a large crop of
suspected witches who were clearly Gaelic speakers. The frontiers of
state interference were clearly established in the Gaedhealtachd. The
highest concentration of cases, however, was in Renfrewshire, due to
the Inverkip hunt of 1631-2. Renfrewshire prosecuted twice as many
witches as any other county, the prosecutions coming mostly from a
single parish. Even those strongholds of witch-hunting East Lothian and
Berwickshire when added together did not prosecute as many cases over
the entire period of the register as this small area did in the space of
about six months.
The traditional picture of a witchcraft panic shows that panics are
fuelled via relaxation of normal standards of evidence, and the
permitting of torture—something which often happened when witch-
hunting escaped the restraints of central control.3 This would lead to
more and more accusations which became less and less credible—
leading to scepticism and a backlash with consequent tightening up of
procedures at a central government level. Such was the case in 1597 and
again in the wake of 1629-30. The lack of bishops or archbishops in the
Inverkip commissions perhaps indicates an accidental loosening of
restrictions in the wake of a major panic which allowed another intense
' Wasser, ‘The privy council and the witches’, 28.
2 Cf. Lamer et al., Source-Book, 85-98.
3 E.g. in the case of Matthew Hopkins whose activities in England happened in the
absence of the usual assize court judges: J. Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness:
Witchcraft in England, 7550-7750 (London, 1996), 140.