North Berwick Witch Trials (1590): James VI Hunts Witches

The North Berwick witch trials were a series of Scottish witchcraft prosecutions between 1590 and 1592 in which dozens of people were accused of plotting to kill King James VI by raising storms at sea. James personally took part in questioning suspects, and the case convinced him that witches were a real political danger. It was the first large witch hunt in Scotland and influenced both James’s later writings and witch persecution in Britain.

Background

Witchcraft had been a capital crime in Scotland since the Witchcraft Act of 1563, but prosecutions had been relatively few. In 1589 James VI married Anne of Denmark by proxy. Her voyage to Scotland was driven back by storms, and James sailed to Norway to collect her himself, marrying her in Oslo on 23 November 1589. The couple returned to Scotland in May 1590 after another rough crossing.

In Denmark, officials blamed witches for the storms that had endangered Anne’s fleet, and trials were held in Copenhagen in 1590. The idea that a conspiracy of witches had targeted the royal couple therefore reached Scotland at the same time as local accusations began.

How the case began

The trials began in Tranent, East Lothian, where David Seton, a deputy bailiff, grew suspicious of his maidservant Geillis Duncan, who was said to have cured the sick in remarkable ways. He had her tortured, and she named a number of others as fellow witches.

Those named included Agnes Sampson, an older healer and midwife from Humbie; John Fian, a schoolmaster in Prestonpans; and two women from Edinburgh’s wealthier circles, Euphame MacCalzean and Barbara Napier. Under interrogation and torture, the accused described a gathering of witches with the Devil at the church of North Berwick on Hallowe’en 1590, and spells meant to sink the king’s ship and harm him with wax images and poison.

The king’s involvement

James VI questioned several of the accused himself at Holyrood. According to the pamphlet Newes from Scotland (1591), he initially dismissed Agnes Sampson’s confession as lies until she repeated the words he and Anne had exchanged on their wedding night in Norway. The story is known only from this pamphlet, but it shows how the king came to believe in the plot.

The accusations soon took on a political dimension. Some confessions named Francis Stewart, 5th Earl of Bothwell, the king’s cousin and a turbulent nobleman, as the instigator of the attempt on James’s life. Bothwell was imprisoned in 1591, escaped, and remained in conflict with the king until he fled abroad in 1595.

Trials and executions

Agnes Sampson was executed on Castlehill in Edinburgh in January 1591, strangled and then burned, the usual method in Scotland. John Fian, who confessed under severe torture and later retracted, was executed around the same time. Euphame MacCalzean was burned alive in June 1591, an unusually harsh sentence.

When a jury acquitted Barbara Napier of the main charge of plotting against the king, James had the jurors themselves prosecuted. Napier escaped execution, reportedly because she claimed to be pregnant. Around 70 people were implicated in total, though records are incomplete and the number of executions is uncertain.

Key people

• James VI (1566–1625): king of Scotland and later of England, who took a personal role in the interrogations.
• Agnes Sampson (died 1591): a healer and midwife, executed as a leading witch.
• John Fian (died 1591): schoolmaster of Prestonpans, accused of acting as the group’s clerk.
• Geillis Duncan (died 1591): the maidservant whose confession started the case.
• Francis Stewart, 5th Earl of Bothwell (1562–1612): the nobleman accused of directing the plot.

Legacy

The trials deepened James’s interest in witchcraft. In 1597 he published Daemonologie, a dialogue arguing that witchcraft was real and must be punished. After he became king of England in 1603, Parliament passed a stricter Witchcraft Act in 1604, the law later used at the Pendle witch trials. Later in life James became more sceptical of individual accusations.

In Scotland, the North Berwick case was followed by a major national witch hunt in 1597 and further waves in the 17th century. Modern research by the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft records close to 4,000 people accused between 1563 and 1736. The case is often compared to later episodes such as the Salem witch trials, and it is thought to have influenced the witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

Timeline

• 1563: Scotland’s Witchcraft Act makes witchcraft a capital offence.
• 1589, 23 November: James VI marries Anne of Denmark in Oslo.
• 1590, 1 May: James and Anne land at Leith after a stormy voyage.
• 1590, late autumn: Geillis Duncan’s confession in Tranent starts the accusations.
• 1591, January: Agnes Sampson and John Fian are executed in Edinburgh.
• 1591, June: Euphame MacCalzean is burned at Castlehill.
• 1597: James VI publishes Daemonologie.

Why it matters

The North Berwick witch trials linked witchcraft to treason against the Crown, giving witch-hunting royal backing in Scotland. Through James VI’s later role as king of England, the case helped shape attitudes to witchcraft across Britain for generations.