Calendar of Cases of Witchcraft in Scotland 1510 to 1727

From the beginning, the clergy became the leading persecutors of this witches. Before them and their kirk session confessions were mostly taken, and in many instances they took upon themselves to inflict torture to induce confession. An examination of the confessions made by the witches show that they are not the spontaneous utterances of the accused, but the answers to specific questions shaped into substantive confessions, so that it is impossible to distinguish what was put into the mind of those who confessed by their examining torturers from what may have been there before, the result of a common superstition.