Witchcraft in Early Modern Scotland

Abstract

This book provides an 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 It provides hitherto unpublished and inaccessible material from the legal documentation of the trials in a way that makes the material fully comprehensible, all in a readable, modernised,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.

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