The Minister and the Witch: Harry Forbes of Auldearn and Isobel Gowdie

In the spring of 1662, the quiet parish of Auldearn became the setting for “one of the most remarkable documents in the history of witchcraft.” (Levack, Brian P. 2015. The Witchcraft Sourcebook, 2nd ed. London: Routledge.) At its center were two very different figures: Harry Forbes, Minister of Auldearn, and Isobel Gowdie, the wife of a cottar (farm laborer) from nearby Lochloy. Over six weeks, Gowdie described encounters with the Devil, meetings with the fairy folk, transformations into animals, magical practices, and a witches' coven. She also claimed that the coven had tried to kill the minister himself.

Harry Forbes became minister of Auldearn in 1655 and remained there until 1663. Forbes's ministry at Auldearn coincided with one of the most intense periods of witch-hunting in Scottish history. Following the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, prosecutions for witchcraft increased dramatically. Between April 1661 and the summer of 1662, at least 660 people were accused of witchcraft and diabolism. (Levack, Brian P. 1980. "The Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1661–1662." Journal of British Studies 20, no. 1.)

The authorities were beginning to impose restrictions on the methods used in witchcraft investigations. On April 10, 1662, the Privy Council prohibited the use of torture without its express authorization. It also required that confessions relied upon for conviction be voluntary, made by people of sound mind, and given without a desire to bring about their own deaths. These restrictions were issued only days before the first confession in the Auldearn case.

The surviving sources provide little information about the events that first brought Isobel Gowdie to the attention of the authorities. Almost nothing is known about her life outside the surviving confessions. All that was known was that she was the wife of John Gilbert, a farm labourer, and lived at Lochloy, approximately two miles north of Auldearn. She could neither read nor write, and her age is not recorded.

What is known is that by April 1662 she had come before the ministers and local authorities at Auldearn on suspicion of witchcraft. The precise origin of the accusation is not preserved in the surviving record, so the circumstances that led to her interrogation cannot be reconstructed with certainty.

“Harie Forbes” is an “Investigator” in the proceedings of 1662 who witnessed the confessions. (Goodare, Julian; Martin, Lauren; Miller, Joyce; and Yeoman, Louise. 2003. The Survey of Scottish Witchcraft, 1563–1736. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.)

Each of the four surviving interrogations opens with the statement that it took place “IN presence of Master Harie Forbes, Minister of the Gospell at Aulderne.” At the conclusion, the clerk attested the document with the words, “Mr. Hary Forbes, Minister at Auld Earn, Attestis.” (Pitcairn, Robert, ed. 1833. Ancient Criminal Trials in Scotland, vol. 3. Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club.)

Forbes was not merely present. His position gave him an important role in the proceedings and placed his name directly beneath the testimony that was recorded.

Later historians have characterized Forbes as a zealous Covenanter who held strong beliefs concerning witchcraft. He is described as part of a wider group of fervent ministers and local landowners whose religious convictions and anxieties helped shape witchcraft prosecutions in their communities. (Wilby, Emma. 2010. The Visions of Isobel Gowdie: Magic, Witchcraft and Dark Shamanism in Seventeenth-Century Scotland. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press.)

Gowdie’s first recorded confession took place on April 13, 1662, only three days after the Privy Council's restrictions on torture. She appeared before ministers from Auldearn and Nairn and at least twelve local lairds and elders. The proceedings were recorded by the notary John Innes. Three further confessions followed on May 3, May 15, and May 27, producing a remarkable series of statements over approximately six weeks.

The confessions describe a supernatural world populated by the Devil, fairies, witches, spirits, and magical transformations. Gowdie claimed that she had met the Devil in Auldearn kirk and renounced her baptism. She described gatherings with the Queen of Elphame (the legendary queen of the fairy realm) beneath Downie Hill and claimed that members of the group could fly through the air and transform themselves into animals. Among the most memorable passages is her description of changing into a hare: “I shall go into a hare, With sorrow and sych and meickle care; And I shall go in the Devil’s name, Ay while I come home again.” (Pitcairn, Robert, ed. 1833. Ancient Criminal Trials in Scotland, vol. 3. Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club.)

The confessions also contain detailed descriptions of magical practices, meetings, charms, and attacks supposedly directed against particular individuals. Forbes himself occupies an unusual place in these accounts. He was not simply the minister presiding over the interrogations. He became one of the people whom the accused claimed to have targeted through witchcraft.

Gowdie returned repeatedly to Forbes in her testimony. On May 3, Gowdie dated the first attack precisely: “In Winter 1660, quhen Mr Harie Forbes, Minister at Aulderne, wes seik.” She described charms worked “striktlie, against Maister Harie Forbes” to prevent “his recowering from the said seiknes.” (Ibid.)

In another confession, she said that members of the group had gathered at the house of Bessie Wilson and made a bag intended to harm him. The contents allegedly included toad flesh, guts and galls, together with the liver of a hare. (Ibid.)

Gowdie also named Margaret Brodie of Auldearn as one of the women associated with her coven. According to Gowdie's confession, Brodie attempted to kill Forbes with an “elf-arrow” at the “at the Standing-stanes,” but the arrow missed. Gowdie said that Brodie asked whether she should shoot again, but the Devil told her not to, because they would not take Forbes's life at that time. (Ibid.)

Later retellings have sometimes claimed that Gowdie described wax images or poppets of Forbes's children. The surviving source examined here does not support that claim. It records clay images directed against the male children of the Laird of Park, not Forbes's children.

The question of how the confessions were obtained is central to understanding the case. When the authorities at Auldearn sought a commission to try Gowdie, the Council required that any conviction rest upon confessions made freely, without torture, by people of sound mind and without an apparent desire to die. The clerk described Gowdie's first confession as voluntary, recording that it was given “w[i]thout any compulsitoris.” Yet modern historians have treated the circumstances with greater caution. (Wilby, Emma. 2010. The Visions of Isobel Gowdie: Magic, Witchcraft and Dark Shamanism in Seventeenth-Century Scotland. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press. Levack, Brian P. 2015. The Witchcraft Sourcebook, 2nd ed. London: Routledge.)

Despite the details of the trial and confessions, no surviving record establishes the verdict or records an execution. Recent scholarship has suggested that Gowdie was released or simply disappeared from the surviving record. (Callow, John. 2004. “Gowdie, Isobel (fl. 1662), Alleged Witch,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press.)

Forbes left his ministry at Auldearn in 1663 but no records suggest that his departure was connected with the witchcraft proceedings, his alleged illness, or the accusations recorded against him.

The Auldearn proceedings occurred near the end of the great wave of Scottish witch-hunting. During the second half of 1662, the intensity of the prosecutions declined. The central authorities increasingly showed concern about the reliability of witchcraft accusations and the methods used to obtain evidence.

That change did not mean that belief in witchcraft disappeared, nor did it bring an immediate end to prosecutions. However, the atmosphere surrounding such cases was beginning to change. The restrictions imposed by the Privy Council in April 1662 were part of that development, placing greater emphasis on the voluntariness and reliability of confessions. The Auldearn case consequently stands at an important point in the history of Scottish witchcraft: it belongs to the height of the great hunt while also revealing the growing unease about the methods by which alleged witches were investigated and convicted.

The story of Harry Forbes and Isobel Gowdie remains compelling precisely because the surviving evidence allows some things to be established while leaving others unresolved.