hrew themselves upon the king's mercy for the fault they had
committed. James was satisfied, and Barbara Napier was hanged along with
Gellie Duncan, Agnes Sampson, Dr. Fian, and five-and-twenty others.
Euphemia Macalzean met a harder fate. Her connexion with the bold and
obnoxious Bothwell, and her share in poisoning one or two individuals who
had stood in her way, were thought deserving of the severest punishment
the law could inflict. Instead of the ordinary sentence, directing the
criminal to be first strangled and then burned, the wretched woman was
doomed "to be bound to a stake, and burned in ashes, _quick_ to the
death." This cruel sentence was executed on the 25th of June, 1591.

These trials had the most pernicious consequences all over Scotland. The
lairds and ministers in their districts, armed with due power from the
privy council, tried and condemned old women after the most summary
fashion. Those who still clung to the ancient faith of Rome were the
severest sufferers, as it was thought, after the disclosures of the fierce
enmity borne by the devil towards a Protestant king and his Protestant
wife, that all the Catholics were leagued with the powers of evil to work
woe on the realm of Scotland. Upon a very moderate calculation, it is
presumed that from the passing of the act of Queen Mary till the accession
of James to the throne of England, a period of thirty-nine years, the
average number of executions for witchcraft in Scotland was two hundred
annually, or upwards of seventeen thousand altogether. For the first nine
years the number was not one quarter so great; but towards the years 1590
to 1593, the number must have been more than four hundred. The case last
cited was one of an extraordinary character. The general aspect of the
trials will be better seen from that of Isabel Gowdie, which, as it would
be both wearisome and disgusting to go through them all, is given as a
fair specimen, although it took place at a date somewhat later than the
reign of James. This woman, wearied of her life by the persecutions of her
neighbours, voluntarily gave herself up to justice, and made a confession,
embodying the whole witch-creed of the period. She was undoubtedly a
monomaniac of the most extraordinary kind. She said that she deserved to
be stretched upon an iron rack, and that her crimes could never be atoned
for, even if she were to be drawn asunder by wild horses. She named a long
list of her associates, includ