Scotland in the early modern period other towns above 10,000 by the end of the period were Glasgow with 32,000, Aberdeen with around 16,000 and Dundee with 12,000. In late medieval Scotland there is evidence of occasional prosecutions of individuals for causing harm through witchcraft, but these may have been declining in the first half of the sixteenth century. In the aftermath of the initial Reformation settlement, Parliament passed the Witchcraft Act 1563, similar to that passed in England one year earlier, which made witchcraft a capital crime. Despite the fact that Scotland probably had about one quarter of the population of England, it would have
Demographic history of Scotland expense of forest from about 2000 BCuntil the time of the Roman advance into lowland Scotland in the first century AD, suggesting an expanding settled population. Thereafter, there was regrowth of birch, oak and hazel for some 500 years, suggesting that the Roman invasions had a negative impact on the native population. There are almost no written sources from which to reconstruct the demography of early medieval Scotland. Estimates have been made of a population of 10,000 in Dál Riata and 80–100,000 for Pictland, which was probably the largest region. It is likely that the fifth and sixth centuries saw