While Elizabeth amused herself with the supernatural gifts to which
Dee advanced his claim, and consoled the adversity and destitution
to which the old man, once so extensively honoured, was now reduced,
a scene of a very different complexion was played in the northern
part of the island. Trials for sorcery were numerous in the reign
of Mary queen of Scots; the comparative darkness and ignorance of
the sister kingdom rendered it a soil still more favourable than
England to the growth of these gloomy superstitions. But the mind
of James, at once inquisitive, pedantic and self-sufficient,
peculiarly fitted him for the pursuit of these narrow-minded and
obscure speculations. One combination of circumstances wrought up
this propensity within him to the greatest height.
James was born in the year 1566. He was the only direct heir to the
crown of Scotland; and he was in near prospect of succession to that
of England. The zeal of the Protestant Reformation had wrought up
the anxiety of men's minds to a fever of anticipation and forecast.
Consequently, towards the end of the reign of Elizabeth, a point which
greatly arrested the general attention was the expected marriage of
the king of Scotland. Elizabeth, with that petty jealousy which
obscured the otherwise noble qualities of her spirit, sought to
countermine this marriage, that her rival and expected successor might
not be additionally graced with the honours of offspring. James fixed
his mind upon a daughter of the king of Denmark. By the successful
cabals of Elizabeth he was baffled in this suit; and the lady was
finally married to the duke of Bavaria. The king of Denmark had
another daughter; and James made proposals to this princess. Still
he was counteracted; till at length he sent a splendid embassy, with
ample powers and instructions, and the treaty was concluded. The
princess embarked; but, when she had now for some time been expected
in Scotland, news was brought instead, that she had been driven back
by tempests on the coast of Norway. The young king felt keenly his
disappointment, and gallantly resolved to sail in person for the port,
where his intended consort was detained by the shattered condition
of her fleet. James arrived on the twenty-second of October 1589,
and having consummated his marriage, was induced by the invitation
of his father-in-law to pass the winter at Copenhagen, from whence
he did not sail till the spring, and, after having encountered a
variety of contrary winds and some danger, reached Edinburgh on the
first of May in the following year.
It was to be expected that variable weather and storms should
characterise the winter-season in these seas. But the storms were
of longer continuance and of more frequent succession, than was
usually known. And at this period, when the proposed consort of James
first, then the king himself, and finally both of them, and the hope
of Protestant succession, were committed to the mercy of the waves,
it is not wonderful that the process of the seasons should be
accurately marked, and that those varieties, which are commonly
ascribed to second causes, should have been imputed to extraordinary
and supernatural interference. It was affirmed that, in the king's
return from Denmark, his ship was impelled by a different wind from
that which acted on the rest of his fleet.
It happened that, soon after James's return to Scotland, one Geillis
Duncan, a servant-maid, for the extraordinary circumstances that
attended certain cures which she performed, became suspected of
witchcraft. Her master questioned her on the subject; but she would
own nothing. Perceiving her obstinacy, the master took upon himself
of his own authority, to extort confession from her by torture. In
this he succeeded; and, having related divers particulars of
witchcraft of herself, she proceeded to accuse others. The persons
she accused were cast into the public prison.
One of these, Agnes Sampson by name, at first stoutly resisted the
torture. But, it being more strenuously applied, she by and by became
extremely communicative. It was at this period that James personally
engaged in the examinations. We are told that he "took great delight
in being present," and putting the proper questions. The unhappy
victim was introduced into a room plentifully furnished with
implements of torture, while the king waited in an apartment at a
convenient distance, till the patient was found to be in a suitable
frame of mind to make the desired communications. No sooner did he
or she signify that they were ready, and should no longer refuse to
answer, than they were introduced, fainting, sinking under recent
sufferings which they had no longer strength to resist, into the royal
presence. And here sat James, in envied ease and conscious "delight,"
wrapped up in the thought of his own sagacity, framing the enquiries
that might best extort the desired evidence, and calculating with
a judgment by no means to be despised, from the bearing, the turn
of features, and the complexion of the victim, the probability whether
he was making a frank and artless confession, or had still the secret
desire to impose on the royal examiner, or from a different motive
was disposed to make use of the treacherous authority which the
situation afforded, to gratify his revenge upon some person towards
whom he might be inspired with latent hatred and malice.
Agnes Sampson related with what solicitude she had sought to possess
some fragment of the linen belonging to the king. If he had worn it,
and it had contracted any soil from his royal person, this would be
enough: she would infallibly, by applying her incantations to this
fragment, have been able to undermine the life of the sovereign. She
told how she with two hundred other witches had sailed in sieves from
Leith to North Berwick church, how they had there encountered the
devil in person, how they had feasted with him, and what obscenities
had been practised. She related that in this voyage they had drowned
a cat, having first baptised him, and that immediately a dreadful
storm had arisen, and in this very storm the king's ship had been
separated from the rest of his fleet. She took James aside, and, the
better to convince him, undertook to repeat to him the conversation,
the dialogue which had passed from the one to the other, between the
king and queen in their bedchamber on the wedding-night. Agnes Sampson
was condemned to the flames.