traced in the kingdom. Even
while the Independents held the reins of government, Cromwell himself,
and his major-generals and substitutes, were obliged to please the
common people of Scotland by abandoning the victims accused of
witchcraft to the power of the law, though the journals of the time
express the horror and disgust with which the English sectarians beheld
a practice so inconsistent with their own humane principle of universal
toleration.

Instead of plunging into a history of these events which, generally
speaking, are in detail as monotonous as they are melancholy, it may
amuse the reader to confine the narrative to a single trial, having in
the course of it some peculiar and romantic events. It is the tale of a
sailor's wife, more tragic in its event than that of the
chestnut-muncher in Macbeth.[79]

[Footnote 79: A copy of the record of the trial, which took place in
Ayrshire, was sent to me by a friend who withheld his name, so that I
can only thank him in this general acknowledgment.]

Margaret Barclay, wife of Archibald Dein, burgess of Irvine, had been
slandered by her sister-in-law, Janet Lyal, the spouse of John Dein,
brother of Archibald, and by John Dein himself, as guilty of some act of
theft. Upon this provocation Margaret Barclay raised an action of
slander before the church court, which prosecution, after some
procedure, the kirk-session discharged by directing a reconciliation
between the parties. Nevertheless, although the two women shook hands
before the court, yet the said Margaret Barclay declared that she gave
her hand only in obedience to the kirk-session, but that she still
retained her hatred and ill-will against John Dein and his wife, Janet
Lyal. About this time the bark of John Dein was about to sail for
France, and Andrew Train, or Tran, provost of the burgh of Irvine, who
was an owner of the vessel, went with him to superintend the commercial
part of the voyage. Two other merchants of some consequence went in the
same vessel, with a sufficient number of mariners. Margaret Barclay, the
revengeful person already mentioned, was heard to imprecate curses upon
the provost's argosy, praying to God that sea nor salt-water might never
bear the ship, and that _partans_ (crabs) might eat the crew at the
bottom of the sea.

When, under these auspices, the ship was absent on her voyage, a
vagabond fellow, named John Stewart, pretending to have knowledge of
jugglery, and to possess the po