Scotland: Apology offered to people accused of witchcraft

Nicola Sturgeon

She told MSPs at Holyrood that it could legislate to pardon those who were convicted and in many cases executed.

Some 4,000 Scots, most of them women, fell foul of the Witchcraft Act between 1563 and 1736.

The move follows a campaign by Witches of Scotland to obtain an apology from the Scottish government.

Ms Sturgeon said those accused “were not witches, they were people and they were overwhelmingly women”.

She said: “At a time when women were not even allowed to speak as witnesses in a courtroom, they were accused and killed because they were poor, different, vulnerable or in many cases just because they were women.

“It was injustice on a colossal scale, driven at least in part by misogyny in its most literal sense, hatred of women.

“Today on International Women’s Day, as first minister on behalf of the Scottish government, I am choosing to acknowledge that egregious historic injustice and extend a formal posthumous apology to all of those accused, convicted, vilified or executed under the Witchcraft Act of 1563.”

Only three witch trials are thought to have been conducted in Irish history. The first involved Dame Alice Kyteler and her maid Petronilla de Meath in 1324. In Northern Ireland, a mass trial was held in Carrickfergus. The women tried have become known as the Islandmagee witches.