Agnes Samson, a Witchy Wednesday article.
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| Confession of Agnes Samson. (Catalogue ref: SP 52/47 f. 14i) |
Sourced from The National Archive.
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
In the course of a witchcraft trial the accused could give a confession (sometimes given freely, sometimes forced) which would be used as evidence against them. Agnes Samsone was burned for witchcraft, and this source contains parts of her confession. 29 January, 1590.
Transcript
Page One, From Top into line 8 of main text:
Certain notes of Agnes Samsone her
confession 27 January 1590 whereupon she was
convicted by an Assize [legal court] &
burned in Edinburgh, 28 day
for a witch
Imprimis [Firstly] the said Agnes confesses that after the death of her hus-
band the devil appeared unto her in the night till she was
[?] and pensive [thinking] for the sustentation [keeping]of her and her bairns [babies]
bidding her be of good cheer and leave of that care for her
children, promising that if she would serve him she nor
they should lack nothing. And being motivated with her poverty
and his fair promises of riches and revenge of her enemies,
took him for her master and renounced Christ.
Page Two, Third Paragraph:
Item, she confesses that upon a complaint of a woman of the
frowardness [person who is difficult to deal with] of her father-in-law and her earnest desire
to be quit of him, she made a picture of wax and raised
a spirit at a waterside beside a brier bush [prickly shrub], desiring her
to enchant it to serve for his destruction, and send it to the said
woman to be put under his bed sheet or bed head.
Page 4, Second Paragraph:
Item, she confesses that she raised the devil by her
evocations [act of summoning the spirits] to ask if a gentlewoman should live or die.
He appeared to her in likeness of a black dog before supper,
she being alone. But after supper, having the gentle-
woman’s three daughters with her, of whom one
would have drowned herself in the well out of the which
the dog came and whether he went, and was hardly
stayed through the violent pulling and holding of
her sisters and the said Agnes Samsone the said
gentlewoman was made a quarter of an hour thereafter.
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| Illustration of Agnes Sampson speaking to the Devil in human form. From The History of Witches and Wizards (1720). |
For more information on Agnes please visit the following links.
