Witches of Scotland: the pardon, the apology, and a tartan

Between 1563 and 1736, roughly 3,800 people in Scotland were accused of witchcraft under the country's Witchcraft Act, and around 2,500 of them were executed. Most were women. A campaign called Witches of Scotland has spent years fighting to have them formally pardoned, apologized to, and memorialized, and in February 2025 it got a tartan registered in their honor.

Who were the Witches of Scotland?

How many people were accused of witchcraft in Scotland?

According to the University of Edinburgh's Survey of Scottish Witchcraft, an estimated 3,837 people were accused and about 2,558 were killed. Around 84 to 85 percent of them were women. Scotland's per capita execution rate for witchcraft was among the harshest in Europe; Claire Mitchell KC has pointed to evidence it ran five times higher than anywhere else.

What was the Witchcraft Act?

Scotland's Witchcraft Act became law in 1563, three years after the Scottish Parliament made Protestantism the state religion. It was short and vague, defining witchcraft largely as consorting with the devil, and it stayed on the books for 173 years until its repeal in 1736. King James VI of Scotland, who believed witches had raised storms against his ship returning from Denmark in 1589, wrote his own manual on the subject, Daemonologie, and fed the panic that followed. The last execution under the Act happened in 1727.

What happened to the accused?

Accused people were stripped and searched for the devil's mark, usually by a paid "witch pricker," deprived of sleep, and tortured. Most of those convicted were strangled and then burned, so the body could not rise. These were not practitioners of any craft; they were ordinary people, disproportionately poor, older, isolated, or otherwise easy to scapegoat. Some may have practiced a bit of folk magic. None of them committed a real crime.

The campaign

Who started Witches of Scotland?

The campaign was launched on International Women's Day in 2020 by two women: Claire Mitchell KC, a practicing advocate who works in criminal law and human rights, and Zoe Venditozzi, a writer. They run the Witches of Scotland podcast together, which has drawn listeners around the world, and they are now co-authors of a book on the trials, How to Kill a Witch, published in 2025.

The campaign has three goals: a legal pardon for everyone convicted, a formal government apology (which reaches even the people who were only accused, since a pardon alone cannot help them), and a national memorial.

Did they win the apology?

They did. On March 8, 2022, International Women's Day, Scotland's then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon issued a formal apology in the Scottish Parliament, calling the persecution a "colossal injustice." She named what it was: an apology for the miscarriage of justice done to thousands of people, mostly women. She also drew the line to the present, saying the deep misogyny that motivated the Act had not left with it. The Church of Scotland has since apologized too, for its role in the persecution.

The legal pardon is still the unfinished piece. A member's bill to clear the names of the accused was championed by SNP MSP Natalie Don, and a public consultation ran in 2022, but the pardon itself has not yet been delivered. That is the campaign's open fight.

How did a tartan become a memorial?

Mitchell and Venditozzi first wanted a physical monument, but they could not settle on a site or a way to fund it. Then, at the opening of the V&A Dundee's Tartan exhibition, the idea arrived: make a tartan instead. They teamed up with Clare Campbell of Prickly Thistle, a weaving mill in the Highlands, and the Witches of Scotland tartan was registered with the Scottish Register of Tartans in February 2025.

Every thread in it is argued on purpose. The black and grey stand for the dark times and the ashes of those burned. The red and pink stand for the legal tape that bound the papers then and now. The large black square is 173 threads, one for each year the Act stood. The thin lines carry thread counts drawn from the digits of 1563 and 1736. A white check of three threads marks the three aims: pardon, apology, memorial. It is woven in Scotland, sold on a pre-order model with proceeds going to charity, and meant to be a living memorial you can wear.

Why this story belongs in our world

Here is what moves me about this campaign, beyond the history. It takes the thing that was done to women who may have known a little folk magic, and it insists on the words: injustice, apology, pardon, memorial. It refuses to let the trials be folklore, spooky or decorative. The accused were neighbors. The machinery that killed them ran on fear of women who did not fit.

That matters to anyone practicing today. Mitchell and Venditozzi are careful to say modern witches and the historical accused are not the same people, and they are right. But modern practitioners get to draw the real lesson, the one Venditozzi names: do not scapegoat vulnerable or isolated people when the community is afraid. That lesson is old and it is not finished.

There is no national memorial in Scotland yet. Until there is, there is a tartan, a podcast, a book, and two women who would not let the record sit wrong. That is how memory gets kept. Somebody refuses to drop it.