McLachlan email:

From: H.McLachlan@gcal.ac.uk
Subject: Query: A Re-assessment of the Famous Paisley Witchcraft Case of 1697
Dear Donna,
I don't know whether this is any use to you, but here goes: I think that Christian Shaw was very bright, very hard-working and that she had a lot of entrepreneurial flair. After all, she was the driving force behind the Bargarran Thread company. She outlived several husbands (three I think) and so she must have been a robust woman and, presumably, not an unattractive one. As a child she might seem to have been over much interested in religious matters (although that is, perhaps, merely how other adults depicted her- nonetheless, there must have been something in this for the depiction to have been attempted.) However, I suspect that her position was more balanced in adult life. I doubt that she was an atheist. She married a minister, after all. I doubt that she was a religious zealot: her life was too full and rich for that.
She had, I think, a powerful personality. She had charisma. She was a survivor.
I am not sure about what her education would have been. I am sure she had a good one. I have no doubt that she was steeped in Church of Scotland Presbyterianism. She would, I think, have been baptised as a child by an episcopalian minister- such were the religious revolutions of the time in Scotland. If she had been a religious bigot and zealot, this might have troubled her.
Best wishes and good luck,
Hugh