BBC History - The Life & Times Of The Stuarts 2016_

1 Pendle Hill, Lancashire

2 Taunton Castle, Somerset

3 Brandeston village, Suffolk

4 Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh

5 Exeter Castle, Devon

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5

3

4

2

4 Edinburgh Castle Edinburgh

 http://www.edinburghcastle.gov.uk

Scotland saw numerous witch trials

throughout the early modern period, many

of which have been attributed to the zeal

of the Calvinist clergy in alerting secular

authorities to cases that appeared before

them in the church courts.

Edinburgh Castle played a key role in

the trial and execution of condemned

witches; an estimated 300 were put to

death on the castle’s esplanade. One such

figure was Agnes Finnie, an Edinburgh

shopkeeper who was charged with 20

counts of witchcraft and sorcery,

including placing “so frightful a disease on

Beatrix Nisbet, for some other trifling

offence, that she lost the use of her

tongue”. Arrested in 1644, Finnie was

found guilty of witchcraft and held in the

castle’s dungeons. After strangulation,

her body was burned on the esplanade.

Although the use of torture in this case

was not officially recorded, it was

permitted in Scotland, the most common

format employed being sleep deprivation.

Also widely used was ‘witch pricking’

• the method of piercing the skin to find
  areas of flesh that would not bleed.
  Today, a small well on the castle’s
  esplanade marks the spot where Agnes
  Finnie, and others, were executed for the
  crime of witchcraft. Edinburgh Castle and
  its dungeons are open to the public.

5 Exeter Castle Devon

 http://www.exetercastle.co.uk

England’s last executions for

witchcraft took place in 1682

and involved three women from

the town of Bideford: Temperance

Floyd, Mary Trembles and Susanna

Edwards. The trio were arrested

“upon suspicion of having used

some magical art, sorcery or

witchcraft upon the body of Grace

Barnes...” who complained of

a “griping” in her “belly, stomach

and breast”.

The three women, two of whom

were widows and the other a

spinster, all confessed to meeting

the devil during their trial at Exeter

Castle, and sources from the time

show their unpopularity. “A less

zeal in a city or kingdom hath been

the overture of defection and

revolution, and if these women had

been acquitted, it was thought the

country people would have

committed some disorder,”

claimed one witness.

Although little of the original

castle remains, a plaque near the

gatehouse names all three women

along with a fourth woman, Alice

Molland. She was sentenced to

death but it is unclear whether she

was executed, as there are no

accounts of the sentence being

carried out.

Edinburgh Castle held

around 300 executions

for the crime of

witchcraft during the

early modern period

Exeter Castle’s entrance hall as it looks today

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