June 19, 1566

James VI of Scotland (June 19, 1566 to March 27, 1625) ruled a rough country with historic ties to France. His mother, Mary Queen of Scots, as she is now called, had in fact been the Queen of France at one time. Her cousin Queen Elizabeth was well aware Mary's claim to the English throne was strong, and so when Mary was her prisoner, the sensible thing was to have Mary killed. Elizabeth though hesitated, for twenty years, because she thought killing legitimate royalty set a bad precedent. In fact, she had to be tricked into signing the proper warrants. James did not protest against England's execution of his mother. And that shows us a major difference between the 16th century and ours. You can see this shift in sentimental explanation in the the headline of the article we quote, "The Brutal Witch Hunts of a Love- Struck Scottish King." There was never a lovestruck king. Another chasm between our times and his is the assumption of the power of the ill-will of elderly women. This Renaissance phenomenon is demonstrated in the details we recount:

'The brutal witch hunts of a love-struck Scottish king... started with a rumour that witches had conjured up a North Sea storm so powerful it would kill Scotland’s king and his new queen....

'James VI, who became so fascinated with ‘witches’ he wrote a book on the subject, began [about 1590] to investigate the possibility that a coven in Scotland was working alongside counterparts in Denmark to try and kill the new Royal couple as they tried to return to Scotland, News came to the king that his old adversary, Francis, 5th Earl of Bothwell, had kept an active witch coven in East Lothian under his influence.... In Scotland, proceedings were raised against the so-called North Berwick witches, who congregated in St Andrews Auld Kirk in the town, and their accomplices. It was the first large scale prosecution of its type in Scotland and those arrested and put on trial included Dame Euphemia Macalzean, Agnes Sampson, a herbalist of Nether Keith; John Cunningham of Prestonpans, a schoolmaster and secretary to Lord Bothwell; Geilie Duncan of Tranent and Barbara Napier and Ritchie Graham both of Edinburgh. 

It is said that James VI personally interrogated a number of suspects. 

Agnes Sampson was tortured at Edinburgh Tolbooth where she was pinned to the wall using a witch’s bridle, an iron muzzle that clamps the head, and eventually she confessed to 53 charges against her. 

During her confession she claimed she attached parts of a corpse to a cat, sailed to sea in a sieve, then put the cat into the sea to create a storm to shipwreck the king. ...

[She was] among at least 50 people executed for endangering the life of the King 

....Meanwile, James VI published Daemonologie in 1597 following the Berwick Witch Trials, with the proceedings charted in the third section of the book. In it, he attempt[ed] to “resolve the doubting...both that such assaults of Satan are most certainly practiced and that the instrument therefore merits most severely to be punished."...

'The book went on to be a major influence [on] Shakespeare in his writing of Macbeth, it is claimed.'

Once James VI arrived in London, he never went back to Scotland.