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John Kincaid was based primarily in Tranent and earned his living from 'unmasking' witches in the localities of Tranent, Dalkeith, Dirleton, Forfar, and Kinross. [1]His dates of birth and death are unknown and little is known of his personal life.
The North Berwick Witches meet the Devil in the local kirkyard, from a contemporary pamphlet, Newes from Scotland. In early modern Scotland, in between the early 16th century and the mid-18th century, judicial proceedings concerned with the crimes of witchcraft (Scottish Gaelic: buidseachd) took place as part of a series of witch trials in Early Modern Europe.
The Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1597 was a series of nationwide witch trials that took place in the whole of Scotland from March to October 1597. At least 400 people were put on trial for witchcraft and various forms of diabolism during the witch hunt. The exact number of those executed is unknown, but is believed to be about 200.
Woodcut image from Newes from Scotland (1591) depicting the devil with Agnes Sampson, one of the witches detailed in the survey [1]. The Survey of Scottish Witchcraft is an online database of witch trials in early modern Scotland, containing details of 3,837 accused gathered from contemporary court documents covering the period from 1563 until the repeal of the Scottish Witchcraft Act in 1736. [2]
Chris Croly, a historian at the University of Aberdeen, stated that Aberdeen’s Great Witch Hunt of 1597 should be seen as but one phase of a wave of witch persecutions across Scotland sparked by the witchcraft laws of King James VI but also that "it is often said that Aberdeen burned more witches than anywhere else — that may not be entirely accurate, but what is absolutely accurate is ...
The expense and difficulty of managing witch trials meant that local authorities often asked for help from the government, as the overwhelmed presbytery of Dunfermline did in 1649. [28] After 1650 witch trials entered a new phase, with a reduction in the total number and the abandonment of local trials in favour of mixed central-local trials. [29]
The exact number of those executed is unknown, largely because they were tried by different legal courts, but is believed to number in the hundreds. Under no other period in Scottish history, possibly with the exception of The Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1597, were so many tried for witchcraft as during the 1661–1662 witch hunt.
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