can laugh at such a charge, and imagine it sufficient not only to disprove itself, but weaken all the other charges brought against him. But in the sixteenth century it was no such laughing matter; for there were not only silly women in abundance to proclaim themselves witches, but wise men to believe them. Even the pulpits of England as well as Scotland resounded with sermons against witchcraft; and a learned prelate, while preaching before Elizabeth, assured her Majesty, that the many people who were dying daily, in spite of all the aid of leechcraft, were thus brought to their end by spells and incantations.[1] While this was the prevalent belief, a person having recourse to such agency was wilfully and deliberately seeking help from the devil, and seeking it where he thought it could best be found. Now, Adamson, among his other offences, had fallen into this most odious and criminal predicament. He was afflicted with a painful disease, which he called a "fœdity;" and being unable to obtain relief from the regular practitioners, he had recourse to the witches of Fife, and among others, to a notable woman, who pretended to have learned the art of healing from a physician who had appeared to her after he was dead and buried! This wretched creature, on being apprehended and convicted of sorcery, or what she meant to be such, was sentenced to suffer death, as she would have been in any other country of Europe, and was given in charge to the Archbishop for execution. But the woman made her escape, and this, it was supposed she did, through Adamson's connivance. After this statement, it needs scarcely be wondered at, that foremost in the accusations both from the pulpit and in church courts, the crime of seeking aid from Satan should have been specially urged against him. The man who will presumptuously attempt "to call spirits from the vasty deep," incurs the guilt of sorcery whether they come or not.
While such was the evil plight to which the archbishop was reduced, and out of which he was trying to struggle as he best could, the condition of public affairs was scarcely more promising for his interests. In the Assembly held in April, 1582, he had seen Robert Montgomery, Archbishop of Glasgow, who was his constant ally in every Episcopal movement, arraigned at their bar, reduced to the most humbling confessions, and dismissed with the fear of deposition hanging over him. In the same year, the Raid of Ruthven had occurred, by which the royal power was coerced, and presbytery established in greater authority than ever. Dismayed by these ominous symptoms, Adamson withdrew from public notice to his castle of St Andrews, where he kept himself "like a tod in his hole," giving out that his painful "fœdity" was the cause of his retirement. But at length the sky began to brighten, and the primate to venture forth after a whole year of concealment. The king emancipated himself from his nobles of the Raid, and came to St Andrews, upon which the archbishop, flinging off his sickness like a worn-out cloak, resumed his abandoned pulpit with royalty for an auditor, and preached such sermons as were well
- ↑ The preacher was no other than the learned Bishop Jewel. "Witches and sorcerers within these last few years," he said, "are marvellously increased within your Grace's realm. These eyes have seen most evident and manifest marks of their wickedness. Your Grace's subjects pine away even unto the death: their colour fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their speech is benumbed, their senses are bereft. "Wherefore your poor subjects' most humble petition to your Highness is, that the laws touching such malefactors may be put in due execution. For the shoal of them is great, their doing horrible, their malice intolerable, their examples most miserable: and I pray God they never practise further than upon the subject."
