The Great Scottish Witch-Hunt

The first history of the most intense period of witch-hunting in Scotland revealing the number of women and men strangled and burned alive at the stake.

Scotland, in common with the rest of Europe, was troubled from time to time by outbreaks of witchcraft which the authorities sought to contain and then to suppress, and the outbreak of 1658-1662 is generally agreed to represent the high-water mark of Scottish persecution.

These were peculiar years for Scotland. For nine years Scotland was effectively an English province with many English officials in charge. In 1660 this suddenly changed. So the threat to Church and state from a plague of witches was particularly disturbing. The tension between this English occupation and the revived fervour of Calvinist religion in the Scottish Church combined to produce a peculiar atmosphere in which the activities of witches drew hostile attention to an unprecedented degree.