BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//InvisionCommunity Events 5.0.18//EN METHOD:PUBLISH CALSCALE:GREGORIAN REFRESH-INTERVAL:PT15M X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT15M X-WR-CALNAME:RMCommunityCalendar NAME:RMCommunityCalendar BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London TZURL:https://tzurl.org/zoneinfo/Europe/London X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20250330T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=-1SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20251026T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:The Witch Hunts from Lucy Worsley  05/22/2025 DTSTAMP:20250522T162116Z SEQUENCE:0 UID:276-7-c3fe8195a3dde498d013e477e2142422@aalbc.com ORGANIZER;CN="richardmurray":noreply@aalbc.com DESCRIPTION:\n The Witch Hunts from Lucy Worsley \n\n https://www.pbs.o rg/video/the-witch-hunts-xkubjt/\n\n\n\n VIDEO\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n Preview Li nk\n\n\n\n https://www.pbs.org/video/imprisonment-agnes-gzj5ww/\n\n\n\n TR ANSCRIPT to full show\n\n\n\n [ Bird cawing ] -Scotland\, 1591.\n\nA woman is about to be executed.\n\nHer crime?\n\nShe is a witch.\n\n-Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly.\n\n-She's been int errogated and tortured\, and now she'll be strangled and burnt at the stak e.\n\nThis woman met her death a century before the notorious witch trials in Salem\, Massachusetts.\n\nI want to know how her execution sparked ter rifying witch hunts across Britain and America\, leading to the death of t housands more like her.\n\n-The ungodly are not so!\n\n♪♪ In this seri es\, I'm reinvestigating some of the most dramatic and brutal chapters in British history.\n\n♪♪ It wasn't just one generation.\n\nIt was three generations losing their lives\, bam\, bam\, bam.\n\nThese stories are epi c and legendary\, and they all have fascinating mysteries at their heart.\ n\nIt's chilling to think that this could actually be evidence in a murder investigation.\n\nI want to look at them from a fresh and modern perspect ive to see if I can unlock their secrets.\n\n♪♪ It's a horrible psycho sexual form of torture\, isn't it?\n\n-Absolutely.\n\n-By uncovering forgo tten witnesses\, reexamining old evidence\, and following new clues\, can I get closer to the truth?\n\n-It is one of the great British mysteries.\n \n-It was one of those moments\, I'm afraid\, for a historian\, that makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck.\n\n[ Bird cawing ] ♪♪ [ T hunder rumbling ] ♪♪ -Today when we think about witches\, we think abo ut old hags with pointy hats and broomsticks and black cats.\n\nBut witche s have a history that's long\, sinister\, and very real.\n\n400 years ago\ , thousands of ordinary women were tortured and executed in witch hunts.\n \nI want to know who these women were and why they were killed.\n\n♪♪ This story begins 400 years ago in Scotland\, near Edinburgh\, in a small seaside town called North Berwick.\n\nWhat happened here would start a cra ze for witch hunting that would spread across the country and to North Ame rica.\n\nI'm heading to the scene of the crime\, the Old Kirk\, or church\ , of St Andrew.\n\nThough it looks a bit like a small hut.\n\n♪♪ Today \, this is all that remains of a once-sizable church.\n\nAnd it was here o ne night in October 1590 that a group of witches supposedly gathered.\n\ n♪♪ What a great place for a witches' meeting\, right on the edge of t he sea with a huge\, craggy\, devilish looking rock in the background.\n\n In 16th century Britain\, everyone believed in witchcraft.\n\nThis was the story told about what supposedly happened here.\n\n\"On the night of All Hallow --\" That means Halloween\, the perfect time for some witchy busine ss... ♪♪ [ Women singing indistinctly ] ...there were a great many wit ches to the number of 200.\n\nAnd it says that they had flagons of wine\, they were making merry and drinking\, and that they were singing all with one voice.\n\n♪♪ The story goes that the devil was here.\n\n[ Distorte d singing ] And these witches were concocting dangerous spells.\n\n♪♪ [ Women singing indistinctly ] They took a cat and christened it and after ward bound to each part of that cat the chiefest parts of a dead man.\n\nA nd the said cat was put in the sea.\n\nAnd then there did arise such a tem pest in the sea as a greater hath not been seen.\n\n[ Thunder crashes ] Th is storm had been conjured for one purpose -- to kill the king of Scotland .\n\n♪♪ James VI had been returning by ship from Denmark and was lucky to survive.\n\nIt all sounds absolutely bonkers.\n\n[ Laughs ] But it all \, uh...\n\nIt makes a crazy sort of sense.\n\nThis is exactly the sort of thing that witches are supposed to do\, isn't it?\n\nThey're supposed to play around with corpses and cats.\n\nWitches are supposed to be able to c ontrol the weather.\n\nIt's one of their powers.\n\n♪♪ It might sound like a fairy tale\, but what happened here set off a devastating chain of events.\n\nDozens were executed for this alleged plot\, and it triggered a century of persecution across the British Isles and beyond.\n\nThousands more would be killed for the crime of witchcraft\, some of them men\, the majority women.\n\n♪♪ [ Bell tolling ] To understand why this story ha d such impact\, I want to see the original text for myself.\n\nIt's held h ere at the University of Glasgow archives.\n\nIt's a pamphlet printed in L ondon called \"Newes from Scotland\,\" and it gives a full account of this plot against the king and the trial of those held responsible.\n\nOnly a very few of these pamphlets survive.\n\n♪♪ This little book is more th an 400 years old.\n\nIt's an account and quite -- in fact\, it's quite a s ensational\, tabloid-y account of the first major witch hunt in Scotland.\ n\nIt was written in 1591\, shortly after the events it describes.\n\nI-I have picked up many\, many old books\, and it never gets old.\n\nIt's a pl easure every single time.\n\nYou can't open it too wide.\n\nDon't want it to snap.\n\nHere's a little summary.\n\nIt's \"a true discourse of the app rehension of sundry witches lately taken in Scotland\, whereof some --\" w hew -- \"are executed\, and some are yet imprisoned.\"\n\n♪♪ These mus t be the witches.\n\nThey're all bustling along in a sort of girl gang.\n\ nAnd it's pretty clear that they are witches\, because here is the devil.\ n\nHe's in a pulpit.\n\nHe's making a sermon like a priest would do.\n\nBu t he's the flipped image of a priest.\n\nHe is\, in fact\, the devil.\n\nA nd these witches here at the top\, they are working magic with their cauld ron.\n\nThey have cooked up a storm that has destroyed His Majesty's ship. \n\nYou can see it's been wrecked.\n\nPeople are falling into the waves.\n \nAnd these are the witches who disrupted the king's journey back from Den mark.\n\n♪♪ This pamphlet was commissioned by King James himself.\n\nI t was distributed in England to tell the story of his triumph against the witches' wicked plot.\n\nIt's clearly designed to be dramatic.\n\nMm\, so\ , this is quite emotive language here.\n\nThey're not just witches.\n\nThe y are wicked and detestable witches.\n\nThey had seduced by their sorcery a number of others to be as bad as themselves.\n\nSo\, this is a problem.\ n\nThe number of witches in Scotland is growing.\n\nThere are more and mor e of them every day.\n\nWe should be very afraid.\n\nThe author tells us t hat God hath lately overthrown and hindered the intentions and wicked deal ings of a great number of ungodly creatures no better than devils.\n\n\"Ne wes from Scotland\" paints witches as a serious threat to order and stabil ity and the witch hunt as the necessary means by which the godly can preva il.\n\nBut why was the Scottish king so eager to tell the English about hi s triumph over evil?\n\n♪♪ Son of the infamous Mary Queen of Scots\, h e became king at a time of great change in politics and religion.\n\nThe R eformation was sweeping across Europe\, as Protestants rejected the Pope's authority and centuries of Catholicism.\n\nHere in Scotland\, James was t he figurehead for this new Protestant church\, but he also had his eye on the English throne.\n\nQueen Elizabeth I was getting older.\n\nShe had no children.\n\nJames was positioning himself as a strong and godly ruler\, a s a worthy successor to the crown of England.\n\n♪♪ I wonder if the Sc ottish King's desire for the English throne played a part in the ramping u p of a war against witches.\n\nI want to find out more about him.\n\nSo I' m meeting an expert at Edinburgh's National Portrait Gallery.\n\n-James ha s just turned 24.\n\nHe's already had two decades of his reign\, and a ver y turbulent reign it has been.\n\nRemember\, he's still quite a young king \, sort of dealing with noble factions and quarrels\, and he doesn't have the all-important heir.\n\n-So\, am I right that in 1590\, James has just got married?\n\n-Yes\, he's just got married to Anna of Denmark.\n\nShe's just a teenager.\n\nShe is his new bride.\n\nAnd of course\, now James has the hope that they're going to have children\, they're going to produce h eirs.\n\n-But there have been a few problems in getting her from Denmark t o Scotland\, haven't there?\n\n-Anna's meant to be coming to Scotland\, bu t there are these terrible storms\, and her ship springs a leak\, and the admiral in charge of the fleet says\, \"No\, we have to turn back.\"\n\nAn d James makes a decision.\n\n\"I'm going to go to Anna.\"\n\nOriginally\, he's driven back by storms.\n\nHe has to go back into one of the five port s and then try again.\n\nBut eventually\, they make it through\, but he's had to leave his country.\n\nI mean\, okay\, he has taken a lot of his nob les and gentlemen with him\, where he can keep an eye on them\, but he has had to leave Scotland.\n\n-It's a risk.\n\n-Yes.\n\n-So these storms\, th is business of the weather in the North Sea\, is psychologically onerous t o him.\n\nIt's more than inconvenient.\n\nIt's dangerous.\n\nHe's had to t ake risks to his personal safety to overcome it.\n\n-Yes.\n\nAnd remember\ , we've only James.\n\nThere's no heir.\n\nIf James goes down with the shi p.\n\nScotland is plunged into chaos.\n\n-Louise\, how familiar do you thi nk James was with the idea of witches and witchcraft?\n\n-Witchcraft has b een around in Scotland from before the Reformation.\n\nThe important thing is that people believed that witchcraft is real.\n\nAnd it's also about l iving in a providential world where you believe God is looking over everyt hing.\n\nSo if the king is godly\, then God blesses him.\n\nGod blesses hi s rule.\n\nGod blesses his country and people.\n\nNow\, if you annoy God b y letting sinners like witches go unpunished\, well\, that's when God migh t visit your country with famines and plagues and losses in battle.\n\nSo\ , you know\, to show you're a good\, strong king\, you must show you're a godly king upholding God's law and especially against the enemies of God\, the witches.\n\n-I think King James had found a way to show the English h e would be a righteous and godly king\, by winning a face-off with witches .\n\nThat pamphlet\, \"Newes from Scotland\,\" was clearly good spin for J ames.\n\nBut who were the real women from North Berwick in rural Scotland who were branded as witches\, strangled\, and burnt at the stake?\n\n♪ ♪ I want to find these women\, but it won't be easy.\n\nThey would have been illiterate and left no writing of their own.\n\nAnd many documents fr om the witch trials have been lost.\n\nThis book is a history of King Jame s VI.\n\nIt's contemporary.\n\nIt was written in his lifetime\, and there' s a whole section in it about witches.\n\nAnd there should be a reference to the very first woman to be executed in the North Berwick witch hunt.\n\ nAnd here\, I think -- Yes -- is her name.\n\nAgnes Sampson.\n\n♪♪ Agn es Sampson\, \"grace wyff.\"\n\nThat means midwife.\n\n♪♪ Somebody who brings you God's grace when you're giving birth.\n\n♪♪ And it says \" alias callit\,\" which means \"otherwise called\,\" \"the wyse wyff of Key th.\"\n\nThat means a wise woman\, a-a folk healer\, somebody with slightl y mysterious powers.\n\nAnd it looks like she's from Keyth.\n\n♪♪ So h ow on earth did Agnes Sampson\, midwife and folk healer\, get caught up in this brutal witch hunt?\n\n[ Baby coos ] ♪♪ The answer could lie in t he role she played in her community and in the tools of her trade.\n\nHidd en away in the storerooms of the National Museum of Scotland is a unique c ollection of everyday objects with magical powers.\n\n♪♪ -Well\, what we have here is a selection of some of our large collection of charms and amulets which are reputed to have superstitious powers.\n\nSo\, these were objects put to protect you\, and they are also curative.\n\n-So\, what so rt of a world are we looking into here\, then?\n\nOne where people probabl y believed in God but also believed in a load of other sorts of supernatur al powers?\n\n-Yes.\n\nWe have religious belief\, belief in God\, that is able to coexist in their mind quite happily with the supernatural\, so\, a belief in fairies\, malevolent elves\, evil witches.\n\n-What's this neat \, little black one that looks like a Christmas pudding tied up with a rib bon?\n\n-This is a seed pod... -Oh\, is it?\n\n-...that's come all the way possibly from the Caribbean.\n\nAnd it's floated on the Gulf Stream.\n\nS o\, local people\, ordinary people\, would pick them up off the beaches an d use these to help them during childbirth.\n\nAnd as a result\, they are called Mary's Nut.\n\n-Mary's Nut.\n\n-Yes\, or St. Mary's Nut.\n\nSo it's really Mother Mary's protection in childbirth.\n\nSo it's that combinatio n of a religious belief allied to something that is more of a folk belief and a superstitious belief.\n\n-And is it the sort of thing that you'd len d to your friend when she was pregnant?\n\n-Yeah\, I think you could.\n\n- And then pass it on?\n\n-Yeah.\n\nBut you'd probably want your own one any way\, 'cause you're probably giving birth quite a lot.\n\n-Oh\, many times .\n\nYes.\n\nA lot of -- A lot of use for the Mary's Nuts.\n\n-Yes.\n\nYea h.\n\n-This one catches my eye.\n\n-Well\, this little cross is a wonderfu l example of something everyday that anyone could have owned.\n\nIt's made from rowan\, and the rowan tree is supposed to be protective against evil spirit.\n\nSo you might just carry this.\n\nYou could have it on your per son\, or you could have it under your pillow.\n\n-Mm-hmm.\n\n-And you plan ted rowan trees in your gardens to keep away the evil spirits.\n\n-So\, ho w does a folk healer fit into this world of the amulets and the charms?\n\ n-So\, you'll have had these as your everyday item for everyday protection .\n\nAnd you would bring in someone like a healer\, a wise woman\, when so mething has gone really badly wrong.\n\nShe will have had knowledge of her bs and so on like a homeopath today.\n\nBut they're also presumed to have magical powers.\n\n-This sounds like witchcraft.\n\nWhat's the difference between folk healing and witchery?\n\n-The witch is living within the comm unity and associated with evil things\, evil spirits\, nasty things happen ing -- disease\, crops failing.\n\nThe folk healer is associated with good things.\n\n-So\, the folk healer is on your side\, and the witch is again st you.\n\n-Yes.\n\nIndeed\, she's a witch buster\, because she's associat ed with getting rid of those evil spirits.\n\n♪♪ -As a midwife and hea ler\, Agnes would have been important to her community.\n\n♪♪ But she' d have walked a fine line between helping people and being blamed when thi ngs went wrong.\n\n♪♪ ♪♪ It makes me wonder what triggered the fir st accusation against Agnes.\n\nThe pamphlet \"Newes from Scotland\" says a servant girl called Geillis Duncane was the first to say that Agnes was a witch.\n\nBut I can't find any evidence to back that up.\n\nWhat I have uncovered is this document describing a church leaders' meeting.\n\n15th o f September\, 1589.\n\nThe minutes at the synod say they've ordered the Pr esbytery of Haddington -- That's the local church committee in Haddington -- to summon before them Agnes Sampson\, suspected of witchcraft.\n\nSo he re it is in black and white.\n\nOn the 15th of September\, 1589\, we have the first reference to Agnes Sampson in connection with witchcraft.\n\ n♪♪ So Agnes is under suspicion\, and church leaders want to question her.\n\nAnd all this happened a year before the North Berwick trial.\n \n♪♪ By this time\, the Scottish Church was in the hands of radical Pr otestant reformers who'd been led by John Knox.\n\nKnox had wanted to crea te a new godly state based on the pure message of the Bible\, obedience an d discipline\, ushering in a new age of religious puritanism in Scotland.\ n\n[ Bird caws ] ♪♪ This is St Mary's Church in Haddington.\n\nNorth B erwick and Agnes' village both came under its jurisdiction.\n\nThe Protest ant elders of this church were keeping a close watch on suspected witch Ag nes.\n\n♪♪ Hello?\n\n♪♪ And this church was also at the forefront of religious change sweeping the country.\n\n-Hello.\n\nWill you be Stewar t?\n\n-Hello\, I'm Stewart.\n\nYes.\n\n-It's really nice to meet you\, Ste wart.\n\n-Nice to meet you.\n\nWelcome to St Mary's.\n\n-Thank you for hav ing me.\n\n-Not at all.\n\n-Now\, I know -- Every historian knows -- that in the 16th century\, the big thing that happens in Scotland is the Reform ation\, which is led by John Knox.\n\nHe's -- He's a Haddington boy\, isn' t he?\n\n-Well\, John Knox was born about 200 yards from where we're stand ing on the other side of the river.\n\nAnd he was almost certainly baptize d in this church.\n\n-Oh\, wow.\n\nSo\, this church -- Well\, he was bapti zed here.\n\nThis is right at the cutting edge of the Reformation\, then\, this place.\n\nAnd how would you characterize this -- this Scottish Refor mation religion that John Knox was keen on?\n\n-'Course\, it was a much si mpler\, stricter\, and very -- in some ways\, very harsh religion.\n\n-So\ , what kind of behavior did the Reformed Scottish Church disapprove of?\n\ n-What we might describe as frivolous behavior -- singing\, dancing\, drin king\, and of course fornication.\n\nYou could be called up in front of th e congregation if you're misbehaving in some way.\n\n-And that's because t he devil is just around the corner\, and your soul is at risk of eternal d amnation if you step out of line.\n\n-Yep.\n\n-And John Knox didn't approv e of women\, did he?\n\n-Well\, he didn't approve of women being in positi ons of authority.\n\n-Mm.\n\nSo\, if the new church did not like to have w omen in positions of authority\, someone like Agnes\, who was a wise woman \, who had the trust of the community\, do you think maybe they felt threa tened by that?\n\n-That's quite possible\, yes.\n\n[ Bell tolls ] -I wonde r if Agnes was aware that she was being watched by the church as she went about her business as a midwife and a healer.\n\nIt's starting to look lik e there's no place in this new Protestant order for women like her.\n\nShe is a woman in a position of authority.\n\nShe's got this power of healing .\n\nPeople in the community trust her\, need her\, look up to her.\n\nDo the church authorities feel a bit threatened by that?\n\n[ Bell tolls ] Ag nes' fate now lay in the hands of these fervent Protestants.\n\nAnd these religious leaders were absorbing new ideas circulating in Europe about the nature of witchcraft and how to deal with it.\n\nThey were laid out in a book written by two German Catholic theologians in the 15th century.\n\nTh is is a direct translation of a text that's more than 500 years old.\n\nIt 's called \"Malleus Maleficarum\,\" \"The Hammer of Witches.\"\n\nAnd it's a sort of a manual of how to spot a witch and what sort of things they're going to get up to.\n\nDemonology books like this made it clear the devil was specifically recruiting women to do his evil bidding.\n\n\"Why is it that more witches are female than men?\"\n\nI'm quite interested in what t hey're going to say about that.\n\nWell\, it's basically because of the wi ckedness of women\, as spoken of in the Bible.\n\n\"In Ecclesiasticus 25 - - There is no wrath above the wrath of a woman.\n\nI had rather dwell with a lion and a dragon than to keep house with a wicked woman.\"\n\n[ Woman moaning\, echoing ] \"All witchcraft comes from carnal lust\, which is in women insatiable.\"\n\nAnd that's why the devil's able to recruit them mor e easily.\n\nThey're so desperate to fill their wombs that they will conso rt even with devils.\n\nYou know\, if there aren't enough men to go around \, devils will do.\n\nThe witches meet together in conclave on a set day.\ n\nAnd the devil appears to them in the assumed body of a man.\n\nAnd he s ays to them\, \"Look\, if you have sex with me\, ladies\, I will give you long life.\"\n\nThat is the deal.\n\nAnd this witch is showing her allegia nce to the devil by kissing his backside.\n\n[ Laughs ] Oh\, dear.\n\nWhat has surprised me reading through this book -- And I really wasn't aware o f this -- was just how much witchcraft and sex seem to be mixed up togethe r.\n\nFear about sexual matters and the lust of women seems to be absolute ly fundamental.\n\n♪♪ So\, poor Agnes.\n\nShe's had the bad luck to be born at a really bad time.\n\nIt's like the end of days.\n\nIn the 16th c entury\, everybody gets utterly obsessed with the devil.\n\nPeople now gen uinely believe that witches are largely female\, that they gather in group s\, that they have this kinky sexual pact with the devil\, and that their number is growing.\n\nMore and more witches are being recruited.\n\nSo wha t are the authorities going to do to deal with these wicked women?\n\n ♪♪ For centuries\, accusations of witchcraft had largely been settled within the local community.\n\nBut if these witches were the devil's agent s\, the authorities had to do something and crack down.\n\n♪♪ Well\, t his is the Scottish Witchcraft Act.\n\nSo\, this act was drawn up by Scotl and's Protestant reformers.\n\nJohn Knox may even have had a hand in it.\n \nIt is statute and ordained that no manner of person or persons of whatev er estate\, degree\, or condition is to use any manner of witchcraft.\n\nA nd if you do do that\, they'll be under pain of death.\n\nIt actually says under the pain of \"deid\,\" but that means death.\n\nYou will be killed. \n\nIt has become a capital offense for the first time.\n\nSo the Act is r eally clear that the whole weight of the law is going to come down on anyb ody doing witchcraft.\n\n♪♪ But there's a -- It seems to me there's a huge problem here.\n\nIt doesn't actually say what witchcraft is.\n\nSo wi tchcraft is open to interpretation\, and that means the law is open to int erpretation\, and that seems to me to be very dangerous.\n\nWhat the Witch craft Act provided was a legal framework for the prosecution of witches.\n \nNow if enough evidence could be gathered\, a suspected witch could be tr ied in the courts and sentenced to death.\n\n♪♪ By autumn 1519\, the c hurch elders in Haddington had been investigating and building a case agai nst Agnes for more than a year.\n\nI'm told that very few witch trial docu ments still exist\, but remarkably\, Agnes' have survived.\n\nI can't acce ss the originals in the National Records of Scotland\, but the history cen ter in Haddington has a copy.\n\nIncredibly\, they include detailed transc ripts of the evidence against Agnes.\n\nIt says here\, \"Here follows the articles of her Dittay\, whereof she was convicted\, by number\, 53.\"\n\n Now\, a Dittay -- It's from the French\, Dittay meaning \"said.\"\n\nThese are the things that were said against her\, and there were 53 charges.\n\ nThat's quite a lot\, isn't it?\n\nOkay.\n\nHere\, she's charged with usin g of witchcraft in healing of John Thomson in Dirletoune\, who remained -- Oh\, I see what she's done.\n\nShe's -- She used witchcraft to heal John Thomson.\n\nBut he remained crippled -- that's crippled -- notwithstanding thereof.\n\nI can see that if you'd booked Agnes to heal you\, and then i t failed\, then he'd want his money back\, wouldn't he?\n\nYou might be so cross that you reported her to the authorities.\n\nLet's have a look at t his one.\n\nItem\, for coming to Bessie Aitkenhead and using her prayer an d devilish charms for the recovering of her health to her.\n\nWell\, here' s someone who's pleased.\n\nBessie -- Bessie Aitkenhead has been cured.\n\ nSo\, when I look at the list of people who've been either cured or not cu red by Agnes\, it's a bit confusing\, 'cause you can't see what the proble m is.\n\nShe's sort of going about her business as a healer.\n\nBut perhap s the problem is that this old\, traditional way of doing things\, of heal ing people\, has now become suspicious\, because people are increasingly w orried about witches.\n\nThere's a lot of talk here about witchcraft and p rayers to the devil.\n\nI mean\, I cannot know whether all of these people who were Agnes' clients\, whether they really said these things\, or were these important people who were determined to catch a witch\, were they t aking the evidence and twisting it and putting on this whole witchy layer? \n\nI can't rely on this document for hard facts\, but it does offer a tan talizing glimpse of Agnes herself.\n\nWe're told that she's a widow and ha s children and that she learned her folk healing skills from her father.\n \nSo I love the way that\, hidden within this formal document written by m en who had it in for Agnes\, we're actually meeting the real person.\n\nAn d then here\, now\, this is really extraordinary\, because this is just wh at you don't normally get.\n\nYou do not normally get the recorded words o f somebody living in a tiny village in remote Scotland in the 1590s.\n\nTh at's not somebody that we normally hear from in history.\n\nBut here we do \, because recorded here\, are the words to Agnes' prayer to her patients for life or death.\n\n\"All kinds of ills that ever may be\, in Christ's n ame\, I conjure thee.\n\nI conjure thee both more...\" -I conjure thee bot h more and less with all the virtues of the mass.\n\nAnd right so the nail s sore that nailed Jesus and no more.\n\nAnd right so the same blood that reeked o'er the ruthful rood.\n\nForth of the flesh and forth of the bone and in the earth and in the stone\, I conjure thee in God's name.\n\n-Thes e are supposed to be her very words.\n\nIt's like she's speaking to us.\n\ n♪♪ It gives a wonderful\, tingly feeling.\n\nThis is -- This is -- Th is is why we do this\, to bring people back from the dead.\n\nBut one thin g is clear.\n\nEven if some of Agnes' clients were grateful for her powers of healing\, and even if she claimed that her prayer was to God\, the aut horities were intent on painting her as a witch in league with the devil.\ n\nAnd there's something else in here that's really intriguing.\n\n♪♪ People are summoning her from far and wide\, and it's not just villagers w ho are after her services.\n\nIt's -- It's the toffs.\n\nPosh people are a fter her\, too.\n\nPerhaps her far-reaching reputation as a healer helps e xplain why\, when the king was looking for a scapegoat for the storms that beset his ship\, Agnes Sampson was a ready name on people's lips.\n\n ♪♪ In the fall of 1590\, just weeks after the alleged witches' gatheri ng at North Berwick\, Agnes was arrested and imprisoned in Scotland's capi tal city\, Edinburgh.\n\nAnd in early December\, she was brought here to b e interrogated.\n\nThis is the Palace of Holyroodhouse.\n\nThis was the ho me of King James VI.\n\nThis part of the palace here has been altered\, bu t this part is the original palace that Agnes would have seen.\n\nShe woul d have set eyes on these two rather sinister-looking turrets.\n\nSo I real ly am walking in Agnes' footsteps at this moment.\n\n[ Door clanks ] ♪♪ ♪♪ This is the actual chamber in which James VI received vis itors.\n\nHis bedchamber is just through there.\n\nAnd it was here in this room\, to the best of our knowledge\, that Agnes came face to face with t he king.\n\n♪♪ What an extraordinary encounter.\n\nA woman from a tiny rural village brought before the king.\n\nA Protestant monarch determined to prove he had the power to drive out the devil.\n\nSo\, what on earth h appened in this room?\n\n\"Newes from Scotland\" offers this account.\n\nA gnes Sampson was brought here to Holyroodhouse before the King's Majesty a nd sundry other of the nobility of Scotland.\n\nBut it says here she stood stiffly in the denial of all that was laid to her charge.\n\nSo she stood up to them.\n\nThis is a fearsome situation to be questioned by the king himself in his royal palace.\n\nBut she wasn't giving way an inch.\n\n ♪♪ Despite this\, at some point\, Agnes cracked and confessed.\n\n ♪♪ It's chilling to realize that all the detail of what happened in No rth Berwick\, as recounted in \"Newes from Scotland\,\" actually comes fro m the confession Agnes made right here in Holyrood Palace.\n\nIt was Agnes who said 200 witches gathered together and used a dead man and a christen ed cat to raise the storm that almost killed the king.\n\nThis is her stor y.\n\nBut why would she say all these things?\n\nReading on\, I think I ca n see why.\n\nAgnes Sampson has all her hair shaven off in each part of he r body and her head \"thrawen\" with a rope.\n\nBut during this time\, she would not confess anything until the devil's mark was found upon her priv ities.\n\n♪♪ Now\, to my mind\, this is -- this is torture of a really horrible\, sexual nature.\n\n♪♪ It's a sort of a sexual assault.\ n\n♪♪ And then when this -- when this happened\, when they did this to her\, she immediately confessed whatsoever was demanded of her.\n\nAnd\, goodness me\, I'd do exactly the same thing.\n\nPoor Agnes.\n\n♪♪ It's hard to be sure whether these descriptions of torture are true.\n\nWas th is the sort of treatment inflicted on women like Agnes?\n\n♪♪ To find out\, I'm traveling to the small Scottish town of Forfar.\n\nWhen a witch hunt happened here in the 1660s\, more than 50 women were accused from thi s small town alone.\n\n[ Gasps ] It's Judith.\n\n-Hello!\n\n-I meet you in the flesh at last.\n\n-I know.\n\n-One local historian has been doing gro undbreaking research into the experiences of these so-called witches.\n\nS he's uncovered shocking new evidence of their interrogation from unlikely historical documents\, the town's financial records.\n\n-\"Accounts of the town officials\" sounds a bit dull.\n\n[ Chuckles ] -Yes\, it does\, if y ou -- if you don't realize what's going on.\n\nAnd what's going on in Forf ar at that time is a witch hunt that's been described as being like no oth er in Scotland.\n\nAnd when you follow the money\, you find some really in teresting things.\n\nOkay\, on the first page\, the first section\, \"ye e xaminer of Girsell Simpson.\"\n\nShe was a suspected witch\, but she was a rrested\, and she was put in a tollbooth.\n\nIt says an item to Andrew Tay lor for closing of the high tollbooth yea time that Girsell Simpson was th erein and for taking down of them again.\n\n-Oh\, so when the suspected wi tch was in the prison\, they closed up the windows.\n\n-Yep.\n\n-And then when she had been executed\, they opened up the windows again.\n\n-That's right.\n\n-And that would be to keep her in the dark?\n\n-Well\, it's the devil\, and you don't want the devil cursing the people in the street when they walk by.\n\n-Wow.\n\nOh\, look at this!\n\nFor the making of two pai rs of stocks for the witches.\n\n-Oh\, yes.\n\nSo\, the stocks are really interesting\, 'cause stocks sound like they are quite innocent.\n\nYou kno w\, we have images of people in the stocks outside.\n\n-Being hung up like this\, and people throw eggs at them.\n\n-That's not what's happening her e.\n\nIn Scotland at the time\, stocks were used on the accused witches as a form of torture.\n\n-It says here that candles are bought for those who did watch Girsell Simpson\, who's the suspected witch.\n\nWhat does that mean to watch her\, do you think?\n\n-Watching usually comes with waking.\ n\nSo watching and waking was a form of torture in itself.\n\nIt's sleep d eprivation.\n\nLater on\, we'll see that there -- There are other prisoner s in.\n\nThey're male prisoners\, and they're murderers\, and they're not being watched.\n\nThere's no -- There's no candles being paid for for them .\n\n-Mm.\n\nSo the suspected witch is treated worse than the murderers.\n \n-Yes.\n\n-Wow.\n\n-Absolutely.\n\nThese women\, they're a danger because they endanger the whole of society.\n\n-Yeah.\n\n-They put the idea of th e godly society at risk.\n\nIf you go down to the 13th of September... -Ye s.\n\n-...John Kincaid and David Cowand come to Forfar.\n\nSo\, John Kinca id is the famous witch-pricker.\n\n-The witch pricker.\n\n-Yeah.\n\n-That' s a very resonant phrase.\n\nWhat exactly does that mean?\n\n-Well\, they pay for two -- \"twa preens\" for him.\n\n-Here it is.\n\nThis is the purc hase of two preens for the pricking of Catherine Porter.\n\n-Preens are pi ns.\n\nThey're made of iron\, and they're usually about 3 inches long.\n\n Or some people would say -- -3 inches.\n\n-Yeah.\n\n-Oh\, not tiny\, littl e dressmaking pins.\n\nBig things.\n\n-Big pins.\n\n-And what ex-- Why -- Why do they want to stick these pins into the suspected witches?\n\n-They' re trying to find the devil's mark.\n\n-What's that?\n\n-It was usually th ought to be a blue mark.\n\nIt could be a mole.\n\nIt could be an extra ni pple.\n\nIt could be scars.\n\nAnything that they thought was unusual on a woman's body that doesn't respond to pain or doesn't bleed.\n\nThat was e vidence\, pure and simple\, that you had convened with the devil.\n\nSo wh at they would do was they would -- they would shave the woman.\n\nThey wou ld shave all her hair.\n\nAnd they would -- She would be naked.\n\nShe's i n front of a panel of men\, and she's having these pins stuck in all over her body.\n\nAnd they would prick people for hours.\n\nThere's mention in one of the Privy Council documents of a woman dying from witch pricking.\n \n-It's a really -- It's a horrible psychosexual form of torture\, this\, isn't it?\n\n-Absolutely.\n\n-What really shocks me\, Judith\, is that the evidence is here\, that they've recorded it for us to see.\n\n-Indeed.\n\ nWhen I read these treasurers' accounts\, and I've read them many times\, the hairs never cease to stand up on the back of my neck.\n\nAnd I think\, how could they have treated people like this?\n\nAnd then you have to rem ember what they had in their mind.\n\nAnd in their mind\, they were absolu tely convinced that they were not people.\n\nYou know\, they -- -They were devils.\n\n-Yeah.\n\n-Inhuman.\n\n-They are the devil.\n\n-How long have you been trawling through all of these records\, Judith?\n\n-About 10 year s.\n\n-Oh\, wow.\n\n[ Chuckles ] -At least 10 years.\n\n-And what -- what motivates you to do this?\n\n-Well\, um\, one\, it's just so incredibly in teresting.\n\nAnd\, two\, there's the real sense of injustice.\n\n♪♪ - Judith's fascinating research shows how the authorities devised a system f or rooting out witches.\n\nTorture was an acceptable means to elicit a con fession.\n\nAnd the so-called devil's mark\, which wasn't too hard to find \, provided undeniable proof.\n\nUnder this kind of duress\, in December 1 590\, Agnes made her confession.\n\n♪♪ Remarkably\, the National Recor ds of Scotland holds an account of what was said during Agnes' actual inte rrogation.\n\nIt also offers clues as to why Agnes' case triggered a terri fying craze for witch hunts that tore across Britain and reached as far as Salem\, the fledgling Puritan colony of Massachusetts.\n\nIs this word fo r word\, then?\n\nWas there someone in the room making notes?\n\nHow -- Ho w was it put together?\n\n-This has been written up afterwards.\n\nThere w as probably a scribe in the room at the time jotting down a few things.\n\ nBut this isn't a transcript of her actual words.\n\nThis is a summary in the third person\, you know.\n\nYou know\, \"She confessed that\, she deni ed that\,\" and so on.\n\nAnd we see breaks in the document where perhaps she was tortured.\n\nIt's hard to tell.\n\nWe do know in general terms tha t she was tortured.\n\nAnd we can see this text as a kind of negotiation\, because Agnes probably didn't know anything about those storms at the tim e\, but they're asking her about it\, so she knows she can't just remain s ilent.\n\nShe has to tell a story.\n\nOtherwise\, she'll get tortured more .\n\n-Do you think that the interrogators were asking what we might call l eading questions to get a particular answer?\n\n-Oh\, undoubtedly\, yes.\n \nYou know\, \"Tell us about when you met the devil\,\" and\, \"How does o ne worship the devil?\"\n\nAnd so\, one of the things that witches do is t hat they kiss the devil's ass.\n\nThat is -- -Does it say that in her actu al confession?\n\n-It actually says.\n\nYes.\n\n-\"Before they departed\, they all kissed his ass.\"\n\nThat almost certainly comes from a leading q uestion from somebody who has come across the European learned idea of how witches worship the devil\, and Agnes has been made to say it.\n\nIf peop le torture you enough\, you do get so confused that you lose confidence in your own memory and you start thinking\, \"The interrogators are right\, and perhaps I'm a witch after all.\"\n\n-That's awful.\n\nThey're breaking her body\, but they're also trying to break her mind at the same time.\n\ n-Yeah\, I'm afraid so\, yeah.\n\n-Really\, it seems to me that they're fi tting her up.\n\n-You certainly could say that.\n\nI mean\, they're doing it unwittingly.\n\nThey're terrifyingly sincere\, these guys.\n\nYou know\ , they think they're getting the truth.\n\nThey are trying to save themsel ves and everybody from the terrifying power of the devil.\n\nAnd\, you kno w\, it certainly by this time has become a conspiracy.\n\nThey -- They thi nk it isn't just one witch.\n\nYou know\, it's a group who has done this.\ n\nAnd this is what the elite understand that witches will do.\n\nThey wil l gather in groups.\n\nSo they're asking Agnes\, you know\, \"Who else was there?\"\n\nYou know\, whether these were names that she gave or names th at were fed to her and then she repeated\, you can't always tell.\n\nYou a sk for names of accomplices\, and you get a sort of snowball effect.\n\nAn d once you've got one witch\, you can then go to another and another and a nother.\n\nAnd\, you know\, the snowball can go on getting larger until ev eryone's sick of it.\n\n-How any people eventually get pulled into the who le thing?\n\n-How many people ultimately is one of the very difficult ques tions to answer.\n\nAlmost certainly dozens\, probably hundreds\, but\, yo u know\, many of the records have disappeared.\n\nIt's very hard to put nu mbers on it for that reason.\n\n-Julian\, why is the North Berwick Witch H unt in particular so important?\n\n-There have been earlier trials with in dividual witches\, but they never get into large numbers.\n\nThey don't ma nage to interrogate them properly\, and it all fizzles out.\n\nThis is the first big\, successful one where we see the witch hunters really working out how to do it.\n\nSo this provides a sort of blueprint for how to have what you might call a successful witchcraft panic that actually leads to l arge numbers of executions.\n\nAnd versions of that then get repeated time and again over the next 100 years or so in Scotland.\n\n♪♪ -What's so horrifying is that\, clearly\, if you torture someone\, they'll say anyth ing to make it stop.\n\nIt's this that made Agnes into a witch and\, in a final tragic irony\, offer up the names of 59 other people\, too\, who'd g o on to face the same fate.\n\nBut here's the problem.\n\nShe's now \"offi cially confessed\" to causing storms and to conspiring to kill the king.\n \n♪♪ Six weeks after her confession\, Agnes was put on trial in Edinbu rgh.\n\nThe building Agnes' trial took place in stood right here.\n\nIt wa s in the shadow of the great cathedral.\n\nShe would have been the only wo man in a courtroom full of men.\n\nThe trial took one day\, and the verdic t was guilty.\n\n♪♪ The following day\, the 28th of January\, 1591\, A gnes was brought here to Castle Hill.\n\n♪♪ She was to be strangled an d burnt at the stake\, a sentence reserved only for the most dangerous of heretics.\n\nI can't begin to imagine how petrified she must have felt as she was being brought here\, knowing what was going to happen.\n\n[ Bird c aws ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly\, nor standeth in the way of sinners\, nor sitteth in the sea t of the scornful.\n\nBut his delight is in the law of the Lord.\n\nOn his law doth he meditate day and night.\n\n-In this moment\, religious zeal\, fear of the devil\, and an ambitious king had collided to create a system of persecution from which there was no escape.\n\nAnd Agnes Sampson paid the ultimate price.\n\n♪♪ [ Bird cawing ] ♪♪ This event\, it makes me angry.\n\nIt seems like a terrible\, tragic miscarriage of justice.\n\ nThis is a woman who tried to help people but who ended up being punished for it.\n\n[ Bird cawing ] ♪♪ King James got what he wanted and became king of England.\n\nAgnes' execution set a blueprint for a century of wit ch hunts across Britain and America\, leading to the trial in 1692 of 200 suspected witches at Salem and the hanging of 19 people.\n\nBut it was Sco tland that would have one of the highest rates of witch killing anywhere.\ n\nIn total\, 2\,500 people would be executed\, the vast majority women.\n \nAnd imagine what it was like for other women in this society\, the fear they must have felt that they could be next.\n\nThe only national monument in Scotland to the thousands killed is this small drinking fountain known as the Witches' Well.\n\nBut a campaign is now under way for a larger-sca le memorial and an official pardon.\n\nIt's hard to know what to do with t hese dark chapters from our past.\n\nSeems to me there's a double injustic e for the women caught up in the witch hunts.\n\nThey were wrongly convict ed\, but on top of that\, their stories have been forgotten.\n\nThey've be en buried under a pile of stereotypes.\n\nNow is the time to restore the v oices of women like Agnes Sampson and to make sure they're heard.\n\n-\"Lu cy Worsley Investigates\" is available on am*zon Prime Video.\ n\n♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪\n\n\n\n  \n\n DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20250522 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR