Four English gentlemen, Messrs George Smith, John Martin, Andrew Owen, and Edward Mosley, the commissioners appointed by Cromwell for the administration of justice in Scotland in place of the Court of Session, commenced their labours in the criminal department at Edinburgh. Three days were spent in the trial and fining of persons of impure life, of whom there were above sixty brought before the judges in a day. ‘It is observable,’ says an English newspaper of the time, ‘that such is the malice of these people, that most of them were accused for facts done divers years since, and the chief proof against them was their own confession before the kirk, who are in this worse than the Roman religion, who do not make so ill a use of their auricular confession. Some of the facts were committed five, ten, nay, twenty years. There was one Ephraim Bennet, a gunner in Leith, indicted, convicted, and condemned for coining sixpences, shillings, and half-crowns. Also two Englishmen, Wilkinson and Newcome, condemned for robbing three men, and for killing a Scottishman near Haddington in March last. But that which is most observable is, that some were brought before them for witches, two whereof had been brought before the kirk about the time of the armies coming into Scotland, and having confessed, were turned over to the civil magistrate. The court demanding how they came to be proved witches, they declared they were forced to it by the exceeding torture they were put to, which was by tying their thumbs behind them, and then hanging them up by them: two Highlanders whipped them, after which they set lighted candles to the soles of their feet, and between their toes, then burned them by putting lighted candles in their mouths, and then burning them in the head: there were six of them accused in all, four whereof died of the torture.... Another woman that was suspected, according to their thoughts, to be a witch, was twenty-eight days and nights with bread and water, being stripped stark naked, and laid upon a cold stone, with only a haircloth over her. Others had hair-shirts dipped in vinegar put on them, to fetch off the skin.’--_Mercurius Politicus_.[162] The resolution of the judges to inquire into these cruelties is intimated. [Sidenote: 1652.] Regarding a man accused of witchcraft, it is mentioned a few days later by the same newspaper, that he first confessed a number of ridiculous things, including frequent converse with the devil, but before the judges he denied all, and said that he _had only been in a dream_. ‘The truth is, he lived in so poor a condition, that _he confessed or rather said anything that was put into his head_.... By this you may guess upon what grounds many hundreds have heretofore been burnt in this country for witches.’ A most pregnant remark, truly.