Aberdeen’s Hammer of the Witches: The Witch Panic of 1597

‘The Witch, No. 3’, c. 1892 lithograph by Joseph E. Baker

In 1487, Heinrich Kramer; Clergyman, Professor of Theology at Salzburg University and Inquisitor, published his text The ‘Malleus Malificarum’ or ‘Hammer of the Witches’. One hundred and ten years later in 1597, Aberdeen found itself gripped in a frenzied fear of witches. The tales of this dark and violent hysteria can be found woven through the Burgh records of the time; but what led Aberdeen to take such a hard line on Witch hunting?

Title Page of the Malleus Malificarum (1669 ed.)

One passage from the text, as translated to English in 1928 by Montague Summers, reads:

“It is a most certain and most Catholic opinion that there are sorcerers and witches who by the help of the devil, on account of a compact which they have entered into with him, are able, since God allows this, to produce real and actual evils and harm, which does not render it unlikely that they can also bring about visionary and phantastical illusions by some extraordinary and peculiar means.”

While scripture could certainly be quoted to back up this religious condemnation of Witchcraft; including the famous “Thou shalt not suffer a Witch to live” of the King James Bible translation of Exodus 22:18, many before the 14th Century held the view that Witchcraft was merely Pagan Superstition. Kramer’s book established the principle of a clear pact with the devil as the underlying cause of Witchcraft; and detailed how to hunt, try and execute Witches. This established a legal and religious basis for the execution of witches which came to be known as ‘heresy’.

While the persecution of marginalised individuals deemed as witches, for being somehow ‘other’ or dissenting from commonly held beliefs, is generally thought of as a ‘Medieval’ practice; the Witch hysteria that swept Europe actually occurred at the beginning of the Early Modern period.

The Malleus Malificarum came to be, on the brink of radical change across Europe. Around 40 years prior to Kramers publication, the Guttenberg Printing Press had been invented. This allowed for not only the publication of Kramer’s thesis, but also for it to be disseminated. Eventually in the 1600s, the Malleus Malificarum become the second bestselling book, after the Bible.

Thirty years after the publication of the volume, came the dissent of Martin Luther. The German theologian nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Schlosskirche in Wittenberg, Germany, in an act that many have pinpointed as the beginning of the Protestant Reformation and subsequently, the Catholic Counter Reformation. Europe in the 1500s was awash with cultural and social change, dissent, anxiety and religious fervour which spread across Europe like a raging storm.

With it came a widespread and intense aspiration to rid the land of the menace to society, that Kramer had not so long ago named as being the cause of hardship and evil: Witches. The reality was that a group of mostly ordinary people, mostly women, in most cases with little power or influence who had nothing to do with the hardship that people in 16th Century Europe faced, were easy to scapegoat and blame for the misfortunes of a village or town. It was easier for an individual to join in the fervour and blame the devil acting through a neighbour for a storm or failing crop, than it was to challenge those with power and risk perhaps being accused of witchcraft themselves.

Despite the likelihood that he had never read the Malleus Malificarum, one of the strongest denouncers of Witchcraft was King James VI, who wrote his own text in the style of a dialogue condemning Witchcraft. Given the turmoil of the time, it is perhaps appropriate that James’ fear of Witches came from a literal storm, when he set sail to collect his future bride Princess Anne of Denmark.

Princess Anne’s ship was previously unable to sail for Scotland due to raging storms, and in 1590 Ane Koldings confessed in the Copenhagen Witch Trials that she and her fellow witches had cursed the ship. After James heard of the proceedings of the trial, his interest, involvement and obsession with hunting Witches grew exponentially. Firstly, in the proceedings of the North Berwick Witch Trials, which James was heavily involved in, and then in the writing of his dialogue Daemonologie in 1597.

Title Page of ‘Daemonologie’ by King Jame VI (1597), Edinburgh: Robert Walde-grave

James’ writing of Daemonologie coincided with a witchcraft panic manifesting across Scotland in 1597. This gripped Aberdeen in the form of many brutal executions of those accused of Witchcraft. In 1597 alone, around 25 people were executed under accusations of witchcraft. Just like the witchcraft trials across Europe and America, most of the people convicted of witchcraft in Aberdeen were women.

The records of these tragic events of 1597 survive in the Burgh Records, in hauntingly banal accounts that include payments made to the Dean of Guild for his pains in the “burning of the great number of witches burnt this year,” as well as ledgers of materials used to execute those convicted of witchcraft:

“Thomas Leis: -

Item, the xxiii of February, 1597, for peattis, tar barrellis, fir, and coillis to burne the said Thomas, and to Jon Justice for his fie in executing him, 3 lib. 13 s. 4d.”

Dean of Guilds Accounts from 1597

While Daemonologie was only published after the large number of Witch Trials in Aberdeen, it would be difficult to dismiss the obsessions of the King and the general zeitgeist of the Country as contributing to both the publication and the executions.

Not only was there a general hysteria around the perceived threat of witches, but it also became a way to curry good favour with the king by engaging in what seemed to be his focus: the persecution of people who he saw as having entered into a pact with the devil. In fact, the opening letter addressed to the reader of Daemonologie makes James’ motives in writing the text blatantly clear:

“The fearefull aboundinge at this time in this countrie, of these detestable slaves of the Devill, the Witches or enchanters, hath moved me (beloved reader) to dispatch in post, this following treatise of mine, not in any way (as I protest) to serve for a shew of my learning and ingine, but onely (mooved of conscience) to preasse thereby, so farre as I can, to resolve the doubting harts of many; both that such assaultes of Sathan are most certainly practized, and that the instrumentes thereof, merits most severely to be punished…” 

A pact with the devil is cited specifically in the dittays against Thomas Leis, as the first accusation cited against him. It is said that Thomas Leis, his mother Janet Wishart, Isobel Cockie and many other witches went to the Mercat cross and danced with the devil on Halloween. By the time that the accusations were levelled against Thomas, his mother had already been executed (noted by use of the word umquhill against Janet’s name). Before her execution, she confessed to something never levelled against her as an accusation: that the night before her death, the devil had come to visit her and Thomas and spoken to them. This seems like strange behaviour, when Janet had taken such pains to deny accusations against her in trial. Why she would have done this is unclear from the documentation of the time.

The mention of the devil in dittays aligns with text from the Malleus Malificarum, which stressed the communion between the devil and witches, as his servants. While the average Aberdonian would not have had access to the contents of the Malleus Malificarum in 1597 and may have levelled accusations more understandable to their daily lives (such as livestock death, crop failure or, as Janet was accused of, making someone hot then cold in the same day), accusations that involved Witches communing with the devil were more likely to have come from someone who knew the contents of Heinrich Kramer’s seminal witch hunting text. However, we can only speculate what made Janet confess to speaking with the devil, when she had previously denied the accusation at her trial.

What we do know is that the accusations of witchcraft did not end with Janet and Thomas. About a month later, the rest of their family found themselves also accused of witchcraft: Janet’s husband John Leis and their remaining children, Elspet, Janet and Violet, were all accused of witchcraft, as well as Janet Leis’ husband John Allen. Janet is accused of learning witchcraft from her mother and her husband accused of assisting her.

It is unclear what happened to the rest of the family and when. There seems to be reference to the family being banished from the Burgh, although accounts contradict each other regarding the details of this banishment. What is clear is that the whole family was affected by the initial accusations again Janet and Thomas.

The records of the time, though sporadic in the information that has survived, weave a picture of a brutal witch hunt that ripped through every member of the Leis family. While Heinrich Kramer and King James VI were able to give their thoughts and accounts in detail, thanks to their status and influence, all we have commemorating the lives of Janet Wishart and Thomas Leis are the records of the dittays against them and the materials used to execute them.

Jade Flannery, Collections and Archives Assistant