(King James') interest in witchcraft was not particularly keen until his marriage to the fourteen-year old Anne of Denmark (1574 – 1619). Although at this time witchcraft was not a hot topic of discussion in Scotland or England, it was a matter of intense interest in Denmark and adjacent countries, which were suffering the throes of an outbreak of witch mania. Witches were being outed by accusers in every village and hamlet, and the people were terrified of the Devil’s agents, as witches were understood to be. They had a very different concept of witchcraft than what we have today. Witches were looked upon as slaves of Satan, compelled to do his bidding.
Shortly after the marriage, Anne took ship to Scotland to be with her new husband, but the vessel was beset by foul weather and a series of mishaps forced it to take shelter in a port on the coast of Norway. When James heard of the great storm that had driven back Anne’s ship, he embarked on an uncharacteristic course of action—he sailed from Scotland to Norway to claim his bride personally. It has been called the only romantic gesture of his entire life.
His own crossing of the sea was uncommonly stormy. Coupled with the trouble Anne had encountered in her efforts to reach Scotland, the storm must have seemed uncanny to the superstitious James. Yet a third storm struck his ship and almost wrecked the vessel as he was bringing his bride home to Edinburgh in the spring of 1590. It merely confirmed James in his conviction that the Danish royal family and nobility, which he had met with in Kronborg Castle over the Christmas season, had been correct—witches were working black magic to keep Anne out of Scotland. At that time many people accused of witchcraft were being burned alive in Norway and Denmark, and the evils of witches were on everyone’s lips.
It was natural, when accusations were made of witchcraft later that same year in the little village of North Berwick, Scotland, that James should take a personal interest in the proceedings. More than a hundred persons were arrested, and many of them subjected to horrifying tortures to extract confessions to a whole range of crimes, including treasons against the Scottish crown. James took so great a role in the interrogations of the accused witches and in their trials that when a Scottish jury acquitted one of the accused, Barbara Napier, due to lack of evidence, James used his power as monarch to void their verdict, and ordered her execution.
It was with a considerable fund of practical knowledge gleaned from the testimonies of the supposed North Berwick witches that in 1597 James came to write his singular dialogue on witchcraft and the supernatural, which he titled Demonology. James wrote the book as a public service. He genuinely believed at this period in his life that witchcraft was real, and that it was an unholy scourge that threatened to destroy all of Christendom unless vigorously combated by godly men such has himself.
Source: http://www.llewellyn.com/journal/article/2186
