North Berwick witch trials

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The North Berwick witch trials were the trials in 1590 of a number of people from East Lothian, Scotland, accused of witchcraft in the St Andrew's Auld Kirk in North Berwick . They ran for two years and implicated seventy people. The accused included Francis Stewart, 1st Earl of Bothwell on charges of high treason.

The confessions were extracted by torture. This trial involved several people who were convicted of having used witchcraft to create a storm in an attempt to sink the ship on which King James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark had been travelling.

One of the accused in particular, Agnes Sampson was examined by James VI at his palace of Holyrood House. She was fastened to the wall of her cell by a witch's bridle, an iron instrument with four sharp prongs forced into the mouth, so that two prongs pressed against the tongue, and the two others against the cheeks. She was kept without sleep, thrawed with a rope around about her head, and only after these ordeals did Agnes Sampson confess to the fifty-three indictments against her. She was finally strangled and burned as a witch.

According to T. C. Smout in his A History of the Scottish People 1560-1830 (p. 184-192) between 3,000 and 4,000 accused witches may have been killed in Scotland in the years 1560-1707.