England, Shakespeare and The Witches of Leicester
On his arrival in England in 1603, James found himself king of a country of skeptics. Although witchcraft was on the statute books, the numbers of trials had been steadily declining during the reign of Elizabeth I. James immediately set about remedying this. Daemonologie was reprinted twice and in 1604the law was tightened to mirror that in Scotland. Hanging now became mandatory for the crime. The result was a pleasing surge in paranoia. A rash of copycat pamphlets followed the Daemonologie’s republication. So did a spate of trials, the most famous being that of Lancashire’s Pendle witches in 1612.
The fact that his subjects were very well aware of what their new monarch’s pet subject was shows in many of the new and popular plays of the time. In 1604, Christopher Marlow’s The Tragic History of the Life and Death of Dr. Faustus, which was first performed in 1588, was re-released. Ben Johnson followed suit by writing his new witch play, The Masque of Queens. However, the most famous witchcraft play of the period was Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which drew on many of the motifs of witchcraft beloved to James- and had its inaugural performance in 1607 when Queen Anne’s brother, the King of Denmark came to visit.
However, as his reign in England progressed, James became a less fervent, more skeptical witchfinder. In 1616, the King was on royal progress about the country when his interest was piqued by a provincial witchcraft case in the town of Leicester. At its center was a 12-year-old boy, John Smythe from Husbands Bosworth, a Leicestershire village. The child had accused a group of women of bewitching him. Nine women were arrested and brought to trial at the Leicester assizes.
Town officials told the fascinated King how during the court case, John Smythe had given ample evidence of the ‘strange fits’induced by the witch’s craft. While possessed by the witch’s familiar animal spirits, he produced the exact noises of the animal in question, barking, meowing or clucking as appropriate. The court also witnessed how he became so strong that two men could not hold him and that he could”strike himself such blows on his breast…that you might hear the sound of it the length of the chamber….and yet all he did to himself did him no hurt.”
This evidence convinced the judges, and the women were found guilty and hung. Having heard the particulars of the case, and having so narrowly escaped the wiles of witches himself, James was eager to meet a fellow survivor. So he asked to meet John Smythe so he could question him about his experience. The boy was presented to the king. However, the experience of meeting his monarch must have been overwhelming -because Smythe immediately broke down and admitted he had made the whole story up. Quite inadvertently, the witchfinder king had exonerated the Leicester witches-albeit too late to save their lives.
Where Do We Get this Stuff? Here are our Sources?
James I and Witchcraft, C N Trueman, The History Learning Site, March 17, 2015
North Berwick Witch Trials, Terry Stewart, Historic UK.
Shakespeare’s Macbeth and King James’s witch hunts, Tracy Borman, History Extra, June 19, 2018
The Little Book of Leicestershire, Natasha Sheldon, The History Press, 2017