Parliament Square, Edinburgh EH1 1RQ
Protestant reformer John Knox died on 24 November 1572 and was buried in Parliament Close (now called Parliament Square). Nine years earlier, on 4 June 1563, the Scottish parliament passed the crucial act against witchcraft that made the offence a secular crime. Knox’s relationship with the act was a close one. The witchcraft act itself, and other acts on godly discipline, were drafted and presented to parliament by a committee of the general assembly of the church; Knox was a member of the committee and may well have drafted the witchcraft act himself.
The plaque marking the approximate location of John Knox’s grave in a car park in parliament square
©Kim Traynor, Wikimedia Commons
Knox stands at the threshold of the Scottish witch-hunts. He had a clear view of the Devil as the great enemy of humankind, and was bitterly hostile to the Catholic church, but human witches were less important enemies to him. The text of the 1563 witchcraft act was confusing; it seemed to imply that witches were public practitioners with clients and gave no clear definition of witchcraft that the criminal courts could use. However, the act did state clearly that witchcraft was a crime punishable by death, and it was duly cited as the legal basis for thousands of executions over the next century and a half.
Source:
- Julian Goodare, 2005, ‘The Scottish Witchcraft Act‘, Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, vol. 74, pp. 39-67.