hard to introduce
this rule into court, that the confessions of the witches should be held
of little worth, and that the evidence of the prickers and other
interested persons should be received with distrust and jealousy. This was
reversing the old practice, and saved many innocent lives. Though a firm
believer both in ancient and modern witchcraft, he could not shut his eyes
to the atrocities daily committed under the name of justice. In his work
on the Criminal Law of Scotland, published in 1678, he says, "From the
horridness of this crime, I do conclude that, of all others, it requires
the clearest relevancy and most convincing probature; and I condemn, next
to the witches themselves, those cruel and too forward judges who burn
persons by thousands as guilty of this crime." In the same year, Sir John
Clerk plumply refused to serve as a commissioner on trials for witchcraft,
alleging, by way of excuse, "that he was not himself good conjuror enough
to be duly qualified." The views entertained by Sir George Mackenzie were
so favourably received by the Lords of Session, that he was deputed, in
1680, to report to them on the cases of a number of poor women who were
then in prison awaiting their trial. Sir George stated that there was no
evidence against them whatever but their own confessions, which were
absurd and contradictory, and drawn from them by severe torture. They were
immediately discharged.

For the next sixteen years the Lords of Session were unoccupied with
trials for witchcraft. Not one is entered upon the record. But in 1697 a
case occurred which equalled in absurdity any of those that signalised the
dark reign of King James. A girl named Christiana Shaw, eleven years of
age, the daughter of John Shaw of Bargarran, was subject to fits; and
being of a spiteful temper, she accused her maid-servant, with whom she
had frequent quarrels, of bewitching her. Her story unfortunately was
believed. Encouraged to tell all the persecutions of the devil which the
maid had sent to torment her, she in the end concocted a romance that
involved twenty-one persons. There was no other evidence against them but
the fancies of this lying child, and the confessions which pain had
extorted from them; but upon this no less than five women were condemned
before Lord Blantyre and the rest of the commissioners, appointed
specially by the privy council to try this case. They were burned on the
Green at Paisley. The warlock of the part