The King Obsessed With Witches

Maddy Pelling and Anthony Delaney investigate one of Europe’s bloodiest witch hunts: Scotland’s North Berwick Witch trials of 1591. In this extraordinary case, fears escalated all the way up the social hierarchy to the King himself, James VI. A wild storm in the North Sea had nearly killed James and his new wife Anne of Denmark, fuelling his fascination with the intellectual study of demonology. A maelstrom of terror brought together the King’s paranoia of a conspiracy against him with local rivalries and misfortune, twisting together the fates of individuals from maidservants to magistrates, in the hunt for scapegoats.

Maddy and Anthony meet at Edinburgh’s Holyrood Palace, the place where the King himself interrogated one of the alleged witches, Agnes Sampson, a local healer and midwife. This was a remarkable moment when different worlds met, king and commoner, captured through the accounts of her confession.

But who were the accused, and how were their confessions extracted? Maddy and Anthony travel through this area of Scotland and examine the records to understand how the fear of witches spread through entire communities, and how the women and men of North Berwick were tragically caught up in the terror.

Check out their podcast 'After Dark' here: https://www.youtube.com/@AfterDarkHistoryHit

00:00 Introduction
02:26 Religious upheaval and the Scottish Witchcraft Act
04:22 The Malleus Maleficarum and European imagery
10:03 Royal storms and the Copenhagen witch hunt
12:04 Accusations at the Old Kirk of North Berwick
15:29 Brutal interrogations and News from Scotland
17:28 David Seton and the targeting of Geillis Duncan
20:43 How accusations spread across social classes
22:59 Instruments of torture and coerced confessions
26:42 King James VI and his royal paranoia
29:46 Daemonologie and royal theological views
33:43 Agnes Samson meets King James at Holyrood
40:09 The trial, confession records, and execution on Castle Hill
44:46 Legacy, James VI, and Shak