At the same time that the presbytery of Lanark was driving on matters with the Marchioness of Douglas, it had another serious affair on its hands. Towards the close of the preceding year, the marquis had sent eleven women of his parish to Lanark, as accused of witchcraft by one Janet Couts, ‘a confessing witch,’ then in prison at Peebles. There was a difficulty about the case, for the burgh declined to maintain so many persons pending their trial. It was therefore necessary to send them back to Crawford Douglas under security. Afterwards, one George Cathie, ‘the pricker,’ being brought to Lanark, the women were brought forward again, when, ‘before famous witnesses--namely, Gideon Jack and Patrick Craig, bailies in Lanark, James Cunningham of Bonniton, &c., Mr Robert Birnie himself [the minister of Lanark] being also present, and by consent of the women, the said George did prick pins in every one of them, and in divers of them without pain the pin was put in, as the witnesses can testify.’ The women were accordingly detained in prison. As ‘it was not possible for the parish out of which they came to furnish watches night and day for them,’ the county ‘did ordain that each parish should, proportionally to their quantity, furnish twelve men every twenty-four hours; whereupon the presbytery did ordain that the minister of that parish out of which the watches shall come for their turn, shall come along with them, to wait upon the suspected persons, and to take pains, by prayer and exhortation, to bring them to a confession.’ [Sidenote: 1650.]