choolmaster
by profession. After a dissolute youth he was said to have given soul to
the Devil. According to the story he gathered around him a motley crowd,
Catholic women of rank, "wise women," and humble peasant people; but it
was a crew ready for evil enterprise. It is not very clear why they were
supposed to have attacked the king; perhaps because of his well known
piety, perhaps because he was a Protestant. In any case they set about,
as the story went, to destroy him, and thought to have found their
opportunity in his trip to Denmark. They would drown him in a storm at
sea. There was a simple expedient for raising a storm, the throwing of
cats into the sea. This Scottish method of sacrificing to Neptune was
duly carried out, and, as we have seen, just fell short of destroying
the king. It was only the piety of the king, as Dr. Fian admitted in his
confession, that overmatched the power of the evil one.[1]

Such is the story that stirred Scotland from end to end. It is a story
that is easily explained. The confessions were wrung from the supposed
conspirators by the various forms of torture "lately provided for
witches in that country." Geillis Duncane had been tried with "the
torture of the pilliwinkes upon her fingers, which is a grievous
torture, and binding or wrinching her head with a cord or roape." Agnes
Sampson had suffered terrible tortures and shameful indignities until
her womanly modesty could no longer endure it and she confessed
"whatsoever was demanded of her." Dr. Fian was put through the ordinary
forms of torture and was then "put to the most severe and cruel pain in
the world, called the bootes," and thereby was at length induced to
break his silence and to incriminate himself. At another time, when the
king, who examined him in person, saw that the man was stubborn and
denied the confessions already made, he ordered him to be tortured
again. His finger nails were pulled off with a pair of pincers, and
under what was left of them needles were inserted "up to the heads."
This was followed by other tortures too terrible to narrate.[2]

It is a little hard to understand how it was that the king "took great
delight to be present at the examinations," but throughout the whole
wretched series of trials he was never wanting in zeal. When Barbara
Napier, sister-in-law to the laird of Carshoggil, was to be executed, a
postponement had been granted on account of her approaching
accouchement. Afterwards, "