ABSTRACT
During the early modern period, ‘Britain’ incorporated a number of discrete political entities, and witchcraft and witch hunting in those various entities demonstrated marked differences. Modern historians of witchcraft in Britain have reached no consensus about the reasons for, or indeed the nature of, the retreat from witchcraft beliefs which the 1736 Act might logically be assumed to have symbolised. Scattered accusations continued throughout the 1590s, and a major wave of witch hunting came in 1597, with 111 accusations that year. In Scotland, the mass craze of 1661–1662 seems to have alerted the central judicial authorities to the dangers of uncontrolled witch hunting, and Edinburgh judges exercised greater control over witchcraft prosecutions. As early as 1568–1569, during a period of civil warfare, the reforming churchman John Erskine of Dun led a witch hunt in Angus and Mearns which was clearly connected with the push to achieve the godly society and which drew in forty accused.
