to the unspeakable prejudice of Christian charity; a late instance whereof we had in the west, in the business of the sorceries exercised upon the Laird of Bargarran’s daughter, anno 1697—­a time when persons of more goodness and esteem than most of their calumniators were defamed for witches, and which was occasioned mostly by the forwardness and absurd credulity of diverse otherwise worthy ministers of the gospel, and some topping professors in and about the city of Glasgow."[82]

[Footnote 82:  Law’s “Memorialls,” edited by C.K.  Sliarpe, Esq.:  Prefatory Notice, p. 93.]

Those who doubted of the sense of the law or reasonableness of the practice in such cases, began to take courage and state their objections boldly.  In the year 1704 a frightful instance of popular bigotry occurred at Pittenweem.  A strolling vagabond, who affected fits, laid an accusation of witchcraft against two women, who were accordingly seized on, and imprisoned with the usual severities.  One of the unhappy creatures, Janet Cornfoot by name, escaped from prison, but was unhappily caught, and brought back to Pittenweem, where she fell into the hands of a ferocious mob, consisting of rude seamen and fishers.  The magistrates made no attempts for her rescue, and the crowd exercised their brutal pleasure on the poor old woman, pelted her with stones, swung her suspended on a rope betwixt a ship and the shore, and finally ended her miserable existence by throwing a door over her as she lay exhausted on the beach, and heaping stones upon it till she was pressed to death.  As even the existing laws against witchcraft were transgressed by this brutal riot, a warm attack was made upon the magistrates and ministers of the town by those who were shocked at a tragedy of such a horrible cast, There were answers published, in which the parties assailed were zealously defended.  The superior authorities were expected to take up the affair, but it so happened; during the general distraction of the country concerning the Union, that the murder went without the investigation which a crime so horrid demanded.  Still, however, it was something gained that the cruelty was exposed to the public.  The voice of general opinion was now appealed to, and in the long run the sentiments which it advocates are commonly those of good sense and humanity.

The officers in the higher branches of the law dared now assert their official authority and reserve for their own decision cases of supposed witchcraft which the fear of public clamour had induced them formerly to leave in the hands of inferior judges, operated upon by all the prejudices of the country and the populace.