The 16th and 17th centuries were periods of profound social, political and religious change, and the turbulence that people experienced made them cling ever more tightly to their deeply-held superstitions. The ‘Kingdom of Darkness’ was as real to them as the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’, and ordinary people everywhere believed in devils, imps, fairies, goblins and ghosts, as well as legendary creatures such as vampires, werewolves and unicorns. Many people feared evil portents – such as a hare crossing one’s path, or a picture falling from the wall – and would follow a whole host of rituals to avoid being cursed. For pregnant women, this meant avoiding looking at the moon.

Far from being pitied, there was widespread suspicion of widows, who tended to find themselves on the periphery of society soon after their husband’s death. The natural order of society dictated that women should be subject to the authority of men – be they fathers, husbands or even sons. It was inconceivable that a woman might wish to make her own way in the world, unfettered by paternal or marital ties. The few who did, either by choice or circumstance, were viewed with suspicion, even fear, by the other members of their community. Single women were derided as freaks of nature, and a contemporary comedy – The London Prodigal – claimed that women who died as virgins “lead apes in hell”.

The beginning of serious official action against witches was signalled by a papal bull issued in December 1484 by Pope Innocent VIII. The significance of the bull was that it declared that witchcraft was heresy. Until then, witches had been viewed merely as magicians who could command special powers to do good or evil. Following the publication of the 1464 bull, however, witches were condemned as devil worshippers who had rejected God and the Christian faith in order to serve Satan. This was considered a crime against the church that should not go unpunished and sparked witch hunting on an unprecedented scale. 

James VI and I was the only monarch in history to publish a treatise on witchcraft. Daemonologie (in effect, the science of demons) was the result of painstaking and meticulous work on the king’s part, and must have taken years to complete. Early versions of the manuscript still survive and show more than 100 amendments made by James’s own hand. The finished version took the form of an 80-page quarto which went through several editions and was later translated into Latin, French and Dutch. Although lacking in original or profound ideas, the fact that it had been written by a king made it enormously influential.

Witchcraft had been on the Scottish law books since 1563, but until the North Berwick witch trials of 1590-1592 it had gone virtually unprosecuted. All of that changed when James returned from Denmark after marrying Anne, daughter of King Frederick II, in 1589. Fired up by the witch hunting fervour that he had witnessed in his new wife’s native land, James was determined to introduce similarly harsh measures against witches in his own country. The turbulent sea voyage home to Scotland presented him with the perfect opportunity. Convinced that the storms had been whipped up by witchcraft, he had 100 suspected witches arrested upon his arrival in Scotland. James personally superintended some of the interrogations – which aimed to uncover a “devilish” plot to drown the Scottish king and his new wife – and was said to have taken “great delight” in watching the torture of the suspects.

Joan, Margaret and Phillipa Flower lived in the Leicestershire village of Bottesford, close to Belvoir Castle, seat of the Earls of Rutland. They were despised by the local community for their poverty and the fact that they refused to attend church. The gossips claimed that as well as leading a shockingly immoral life, they were also witches and had made a pact with the devil. When the sixth Earl of Rutland’s young sons both fell ill while the Flower women were employed at Belvoir, it did not take long for the finger of blame to point at Joan and her daughters. They were eventually rounded up and taken to Lincoln Castle. Joan died en route and her two daughters were convicted at the Court of Assizes in early 1619 and hanged shortly afterwards.

When James succeeded to the English throne upon Elizabeth I’s death in 1603, his new subjects were quick to try and curry favour with their new king. His new Witchcraft Act, passed in 1604, inspired a rash of plays and other literary works. By far the most famous was William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which was deliberately short in length (the king was known to have little patience for sitting through long plays). Given that it was James’s voyage to his wife’s native land that had prompted his obsession with witchcraft, it is significant that the occasion of Macbeth’s inaugural performance was a visit by Queen Anne’s brother, the king of Denmark, in 1606. Shakespeare wove in several references to James’s voyage throughout the play. One example is when the First Witch (one of three witches in the play) claims that she set sail in a sieve, as this was an accusation levied at one of the North Berwick witches. The line “Though his bark cannot be lost,/Yet it shall be tempest-tossed” almost certainly alludes to James’s near-death experience during the voyage, too. 

Upon the subject of how a convicted witch should be punished, James was emphatic: “They ought to be put to death according to the law of God, the civil and imperial law, and municipal law of all Christian nations.” His personal preference was for death “by fire”, but he admitted that the method of execution depended upon the laws and customs of the individual countries. No one should be spared, except children – for, James argued, “they are not that capable of reason as to practice such things.”. Otherwise, a prince or magistrate should not hesitate to exact the ultimate punishment. He failed to convince his English subjects, however, and hanging remained the penalty for convicted witches.

It is notoriously difficult to ascertain the exact number of people accused of witchcraft who were tried and executed, due to the loss or absence of many contemporary judicial records. This has led to intense speculation among historians, with estimates ranging from 50,000 to nine million executions. There is now a broad consensus that around 100,000 suspected witches were tried and 40,000 executed. Shocking though it is, the total number of executions does not convey the intensity of the witch craze. In addition to the official trials and executions, there were possibly many thousands of others who suffered a more random form of justice at the hands of neighbours through assaults, lynchings and summary executions. The figure also does not account for the thousands of people who suffered the terror of living under suspicion of witchcraft, or who were ostracised by their local community. 

Witches were thought to have a wide variety of different animals as their ‘helpers’ or ‘familiars’, although cats were most common. Rutterkin the cat was owned by Joan Flower, one of the three ‘Witches of Belvoir’. Under interrogation, her daughters described how Joan had tried to bewitch to death Katherine Manners, the elder half-sister of two young boys who were thought to have died from a bewitchment. According to Margaret Flowers’s confession, she had stolen a piece of Katherine’s handkerchief from Belvoir Castle at her mother’s command. Joan Flower reportedly plunged this into hot water, then rubbed it on Rutterkin’s back, “bidding him to flye and go”. But the cat had merely “whined and cryed Mew”, for he “had no power over the Lady Katherine to hurt her”.