John, Master of Orkney, was tried for the alleged crime of attempting to destroy the life of his brother the Earl of Orkney, first by witchcraft, and secondly by more direct means. The case broke down, and would not be worthy of attention in this place, but for the nature of the means taken to inculpate the accused. It appeared that the alleged witchcraft stood upon the evidence of a confession wrung from a woman called Alison Balfour, residing at Ireland, a village in Orkney, who had been executed for that imaginary crime in December 1594. The counsel for the Master shewed that, when this poor woman made her ‘pretended confession,’ as it might well be called, she had been kept forty-eight hours in the _cashielaws_--an instrument of torture supposed to have consisted of an iron case for the leg, to which fire was gradually applied, till it became insupportably painful. At the same time, her husband, a man of ninety-one years of age, her eldest son and daughter, were kept likewise under torture, ‘the father being in the _lang irons_ of fifty stane wecht,’ the son fixed in the _boots_ with fifty-seven strokes, and the daughter in the _pilniewinks_, that they, ‘being sae tormented beside her, might move her to make any confession for their relief.’ A like confession had been extorted from Thomas Palpla, to the effect that he had conspired with the Master to poison his brother, ‘he being kept in the cashielaws eleven days and eleven nights, twice in the day by the space of fourteen days callit [driven] in the boots, he being naked in the meantime, and scourgit with tows [ropes] in sic sort that they left neither flesh nor hide upon him; in the extremity of whilk torture the said pretended confession had been drawn out of him.’ Both of these witnesses had revoked their confessions, Alison Balfour doing so solemnly on the Heading Hill of Kirkwall, when about to submit to death for her own alleged crime, of which she at the same time protested herself to be innocent. These are among the most painful examples we anywhere find of the barbarous legal procedure of our ancestors.--_Pit._ * * * * * [Sidenote: AUG. 3. 1596.] One John Dickson, an Englishman, was tried for uttering slanderous speeches against the king, calling him ‘ane bastard king,’ and saying ‘he was not worthy to be obeyed.’ This it appeared he had done in a drunken anger, when asked to veer his boat out of the way of the king’s ordnance. He was adjudged to be hanged.--_Pit._ It is curious on this and some other occasions to find that, while the king got so little practical obedience, and the laws in general were so feebly enforced, such a severe penalty was inflicted on acts of mere disrespect towards majesty. [Sidenote: AUG. 17.]