5/28/2023 0 Comments Eric smith north berwick scotland![]() This was the first major witchcraft persecution in Scotland, and began with a sensational case involving the royal houses of Denmark-Norway and Scotland. The North Berwick trials were among the more well known of the large number of witch trials in early modern Scotland between the early sixteenth century and the mid-eighteenth century. King James VI wrote a dissertation on witchcraft and necromancy titled Daemonologie in 1597. One source for these events is a 1591 pamphlet Newes from Scotland. The confessions were extracted by torture in the Old Tolbooth, Edinburgh. The "witches" allegedly held their covens on the Auld Kirk Green, part of the modern-day North Berwick Harbour area. These included Francis Stewart, 5th Earl of Bothwell, on charges of high treason. They ran for two years, and implicated over 70 people. The North Berwick witch trials were the trials in 1590 of a number of people from East Lothian, Scotland, accused of witchcraft in the St Andrew's Auld Kirk in North Berwick on Halloween night. ![]() The North Berwick Witches meet the Devil in the local kirkyard, from a contemporary pamphlet, Newes from Scotland.
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