Castlehill, Edinburgh EH1 2NG
King James VI of Scotland (reigned 1567-1625) was born in Edinburgh Castle on 19 June 1566. James was an important figure in Scottish witchcraft, particularly during the infamous North Berwick witch trials between 1590 and 1592.
The Scottish parliament had passed an act against witchcraft in 1563, but the North Berwick witch trials were the first occasion on which a persecution of a group of alleged witches resulted in a large number of executions. The panic began when a local witch-hunt in East Lothian became linked to royal misfortunes. The fleet of ships that was carrying James’s bride Princess Anna of Denmark to Scotland ran into storms in 1589 and had to turn back. James himself crossed the North Sea to fetch her and also encountered treacherous sea conditions. In Anna’s native Denmark this was blamed on witches, and in Scotland the local witch-hunting in East Lothian came to be imagined as part of an international witch conspiracy. Several dozen witches were executed, including healer Agnes Sampson, maidservant Geillis Duncan, schoolmaster John Fian, and magician and necromancer Richie Graham. The alleged ringleader of the conspiracy, Francis Stewart, Earl of Bothwell, was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle in 1591 but managed to escape.
These sensational trials placed witch-hunting firmly on the agenda in Scotland. The idea of witches conspiring with the Devil was adopted in many Scottish localities, and there were further panics from time to time over the next century. James himself was inspired to write a treatise about witchcraft, Daemonologie, published in 1597.
Sources & Additional Resources:
- Brian P. Levack, ‘Witch-Hunting in Scotland: Law, Politics and Religion (London: Routledge, 2008), 34-54.
- Lawrence Normand and Gareth Roberts (eds), Witchcraft in Early Modern Scotland : James VI’s Demonology and the North Berwick Witches (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000).
- Witch Hunt, BBC Scotland.