A review of these circumstances leaves a strange feeling on the mind, as if we were reading that which was deficient in some of the most necessary elements of human action. It is difficult to see to what extent the so-called wizards and witches were deluders and deluded. Was there any basis in fact for the affair at North Berwick Kirk, confessed to by two or three of the culprits, though, it may be remarked, with varying circumstances? Was Geilie Duncan’s dance-tune truly repeated before the king? Or were these matters of mere hallucination? Did these women really aim at doing harm to any one, or were they only lunatics? The story reads the more inexplicably when we see so many names as of simple villagers involved in it, and find a king and all his court and clergy viewing it in a serious light. * * * * * This year was marked by ‘a plague amang the bestial.’--_Chron. Perth._ REIGN OF JAMES VI.: 1591-1603. In this period we see a continuation of the struggles of the clergy for the independence of the kirk, and those of the king for a supremacy over it; the merciless measures for repressing the Catholic faith, and the desperate practices of the Catholics for relief; the weak rule of the king in all administrative matters; and the efforts of ambitious courtiers to gain an ascendency in his councils. The first transactions of any note were those arising from the condemnation and forfeiture of Stuart, Earl of Bothwell, an illegitimate cousin of the king, and nephew by his mother to the noted Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, the murderer of Darnley. Conceiving himself to be simply a victim of the jealousy of the Chancellor Maitland, this vivacious noble was indisposed to submit to his doom; he thought, if he could reach the king’s ear, he might regain lost power and place. His consequent intrusions by night into the palace, and appearances at the head of armed parties in the field, form a strange chapter in the history of the period. Our chronicle gives details of an unfortunate collision between the houses of Huntly and Moray, which resulted in the barbarous slaughter of the latter nobleman. The loss of public esteem which the king and the chancellor sustained through their suspected concern in this affair, and through the undoubted lenity which was shewn to the Earl of Huntly, reduced the government to such a degree of weakness, that it became necessary to give way somewhat to the demands of the clergy. To obtain their support, the episcopal arrangements of 1584 were in a great measure done away with (June 1592), and James himself passed a glowing eulogium on the Presbyterian system.