ns suffered for the crime during
that interval. This was the consequence of the act of parliament and
the unparalleled severity of the magistrates; the latter frequently
complained that for two witches they burned one day, there were ten to
burn the next: they never thought that they themselves were the cause
of the increase. In a single circuit, held at Glasgow, Ayr, and
Stirling, in 1659, seventeen unhappy creatures were burned by judicial
sentence for trafficking with Satan. In one day, (November 7, 1661,)
the Privy Council issued no less than fourteen commissions for trials
in the provinces. Next year, the violence of the persecution seems to
have abated. From 1662 to 1668, although "the understanding gentlemen
and magistrates" already mentioned, continued to try and condemn, the
High Court of Justiciary had but one offender of this class to deal
with, and she was acquitted. James Welsh, a common pricker, was ordered
to be publicly whipped through the streets of Edinburgh for falsely
accusing a woman of witchcraft; a fact which alone proves that the
superior court sifted the evidence in these cases with much more care
and severity than it had done a few years previously. The enlightened
Sir George Mackenzie, styled by Dryden "the noble wit of Scotland,"
laboured hard to introduce this rule into court--that the confessions
of the witches should be held of little worth, and that the evidence of
the prickers and other interested persons should be received with
distrust and jealousy. This was reversing the old practice, and saved
many innocent lives. Though a firm believer both in ancient and modern
witchcraft, he could not shut his eyes to the atrocities daily
committed under the name of justice. In his work on the Criminal Law of
Scotland, published in 1678, he says, "From the horridness of this
crime, I do conclude that, of all others, it requires the clearest
relevancy and most convincing probature; and I condemn, next to the
wretches themselves, those cruel and too forward judges who burn
persons by thousands as guilty of this crime." In the same year, Sir
John Clerk plumply refused to serve as a commissioner on trials for
witchcraft, alleging, by way of excuse, "that he was not himself good
conjuror enough to be duly qualified." The views entertained by Sir
George Mackenzie were so favourably received by the Lords of Session
that he was deputed, in 1680, to report to them on the cases of a
number of poor women who