Witchcraft in Early Modern Scotland: James VI's Demonology and the North Berwick Witches (Exeter Studies in History) - Softcover

Normand, Lawrence; Roberts, Gareth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 085989388X ISBN 13: 9780859893886

Publisher: Liverpool University Press, 2000

Synopsis

This volume provides a valuable introduction to the key concepts of witchcraft and demonology through a detailed study of one of the best known and most notorious episodes of Scottish history, the North Berwick witch hunt, in which King James was involved as alleged victim, interrogator, judge and demonologist. It provides hitherto unpublished and inaccessible material from the legal documentation of the trials in a way that makes the material fully comprehensible, as well as full texts of the pamphlet News from Scotland and James' Demonology, all in a readable, modernised, scholarly form. Full introductory sections and supporting notes provide information about the contexts needed to understand the texts: court politics, social history and culture, religious changes, law and the workings of the court, and the history of witchcraft prosecutions in Scotland before 1590. The book also brings to bear on this material current scholarship on the history of European witchcraft.

About this title

About the Authors

Lawrence Normand is principal lecturer in English at Middlesex University.

Until his death in 1999, Gareth Roberts was senior lecturer in the School of English, University of Exeter, where he was Course Director of the MA in The History and Literature of Witchcraft.

Edition details

• Publisher: Liverpool University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 085989388X
• ISBN 13: 9780859893886
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 468