Behind the Palace Doors (2011)
“—KING JAMES VI AND I King James VI and I expressed many of his most firmly held beliefs in the books he wrote. For example, he promulgated the divine right of kings in The True Law of Free Monarchies and Basilikon Doron and railed against smoking in A Counterblaste to Tobacco. Then there was Daemonologie, in which the king encouraged the persecution of witches in Scotland. James was inspired, he wrote, by “the fearful abounding, at this time and in this country of these detestable slaves of the... devil.”
King James, famous for the Bible that bears his name, ignored many of the injunctions contained in the good book—like the one against sleeping with other men. He did, however, zealously heed one scriptural admonition found in Exodus: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
After an extended sojourn in Denmark, where he may have been educated about the dangers of witchcraft, the king returned to Scotland in 1590 with a new queen and an appetite for burning witches. Given his feelings about marriage, and women in general, it seems somehow fitting that the deeply misogynistic monarch would, at the time of his nuptials, become a rabid witch hunter.MoreLess
King James, famous for the Bible that bears his name, ignored many of the injunctions contained in the good book—like the one against sleeping with other men. He did, however, zealously heed one scriptural admonition found in Exodus: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
After an extended sojourn in Denmark, where he may have been educated about the dangers of witchcraft, the king returned to Scotland in 1590 with a new queen and an appetite for burning witches. Given his feelings about marriage, and women in general, it seems somehow fitting that the deeply misogynistic monarch would, at the time of his nuptials, become a rabid witch hunter.MoreLess
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