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The ‘Mackenzie Mausoleum’ in Greyfriars Kirkyard is the tomb of Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh (c.1636-1691), a lawyer who was influential in discouraging the prosecution of witches in the 1670s. Early in his career, Mackenzie served as a justice depute (junior judge) during the witchcraft panic of 1661-62. He presided over numerous trials and issued numerous death sentences, but the experience caused him to have doubts over the evidence that had been presented. In a speech published in 1672 he wrote of witchcraft trials: ‘poor Innocents die in multitudes by an unworthy Martyredom, and Burning comes in fashion’. Mackenzie’s book The Laws and Customs of Scotland in Matters Criminal (1678) included a chapter on the crime of witchcraft that warned against indiscriminate prosecutions and demanded higher standards of evidence for conviction. As Lord Advocate, the crown’s chief law officer (1677-86, 1688-89), Mackenzie generally discouraged the prosecution of witches. He was a zealous prosecutor of presbyterian dissidents (a memorial to these presbyterians may be seen on the other side of Greyfriars Kirkyard), seeing them as threatening enemies of the state – but, to him, witches were not such a threat.
George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh’s mausoleum in Greyfriars Kirkyard
©Kim Traynor,
Wikimedia Commons
As well as his legal writings, Mackenzie also wrote on politics and philosophy, and published the first Scottish novel, Aretina. In 1682 he initiated the Advocates’ Library, which later became the National Library of Scotland; his name is commemorated in a window on the staircase of the Library in George IV Bridge.
Source:
- Wikipedia: George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh