Scotland was a bad place to be an accused witch in the 16th and 17th centuries.
That country killed five times as many people accused of witchcraft as any other place in Europe, according to a Scottish group seeking posthumous pardons for the victims of Scottish witch hunts.
Between 1563 and 1706, a period of nearly 1½ centuries, at least 4,000 Scots — 75% of them women — were accused of being witches, of whom nearly two-thirds were put to death. Most were strangled, although some were burned alive. Read story here; more details here.
While persecution of accused “witches” is often associated with the Catholic Inquisition, in fact, Protestants also were persecutors and Catholics were sometimes victims.
Witch hunts, of course, were driven by irrationality and the advent of science and its devotion to rationality more or less ended widespread pursuit of the practice (see history here), although a form of hysteria-based witch-hunting seems to be enjoying something of a revival in today’s politics.
