User:Stinglehammer/sandbox20

Margaret Aitken (died Fife c. August 1597) was known as 'the great witch of Balwearie' and was an important figure in the great Scottish witchcraft panic of 1597.

Background
Later subsumed into the town of Kirkcaldy, the small village of Balwearie in Fife had long been associated with supernatural events.

It is recorded that King James V had a nightmare in 1539 that the laird of Balwearie's son, Thomas Scott, visited the king 'in the company of devils' while the 13th century physician, Sir Michael Scott of Balwearie, had long since entered folklore as being a wizard.

The great Scottish witch hunt of 1597
Margaret was arrested in Fife c. April 1597. Under extreme torture and to spare her own life, she claimed to be able to recognise other witches by looking for a special mark in their eyes.

In May 1597, she claimed to know of a convention of 2,300 witches in Atholl. As a result, a special commission was formed with the approval of James VI, and prosecutors took her from town to town to detect witches.

In addition to Margaret looking into the eyes of those accused of witchcraft, the commission also employed the swimming test - almost the only occasion this test was employed in Scotland:

When she reached Glasgow, Minister John Cowper condemned many innocent women to death on her testimony. Any women suspected of witchcraft was cast into prison and subjected to torture - under which most of them confessed to being guilty. They would then be brought to trial and executed.

The exact number of executions carried out by the commission is unknown but is thought to have run into hundreds.

Margaret's short-lived success also led to imitators such as Anne Ewing in Kirkcaldy who after large-scale witch hunts in Kirkcaldy was loaned by the magistrates of Kirkcaldy to their colleagues in Inverkeithing on condition that she was to return.

An English ambassador to Scotland wrote to Lord Burghley in August 1597 that the king was 'much pestered with witches, who swarm in thousands.'

Death
Around 1st August 1597, Margaret was exposed as a fraud.

A sceptical prosecutor took some of those declared guilty and brought them back to Margaret the next day in different clothing. When she declared them innocent, her role as witch-finder was irretrievably undermined and the witch trials stopped.

Taken back to Fife, she stood trial and affirmed that all she had said about herself, and about others, was false.

Margaret was burnt at the stake in August 1597.

Legacy
After this disastrous episode, James VI revoked the existing commissions on 12 August 1597 via a proclamation by the privy council at Falkland. The outcry over the Aitken affair meant that Scotland would not see another panic for another three decades but James VI's confidence in pursuing offenders was undiminished. The publication of his dissertation, Daemonologie, not long after shows how deeply concerned he was with the problem. "'The king had his mind only bent on the examination and trial of sorcerors, men and women.'"