Events connected with the marriage of James and Princess Anne of Denmark appeared from the start in the evidence of those accused of witchcraft in the North Berwick witch hunt. The personal, political and dynastic import of this royal marriage was not lost on the accused, nor were the details of the perilous journeys. The accused also clearly understood what the earl of Bothwell’s relation to the regime was, for he too appears in their evidence from an early stage. The royal marriage and Bothwell form two dominant themes of this witch hunt, and generate other minor motifs (ships, journeys,...

The witch hunt of the 1590s spread through central and east Scotland and the north-east, beginning at the same time as the North Berwick witch trials and continuing after they were over until about 1597. The conditions and causes of an early modern witch hunt are complex, and include ideology, law, religion, and the nature of the society where that hunt takes place. While none of these alone provides a complete explanation for a witch hunt, each contributes to the conditions necessary for accusations to be made, for prosecutions to be successful, and for a witch hunt to develop. These...

The witchcraft trials of the early 1590s can only be fully understood in relation to the Scottish reformation.¹ Witchcraft trials were a mechanism through which some of the ideological struggles between church and crown were articulated and realised, particularly in relation to questions of spiritual and political authority. Witchcraft too was involved in the protestants’ campaign for the reform of morality and social life; it was used by the church to redefine as evil an inchoate and diverse range of beliefs and practices that were found mostly, but not exclusively, among the lower social classes. Scottish protestants participated with European...

Learner believed that ‘the beginning of witch-hunting in 1590 is unambiguous and the discontinuity with the previous era clear cut’, and that the North Berwick witch trials stimulated a national witch hunt in 1591-7.² This section reconsiders whether there was such a clear break in 1590 by surveying the witch trials between the 1563 witchcraft act and November 1590. In addition it considers whether notions of magic and the supernatural, and especially of the devil, changed during the later sixteenth century. Larner thought it hard to see ‘much development in beliefs about witchcraft’ in the second half of the sixteenth...

An accusation of witchcraft in early modern Scotland was usually brought against a woman by someone living in her neighbourhood. It often ‘began with an insult [and] ended with a public burning’.¹ The steps along this tragic path were determined by men in authority and the institutions in which they operated. This section summarises the legal institutions and the processes of accusation, examination, trial and punishment which might be faced by someone charged with witchcraft in Scotland, and tries to trace a path through the ‘confused and flexible system’² of criminal justice at that time.

In sixteenth-century Scotland there was...

The protracted witch hunt that lasted from 1590 until 1597 finally came to an end by state action but not before an unknown number of people had died. Scattered references indicate witch hunts, not just individual cases, breaking out in several areas. In June 1595 a letter recorded ‘many witches are taken and burnt in the Merse, some for mean, some for greater matters’.¹ In Aberdeen in 1597 there was a particularly serious outbreak of trials and executions. The Aberdeen dean of guild was commended by the town council because he ‘hes extraordinarlie takin panis [pains] on the birning of...

Before the trials suspects were detained, interrogations were conducted and depositions taken, and this evidence was recorded and retained for production at trial. Confrontation of the accused with witnesses, that is the bringing of these persons face to face with each other, took place before the trial and could be repeated at it. And witnesses could be confronted with other witnesses. Interrogations were repeated, as in the case of Agnes Sampson.

There were virtually no limits to what constituted admissible evidence at a witchcraft trial. Rumour and reputation were included alongside things allegedly said and done.¹ The investigators were trying...

The fragmentary notes at the top of the page indicate particular questions the examiners had in mind to ask the examinates. The ‘ring’ mentioned in these notes is presumably the one in Agnes Sampson’s dittay, item 35, which she supposedly enchanted for Barbara Napier to gain the favour of Lady Angus.

At the start Geillis Duncan seems to be confessing to a meeting, in the middle of the firth, between the Scottish witches and a witch from Copenhagen (‘Coppenhown’). There were rumours current that the storms that troubled the voyages of James and Anne from Denmark to Scotland were caused...

A dittay (from Old Frenchditté, something written) is the indictment against an accused person. The dittays of four persons accused of witchcraft from December 1590 to June 1591 and tried before the justiciary court in Edinburgh have survived. The four persons are John Fian, alias Cunningham, Agnes Sampson, Barbara Napier and Euphame MacCalzean. In addition, records of Bothwell’s trial in August 1593 have also survived.

John Fian and Agnes Sampson were dealt with quickly in December 1590 and January 1591, their trials each taking one day. There is then a gap until Barbara Napier’s trial begins on 8 May...

Which persons of assize being chosen, sworn and admitted¹ upon the said John Fian’s assize, he being accused by dittay of the said crimes, they removed themselves altogether forth of court to the assize house, where they chose the said James Watson chancellor.¹ And have reasoned upon¹ the points³ of the said dittay and resolved¹ therewith, re-entered again in the said court where they, by the mouth of the said chancellor,¹ found, pronounced and delivered the said John Fian, alias Cunningham, to be filed¹ and convict.

(1) First,¹ that when the devil appeared and came to him when he was...

News from Scotlandis the first work printed in Scotland or England which is solely about Scottish witchcraft, and there were none in the early seventeenth century. There is an account of the trial and execution of some witches at Irvine in 1618, but this seems to have existed only in manuscript until it was printed about 1855.’ The flow of material about witchcraft in Scotland came in the late seventeenth century when the period of the major witch hunts was over.² Although there is some truth in Larner’s claim thatNews‘is a classic sixteenth-century English pamphlet’,³ it is...

The manifold untruths which are spread abroad concerning the detestable actions and apprehension of those witches, whereof this history following truly entreateth,¹ hath caused me to publish the same in print.¹ And the rather for that¹ sundry written copies¹ are lately dispersed thereof, containing: that the said witches were first discovered by means of a poor pedlar travelling to the town of Tranent, and that by a wonderful manner he was in a moment conveyed at midnight from Scotland to Bordeaux² in France (being places of no small distance between³) into a merchant’s cellar there; and after, being sent from...

Demonologycould in theory have been written any time between 1591 and 1597, and within these limits scholars have favoured either an early date or a late one, arguing that James was motivated by either the examinations and trials of 1590–1 or another outbreak of witchcraft prosecutions in 1597.’ In this edition an early date is preferred for the following reasons.

A sense of the urgent and the immediate pervadesDemonology’spreface and the opening exchanges between Philomathes and Epistemon. Although a claim to have written in haste or carelessly is a conventional humanist gesture,² the king’s pressing desire...

The fearful abounding¹ at this time¹ in this country¹ of these detestable slaves of the devil, the witches or enchanters, has moved me (beloved reader) to dispatch in post¹ this following treatise of mine. Not in any wise,¹ as I protest, to serve for a show of my learning and engine,¹ but only, moved of conscience,¹ to press¹ thereby so far as I can to resolve the doubting hearts of many, both that such assaults of Satan are most certainly practised, and that the instruments¹ thereof merit most severely to be punished—against the damnable opinions of two principally in...