WITCH-BURNINGS. 431 was difference of opinion. Among the extinguished lights was Thomas Buchanan. Now he was killed, as Calderwood has told us, by being dragged along the road, after a fall from his horse, for which the eclipse was not responsible. It is interesting to note that the old and very natural superstitious beliefs (natural while the real causes of the phenomenon were unknown) survived among men of learning, perfectly acquainted with the science of the subject. The politics of 1597, ecclesiastical matters apart, were relatively tranquil. The Octavians resigned their thankless office, and the royal finances presently fell into the usual chaos (January 11, 1597).10 Border affairs were unquiet: Elizabeth kept demanding the surrender of Cessford and Buccleuch, and for a brief while (October 1597-February 1598) Buccleuch did "render himself" across the Marches.11 Sir William Bowes succeeded the veteran Bowes as English Ambassador, old Bowes dying in November, after a career of mischievous treacheries against the Court to which he was accredited. In July James had the pleasure of burning a number of witches at St Andrews. 12 One St Andrews witch, of a rather earlier date (ob. 1588), seems to have been merely a dealer in folk-medicine. She doctored Archbishop Adamson with "ewemilk and claret wine," though a satirist, Sempill, describes her as "Ane carling of the Quene of Phareis," a comrade of "the faery queen, Proserpina." The witches burned in July 1597 were from Pittenweem. The preachers had sense enough to deprecate the carrying of a witch about the country to detect other witches by bodily marks to her known. This method later led to horrible cruelties, and the witch - finder was herself convicted of fraud. James was acting precisely in the fashion of T'chaka and other Zulu kings. Later, in England, Bishop Jewel fell in with James's notions about witchcraft. Bancroft, on the other hand, he who dealt so hardly with Scottish Presbyterian eloquence, treated witches and witch-finders with equal disdain, "such as could start a devil in a lane as soon as a hare in Waltham forest." The witnesses were "giddy, idle, lunatick, illuminate, holy spectators of both sexes, and specially a sisternity of nimps, mops, and idle holy women, that did grace the devil with their idle holy presence." Thus were bishops divided, the most anti-Puritan being the most averse to witch-hunting. A historian of the Kirk, Principal Lee, has made the odd suggestion that James's zeal against witches, like his love of Episcopacy, 432 WITCH-BURNINGS. was assumed for the purpose of ingratiating himself with the English nation, where a passion for the wonderful has always been much stronger than in this northern climate," where second-sight is still common, and fairies are both seen and heard unto this day. The truth is, tha James would have ingratiated himself with Elizabeth on many an occasion by being a devout Presbyterian. In England he would, possibly enough, have ingratiated himself best by at least favouring the Puritans. He wanted bishops merely to keep the preachers in their place, and witchcraft appealed to his acute and inquiring but ill-balanced mind. Even John Wesley held that disbelief in witches was the thin end of the wedge of infidelity. What went under the name of witchcraft was a web of fraud, folk-medicine, fairy tale, hysteria, and hypnotic suggestion, including physical and psychological phenomena still unclassified. The Bible undeniably regarded some of these phenomena as the result of "possession" by intelligent discarnate entities. To disbelieve the Bible was flat atheism, so James and the preachers agreed in holding. In France in 1850-1854 some men of science, and several ecclesiastics, fell back on James's theory when confronted with talking-tables and clairvoyants. 13 On the other hand were laughing and humane sceptics, like Reginald Scot. James took the line which the religion of the age and his constitutional bias made him select, the line of Richard Baxter, Glanvil, and Cotton Mather. His performances, so far, were such as the Kirk recommended. If, like Saul, he resisted the prophets, like Saul he persecuted witches. A hideous example of the manners of the age has been published by Mr Hay Fleming. In 1598 the laird of Lathocker, near St Andrews, was in trouble about a murder. At the same date, or shortly afterwards, the minister of Crail, by order of the presbytery, captured a woman suspected of witchcraft, "whom the laird of Lathocker took from him, and carried her to his place of Lathocker, and there tortured her, whereby she is now impotent, and may not labour for her living as she was wont." 14 In this folly of witch-burning, neither the Church of Rome, the Church of England, nor the Church of Scotland can throw the first stone at sister sinners. In Scotland, however, witch persecution became infinitely more frequent and stringent after the Reformation, as part of inquisitorial discipline in general. Just after James's witch-burnings at St Andrews in July 1597, the Privy Council discharged the commissions of justiciary against witches, EPISCOPACY RESTORED (1598). 433 "understanding by the complaints of divers his Highness's lieges that great danger may ensue to honest and famous" (reputable) "persons" under the powers of these commissioners. 15 Spottiswoode explains this discharge by the case of Margaret Atkin, who, under torture, confessed to witchcraft, and put herself forward as a "smeller out of witches," in the Zulu phrase. She knew them by a mark in the eye; but when women whom she had detected were brought before her in disguise, so that she failed to recognise them, she acquitted them. Especially at Glasgow innocent women were put to death "through the credulity of the minister, Mr John Cowper." Brought back to Fife, Margaret Atkin confessed that her previous confession, and her detections, were all equally false, and she was executed. But this did not put a stop to the witch-trials and witch-burnings, an epidemic more permanent than that which devastated Salem in America a century later.16 In November and December James himself visited the Borders and hanged a number of reivers.17 In December a Parliament met, during a feud between Hamilton and Lennox, to whom the Castle of Dumbarton, the old strength of his House, previously in Hamilton's hands, was now intrusted. James delivered an oration about his mother's wrongs and his own. It needed some lack of shame to grumble that the slayer of the mother did not pay the pension of the son. A grant of 200,000 marks was voted by the Estates.18 The great affair was the covert reintroduction of Episcopacy. The king's commissioners of the General Assembly, fourteen in number, petitioned that ministers might vote in Parliament. Consequently holders of prelatic titles (preachers so promoted by the king) were permitted to sit and vote with the Estates. 19 A General Assembly was proclaimed for March 1598. James reconciled himself with the Edinburgh preachers, who in future were to have each his separate flock, which did not suit their collective policy. In the same way they had already been turned out of their "close," where they used to live conveniently assembled. James explained that he did not mean to introduce "papistical or Anglican bishoping," but merely to admit the best ministers, chosen by the General Assembly, to represent the Kirk in the national council. Andrew Melville had not been allowed to take part in the Assembly, and the northern preachers outvoted the Brethren of Fife and the Lothians only by a majority of ten.20 Thus were the "horns of the mitre," VOL. II. 2 E 434 IRISH COMPLICATIONS (1598). allowed to peep forth; thus, as the godly said, was the Trojan horse of Episcopacy brought within the walls of our Zion. The new ecclesiastical members of Parliament were to be fiftyone in number, partly chosen by the king, partly by the General Assembly. Later (March 1600) the king was to choose each bishop out of a list of six, selected by the Kirk. Each was to attend to his own "flock"; they were to exercise no ecclesiastical discipline, and were to be amenable to the jurisdiction of presbyteries and General Assemblies. To avoid prejudice, they were only styled "commissioners." Meanwhile, in 1598, at Dundee, the godly had one safe victim, the witch. It was reported that civil magistrates discharged persons convicted of witchcraft. "Therefore the Assembly ordains that, in all time coming, the presbytery proceed in all severity with their censures" (excommunication ?) "against such magistrates as shall set at liberty any person or persons convicted of witchcraft hereafter." The common-sense and humanity of the laity was not to override the cruel fanaticism of the preachers. They objected, indeed, to setting a witch to catch a witch, because that was using Satan against himself, a disreputable king's evidence enough. They also tried to check commercial intercourse with Spain, an idolatrous country.21 But, too clearly, the great days of the Kirk were over for a while. James had complained grievously of Elizabeth in the Parliament of December 1597. The relations between the two Crowns continued to be uneasy. They were complicated by the vexed affairs of the Western Isles and Highlands. For long Elizabeth had been trying to engage the brave and accomplished Maclean of Duart, the hero of Glenrinnes fight, to aid her against her Irish rebel, Tyrone. But Elizabeth would promise and not pay. Maclean muttered that he would take his men where they would be welcomed, probably by the Irish and their Spanish allies. All the Macdonald and Macleod country was embroiled in the private wars and treacherous diplomacies of the chiefs. One of these, James Macdonald of Dunluce, was a man of the world at Holyrood, a determined and traitorous ruffian in the heather. He had been aiding Elizabeth's Irish rebels (who knew him as "Macsorley "), and Robert Cecil bade William Bowes to remonstrate with the king for admitting Dunluce to his presence, also for secret dealing with Tyrone (January 4, 1598).22 He had a claim, a baseless one, on Kintyre and Isla, held by Angus Macdonald, his father. The king CELTS REFUSE RENT. 435 made the handsome freebooter a knight; he might be useful some day. At this time, and in the Parliament of December 1597, Highland affairs had been taken in hand. The natives did not pay their crown-rents, and the chiefs were bidden to exhibit their titledeeds on May 15, 1598, and to give security for law and order. Disobedience was to entail forfeiture: obedience was difficult or impossible. "Sheepskin titles" were rare among the Celts. The Court probably hoped to reap forfeitures, but the claymore was apt (as James found) to engross charters on the bodies of Lowland claimants. The Lewes and other Macleod lands were granted to a kind of chartered company which had occasion to rue its bargain. Meanwhile, in a series of feuds, Macallester of Loupe killed his guardian, and was backed by Dunluce, who burned a house in which Loupe's foes were, and also his own father, Macdonald of Dunyveg. He imprisoned Dunyveg, and was put at by James, but made his peace. Such was the Macsorley (Dunluce) whom Elizabeth thought an ill companion for James. She was also vexed by his words in Parliament, and he was irritated by Doleman's (that is, Father Parsons') book in favour of a Spanish successor to the crown of England. He excused himself on all counts of Elizabeth's indictment (February 1, 1598). He engaged, however, an Irishman, Quin or Gwyn, to write in favour of his title, and also to scourge the author of the peccant 'Faery Queen.'23 Mr Bruce, the preacher, at this time much out of James's favour, offered to reveal "certain dangerous practices" to Robert Cecil, who guaranteed a recompense. (This appears to be the Protestant Bruce, not the Catholic double spy of the same name.) Probably the "practices" were a notion of reverting to Spanish relations, and dealings with Elizabeth's Irish rebels (March 1598).24 Bruce might thus avenge himself on James for the loss of his pulpit. James was naturally wroth that Robert Cecil had met Bothwell at Rouen, and a play in which Scotland was ridiculed offended the Court and country.25 Elizabeth wrote haughtily to James (April 25), and if Cecil could have made mischief by aid of Bothwell, he would doubtless have pursued the usual policy of the Tudors. Elizabeth did present James with £3000, such were his "fiddler's wages." Meanwhile there was grumbling at the expenditure of public money on banquets to the Duke of Holstein. To make matters worse, in May a scoundrel called Valentine Thomas gave out that |