Witchcraft in Early Modern Scotland

This volume provides a valuable introduction to the key concepts of witchcraft and demonology through a detailed study of one of the best known and most notorious episodes of Scottish history, the North Berwick witch hunt, in which King James was involved as alleged victim, interrogator, judge and demonologist. It provides hitherto unpublished and inaccessible material from the legal documentation of the trials in a way that makes the material fully comprehensible, as well as full texts of the pamphlet News from Scotland and James' Demonology, all in a readable, modernised, scholarly form. Full introductory sections and supporting notes provide information about the contexts needed to understand the texts: court politics, social history and culture, religious changes, law and the workings of the court, and the history of witchcraft prosecutions in Scotland before 1590. The book also brings to bear on this material current scholarship on the history of European witchcraft.

This volume provides a valuable introduction to the key concepts of witchcraft and demonology through a detailed study of one of the best known and most notorious episodes of Scottish history, the North Berwick witch hunt, in which King James was involved as alleged victim, interrogator, judge and demonologist.

The court and politics; social contexts and cultural formations; the Kirk; Scottish witchcraft before the North Berwich witch hunt; the legal process; aftermath. Witch hunting - examinations, confessions and depositions. Records of the witchcraft trials (Dittays); text of the witchcraft trials (Dittays). Witchunt propaganda - "News from Scotland"; text of "News from Scotland". Theorizing the witch hunt - James VI's "Demonology"; text of "Demonology". Appendix: Privy Council Orders relating to the legal processes of witch trials.