MacBeth

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Macbeth

King James I 1566-1625

James VI, king of Scotland, was the most experienced monarch to accede to the English throne since William the Conqueror, as well as one of the greatest of all Scottish kings.

King James VI of Scotland / King James I of England

House of Stuart

King James VI of Scotland (1567-1625)

King James I of England  (1603-1625)                          > King of Great Britain

Achieved: a common coinage, a common flag and the abolition of hostile laws between England, Scotland and Ireland.

Hoped that the moderates of all persuasions, Roman Catholic and Protestant alike, would join together in his church.

5 November 1605: Gunpowder plot

King James Bible 1611

He was sober in habit, enjoyed vigorous exercise, and doted on his Danish wife, Anne, who had borne him two male heirs.

Obsession with black magic

Scottish Parliament had criminalised witchcraft in 1563, just before James’s birth. The act made being a witch a capital offence. 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 conjured dangerous storms to try to kill the royals during their voyages across the North Sea.

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 coastal town of North Berwick on Halloween night in 1590. There the devil preached to them and encouraged them to plot the king’s destruction. After hearing these confessions, even though they had been extorted by torture, King James and his advisers came to believe a witchcraft conspiracy threatened his reign.

1597    

King James published his treatise, Daemonologie. Witchcraft attracted scholarly interest in the 16th century, and the king’s book reflects how James saw himself as an intellectual. 

Daemonologie explains the way the devil operated in the world. He was the leader of fallen angels, who had become demons. These demons made pacts with people and granted them powers to work harmful magic. According to James’s book, therefore, witchcraft was a secret conspiracy between humans and demons, who were out to do all the harm they could. Against this conspiracy, the faithful’s only hope was to appeal to God—and especially to the God-given powers of kings like James.

About 30,000–60,000 people were executed in the whole of the main era of witchcraft persecutions, from the 1427–36 witch-hunts in Savoy (in the western Alps) to the execution of Anna Goldi in the Swiss canton of Glarus in 1782. These figures include estimates for cases where no records exist.

More accused witches were executed in the last decade of Elizabeth I’s reign (1558–1603) than under her successor, James I (1603–25).

The first Witchcraft Act was passed under Henry VIII, in 1542, and made all pact witchcraft (in which a deal is made with the Devil) or summoning of spirits a capital crime. The 1604 Witchcraft Act under James could be described as a reversion to that status quo rather than an innovation.

In Scotland, James had personally intervened in the 1590 trial of the North Berwick witches, who were accused of attempting to kill him. He wrote the treatise Daemonologie, published in 1597. However, when King of England, James spent some time exposing fraudulent cases of demonic possession, rather than finding and prosecuting witches.

Misconception: King James I was terrified of witches and was responsible for their hunting and execution

Henry Fuseli

ca. 1785

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