Scotland under the Commonwealth in the context of Restoration in Scotland

In early modern Scotland, in between the early 16th century and the mid-18th century, judicial proceedings concerned with the crimes of witchcraft (Scottish Gaelic: buidseachd) took place as part of a series of witch trials in Early Modern Europe. In the Late Middle Ages, there were a handful of prosecutions for harm done through witchcraft, but the passing of the Witchcraft Act 1563 made witchcraft, or consulting with witches, capital crimes. The first major issue of trials under the new act were the North Berwick witch trials, beginning in 1590, in which King James VI played a major part as "victim" and investigator. He became interested in witchcraft and published a defence of witch-hunting in the Daemonologie in 1597, but he appears to have become increasingly sceptical and eventually took steps to limit prosecutions.

An estimated 4,000 to 6,000 people, mostly from the Scottish Lowlands, were tried for witchcraft in this period, a much higher rate than for neighbouring England. There were five major series of trials in 1590–91, 1597, 1628–31, 1649–50 and 1661–62. Seventy-five per cent of the accused were women. Modern estimates indicate that more than 1,500 persons were executed; most were strangled and then burned. The hunts subsided under English occupation after the Civil Wars during the period of the Commonwealth led by Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s, but returned after the Restoration in 1660, causing some alarm and leading to the Privy Council of Scotland limiting arrests, prosecutions and torture. There was also growing scepticism in the later seventeenth century, while some of the factors that may have contributed to the trials, such as economic distress, subsided. Although there were occasional local outbreaks of witch-hunting, the last recorded executions were in 1706 and the last trial in 1727. The Scottish and English parliaments merged in 1707, and the unified British parliament repealed the 1563 act in 1736.

The Restoration was the return of the monarchy to Scotland in 1660 after the period of the Commonwealth, and the subsequent three decades of Scottish history until the Revolution and Convention of Estates of 1689. It was part of a wider Restoration in the British Isles that included the return of the Stuart dynasty to the thrones of England and Ireland in the person of Charles II.

As military commander of the Commonwealth's largest armed force, George Monck, governor-general in Scotland, was instrumental in the restoration of Charles II, who was proclaimed king in Edinburgh on 14 May 1660. There was a general pardon for offences during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, but four individuals were excepted and executed. Under the eventual political settlement Scotland regained its independent system of law, parliament and kirk, but also regained the Lords of the Articles and bishops, and it now had a king who did not visit the country and ruled largely without reference to Parliament through a series of commissioners. These began with the Earl of Middleton and ended with the King's brother and heir, James, Duke of York. The restoration of the Scottish Episcopacy led to a series of conflicts between Presbyterians and the Bishops of the Episcopalian establishment, culminating in the persecution of The Killing Time.