North Berwick witch trials
The "witches" allegedly held their covens on the Auld Kirk Green, part of the modern-day North Berwick Harbour area.
[2] The admiral of the Danish fleet, Peder Munk argued with the treasurer Christoffer Valkendorff about the state of the ships used to transport Anne of Denmark.
They all confessed that they had been guilty of sorcery in raising storms that menaced Queen Anne's voyage, and that on Halloween night they had sent devils to climb up the keel of her ship.
[9] Two significant accused persons were Agnes Sampson, a respected and elderly woman from Humbie, and Dr John Fian, a schoolmaster and scholar in Prestonpans.
Fian's testimony implicated Francis Stewart, 5th Earl of Bothwell in a supernatural conspiracy, bringing a political element into the ongoing trials.
[14] According to the contemporary pamphlet Newes from Scotland, 1591, she named numerous individuals, both women and men: Agnes Sampson the eldest witch of them all, dwelling in Haddington; Agnes Tompson of Edenbrough; Doctor Fian alias John Cuningham, master of the school at Saltpans in Lowthian, of whose life and strange acts you shal hear more largely in the end of this discourse.
These were by the said Geillis Duncane accused, as also George Motts wife, dwelling in Lowthian; Robert Grierson, skipper; and Jannet Blandilands; with the potter's wife of Seaton: the smith at the Brigge Hallis, with innumerable others in those parts, and dwelling in those bounds aforesaid; of whom some are already executed, the rest remained in prison to receive the doome of judgment at the Kinges Majesties will and pleasure.
[18] It was alleged that Euphame MacCalzean, Barbara Napier, Agnes Sampson and others had attended an assembly of witches at "Atkynson's Haven" where an image of James VI was given to the devil for the destruction of the king.
When it all came to trial, Napier was accused of a practice to kill the king by witchcraft but was found guilty of only the lesser crime of conspiring with witches.
[20] James VI wanted an appeal to overturn the first verdict, in order to better prosecute the Earl of Bothwell, and an "assize of error" was planned.
[25] Shakespeare adapted or was influenced by several concepts from the trials, including the rituals confessed by the witches and the Scottish setting, in his tragedy Macbeth.
Borrowing many quotes from the treatise, the three witches cast their spells in the same manner:[27] "purposely to be cassin into the sea to raise winds for destruction of ships.
Heavy/doom metal group Cathedral has a song called "North Berwick Witch Trials" on their 2005 album The Garden of Unearthly Delights.
Additionally, the two main characters, Diana and Matthew travel to the past, to Elizabethan England on Halloween night 1590 at the beginning of the book.
The Burnings, a 2023 debut novel by Naomi Kelsey,[31] describes the North Berwick witch trials from the perspectives of Geillis Duncan and of Margaret Vinstarr, who was married to John Wemyss of Logie and was a lady-in-waiting for princess Anne of Denmark, Queen of Scotland by marriage (at age 14) to King James VI.
