Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University History Dissertations Department of History 12-2020 KING JAMES AND THE INTELLECTUAL INFLUENCES OF THE WITCHCRAFT PHENOMENON IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND Lashonda Slaughter Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_diss Recommended Citation Slaughter, Lashonda, "KING JAMES AND THE INTELLECTUAL INFLUENCES OF THE WITCHCRAFT PHENOMENON IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2020. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_diss/85 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of History at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. KING JAMES AND THE INTELLECTUAL INFLUENCES OF THE WITCHCRAFT PHENOMENON IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND by LASHONDA M. SLAUGHTER Under the Direction of Jacob Selwood, PhD ABSTRACT King James VI of Scotland took part in the prosecution of several witches between 1590 and 1592. As a result, the king composed and published a treatise on witchcraft that placed emphasis on popular European understandings of witchcraft, the Devil and Magic. This treatise subsequently had a profound influence on English and Scottish intellectual responses to witchcraft during the seventeenth century. INDEX WORDS: Early Modern England, Early Modern Scotland, Witchcraft KING JAMES AND THE INTELLECTUAL INFLUENCES OF THE WITCHCRAFT PHENOMENON IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND by LASHONDA M. SLAUGHTER A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2020 Copyright by Lashonda Marie Slaughter Wilson 2020 KING JAMES AND THE INTELLECTUAL INFLUENCES OF THE WITCHCRAFT PHENOMENON IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND by LASHONDA SLAUGHTER Committee Chair: Jacob Selwood Committee: Nick Wilding Jared Poley Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Services College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University December 2020 iv DEDICATION I dedicate this to my husband Adam and my son Aiden, who have stood beside me and supported me through this journey. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work would not have been possible without the financial support of the Georgia State University Library Dissertation Award and the ongoing support and encouragement of the Georgia State University Department of History. I am especially indebted to Dr. Jacob Selwood, my advisor, who has been supportive of my career goals and who worked actively to provide me with the protected academic time to pursue those goals. I am forever grateful to all of those with whom I have had the pleasure to work during this and other related projects. Each of the members of my Dissertation Committee has provided me extensive personal and professional guidance and taught me a great deal about both historical research and academia. None of my accomplishments would have been possible without the love and support of my family.I would like to acknowledge my supportive husband, Adam, and my son, Aiden. Further, I would like to recognize my parents Cyrus and Kathy, and my in-laws, David and Bunny. Finally, I would like to recognize my fellow researcher and cohort-mate Heather Welch. Heather’s constant support and friendship has been of the utmost importance and influence on my academic journey. Without the help of Heather and the others listed here, this dissertation would not have been possible. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................ V 1 INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................. 1 2 “THOU SHALT NOT SUFFER A WITCH TO LIVE:” THE ORIGINS OF THE WITCHCRAFT NARRATIVE ..................................................................................... 34 3 THE ORIGINS AND STRUCTURAL FOUNDATIONS OF DIABOLICAL WITCHCRAFT............................................................................................................... 85 4 THE DAEMONOLOGIE OF KING JAMES ............................................................. 129 5 DAEMONOLOGIE IN PRACTICE AND PRINT ..................................................... 178 6 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 228 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 246 APPENDICES ........................................................................................................................... 257 Appendix A ........................................................................................................................... 257 Appendix B ........................................................................................................................... 259 1 1 INTRODUCTION I. James VI and the Development of Sixteenth Century Witchcraft Belief King James VI and I of Scotland and England was a prolific author who skillfully used his position and the rising popularity of and access to the printed word to inform and instruct his subjects. In 1597, he published Daemonologie, an eighty-eight-page treatise consisting of a comprehensive analysis of the existence and threat of diabolical witchcraft.1 The treatise, formatted as a dialog between a skeptic of witchcraft’s danger and a believer covered an array of topics including a witch’s powers, how they obtained those powers, and the intended targets of a witch’s attacks. Daemonologie’s two narrators, Epistemon and Philomathes, engaged in a debate about the anecdotal and scriptural evidence that for many of James’s contemporaries, proved that witchcraft was real and that it posed a significant threat to all of Christianity. Witches possessed evil and unnatural abilities acquired through a pact with Satan and used them to cause serious harm to their entire community. Societal fears of evil magic were real, and publications like James’s are examples of increased concern about the subject by the turn of the seventeenth century. Personal experience led James to develop an interest in witchcraft and the Devil. Six years before the publication of Daemonologie, the king assisted in uncovering an alleged conspiracy to murder him and his new wife, Anne of Denmark.2 Newes from Scotland (1592), the first witchcraft pamphlet published in Scotland, recounts the details of the plot and the prosecution of eleven accused witches in North Berwick, where the conspiracy took place.3 1 James VI, Daemonologie in Forme of a Dialogue, Divided into Three Books (Edinburgh: Robert Walde-Grave, 1597). 2 Anonymous, Newes from Scotland, Declaring the Damnable Life and Death of Doctor Fian (London: 1592). 3 Anonymous, Newes from Scotland. 2 According to the pamphlet, the witches made sinister pacts with Satan, conducted diabolical rituals, and plotted to kill their enemies. The crimes were shocking on their own, but the more pressing significance of the acts committed in Newes was that the target was the king, God’s anointed representative on earth. James took the allegations against the witches seriously and personally participated in the interrogation and prosecution of several of the North Berwick witches. Without the North Berwick conspiracy, James’s Daemonologie and its subsequent influence on English and Scottish witchcraft belief would probably not exist. Officials obtained information from the witches in North Berwick from long periods of interrogation and torture.4 Newes from Scotland provides a detailed description of how the eldest of the accused witches, Agnes Sampson, appeared before King James and other Scottish nobles after her initial arrest and revealed the details of the entire conspiracy.5 Sampson and several of her co-conspirators admitted to acts of demon worship and malicious sorcery, but more importantly, Sampson specifically admitted to attempted regicide with assistance from the Devil.6 According to the pamphlet, Sampson confessed that Satan loathed the king, “by reason the king is the greatest enemy he hath in the world.”7 Sampson subsequently confessed to multiple acts of harmful magic, including regicide, poisoning, the ritual sacrifice of cats, the defiling of human corpses, and the conjuring of a destructive tempest.8 The events relating to the North Berwick witch-hunt had a profound effect on the young monarch. After the trials, James believed that witches, in collusion with Satan, posed an increasingly dangerous threat to both himself and his subjects. The king immersed himself in the study of witchcraft, and in 1597, he 4 Anonymous, Newes from Scotland, B2v. 5 Anonymous, Newes from Scotland, B2v. 6 Anonymous, Newes from Scotland, A4r. 7 Anonymous, Newes from Scotland, A4r. 8 Anonymous, Newes from Scotland, A4r-Cr. 3 presented his findings by publishing Daemonologie. The insidiously unnatural activities of the North Berwick witches convinced King James of the necessity to eradicate witches, but he was in no way alone in those beliefs. By the end of the sixteenth century, public concerns about the nature of magic resulted in higher rates of witch prosecutions, which paralleled the emergence of an intellectual interest in the witchcraft phenomenon throughout Europe. Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe Thousands of men, women,