The Great Scottish Witch-Hunt

The Great Scottish Witch-Hunt examines the most intense phase of Scotland’s witch persecutions, focusing on the years 1658–1662. Maxwell-Stuart considers how accusations brought women and men before the authorities, with some condemned to strangulation or burning at the stake. The book treats these events as products of their political and religious setting rather than isolated outbreaks of popular superstition.

Scotland’s nine-year period as an effectively English province, followed by the political upheaval of 1660, forms an important part of the explanation. Maxwell-Stuart also examines the uneasy meeting of English official attitudes towards witchcraft and renewed Calvinist fervour within the Scottish Church, which helped make alleged witchcraft a pressing threat to Church and state.