ROYAL
HANDBOOK
In 1597 King
James VI outlined
his theories of
black magic in
Daemonologie
(below). When
James took the
English throne in
1603, the book
was republished
in England.early 16th century, both sides hunted witches.
During this period of religious reform, rulers
wanted to prove their godliness. They perceived
the unholy and evil as the source of unrest
and disorder.
Witch-hunting could be seen as an extension
of the Protestant Reformation as parish minis-
ters and government authorities sought to cre-
ate a “godly state” in which everyone worshipped
correctly, and sin and ungodliness were wiped
out. In numerical terms, Scotland’s witch hunts
were severe. Between 1590 and 1662, five in-
tense panics erupted across Scotland: 1590-91,
1597, 1628-1631, 1649-1650, and 1661-62.
As a result of these panics, out of a population
of roughly a million people, about 2,500 accused
witches, most of them women, were executed,
five times the average European execution rate
per capita. Scotland’s susceptibility to wide-
spread panic over witches and witchcraft was,
in part, determined by the role of one man: the
Scottish ruler King James VI, who, following
the death of Elizabeth I, became King James I of
England in 1603.
The King’s Book
Scottish Parliament had criminalized witchcraft
in 1563, just before James’s birth. The act made
being a witch a capital offense. Nearly three
decades passed before the first major witchcraft
panic arose in 1590, when King James came to
believe that he and his Danish bride, Anne, had
been personally targeted by witches who con-
jured dangerous storms to try to kill the royals
during their voyages across the North Sea.
One of the first accused in this panic was a
woman named Geillis Duncan, from Tranent in
East Lothian. In late 1590 her employer, David
Seton, accused her and tortured her into a con-
fession in which she named several accomplices.
Duncan later retracted her confession, but by
then the panic was well under way.
King James sanctioned witch trials after an
alarming confession in 1591 from an accused
witch, Agnes Sampson. It was revealed that
200 witches—even some from Denmark—
had sailed in sieves to the church of the coast-
al town of North Berwick on Halloween night
in 1590. There the devil preached to them andKING JAMES
1603 PORTRAIT
ATTRIBUTED
TO JOHN DE
CRITZ THE
ELDER. DULWICH
PICTURE GALLERY,
LONDONKING JAMES VI of Scotland
came to the throne in 1567, at
just over a year old, after his
mother Mary Queen of Scots
was deposed. Unlike his Catho-
lic mother, James was brought
up a Protestant. He received
an outstanding education and
became an able scholar. The
young king wrote learnedly on
many subjects, including king-
ship and his God-given right to
rule. Various plots and threats
spurred him into action to dem-
onstrate to the public his godly
superiority over his enemies,
which informed his writing of
Daemonologie in 1597. After
becoming James I of England
in 1603, he switched his at-
tention toward Catholic plots
against his rule.A SCHOLAR
AND A KING
BRIDGEMAN/ACIBRITISH LIBRARY/ALBUM