re leagued for the purpose of
tormenting a clay image in his likeness. The chief evidence on the
subject was a vagabond girl, pretending to be deaf and dumb. But as her
imposture was afterwards discovered and herself punished, it is
reasonably to be concluded that she had herself formed the picture or
image of Sir George, and had hid it where it was afterwards found in
consequence of her own information. In the meantime, five of the accused
were executed, and the sixth only escaped on account of extreme youth.

A still more remarkable case occurred at Paisley in 1697, where a young
girl, about eleven years of age, daughter of John Shaw, of Bargarran,
was the principal evidence. This unlucky damsel, beginning her practices
out of a quarrel with a maid-servant, continued to imitate a case of
possession so accurately that no less than twenty persons were condemned
upon her evidence, of whom five were executed, besides one John Reed,
who hanged himself in prison, or, as was charitably said, was strangled
by the devil in person, lest he should make disclosures to the detriment
of the service. But even those who believed in witchcraft were now
beginning to open their eyes to the dangers in the present mode of
prosecution. "I own," says the Rev. Mr. Bell in his MS. "Treatise on
Witchcraft," "there has been much harm done to worthy and innocent
persons in the common way of finding out witches, and in the means made
use of for promoting the discovery of such wretches and bringing them to
justice; so that oftentimes old age, poverty, features, and ill-fame,
with such like grounds not worthy to be represented to a magistrate,
have yet moved many to suspect and defame their neighbours, to the
unspeakable prejudice of Christian charity; a late instance whereof we
had in the west, in the business of the sorceries exercised upon the
Laird of Bargarran's daughter, anno 1697--a time when persons of more
goodness and esteem than most of their calumniators were defamed for
witches, and which was occasioned mostly by the forwardness and absurd
credulity of diverse otherwise worthy ministers of the gospel, and some
topping professors in and about the city of Glasgow."[82]

[Footnote 82: Law's "Memorialls," edited by C.K. Sliarpe, Esq.:
Prefatory Notice, p. 93.]

Those who doubted of the sense of the law or reasonableness of the
practice in such cases, began to take courage and state their objections
boldly. In the year 1704 a frightful in