scholarly journals Reginald Scot and King James I: The Influence of Skepticism

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly Marie-Anne Bercovice
Keyword(s):  
James I ◽  
Witch Trials ◽  
King James I ◽  
The Witch ◽  
Changing Attitudes ◽  
James I Of England

The witch trials were less robust in England than in contiental Europe and the efforts of England's first skeptic, Reginal Scot, may have contributed to the outcome.  Scot's efforts to debunk witchraft in his book The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), were done so in a logical, methodical and theological manner.  King James VI of Scotland felt the need call out the doubters of witchcraft, and named Scot specifially, in his own work Daemonologie (1597) and upon becoming King James I of England, he banned Scot's book.  It is apparent, however, through the King's changing attitudes and eventual desire to reveal the hoaxes for what they were it becomes evident that the information Scot sought to reveal did in deed have an impact on the King.

King James I. of England

1874 ◽  
Vol s5-I (16) ◽  
pp. 312-313
Author(s):  
Henry Kilgour
Keyword(s):  
James I ◽  
King James I ◽  
James I Of England

James I and the Huguenot Synod of Tonneins of 1614

1972 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Brown Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Classical Scholar ◽  
James I ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Ecumenical Council ◽  
King James I ◽  
James I Of England

That King James I of England was ardently interested in religious ideas is well-known to students of the seventeenth century. Less well-known is the fact that he was specifically interested in the cause of religious reunion and played a leading part in a movement to find a way to reconcile the different national churches of his day and thus significantly to reduce international tensions. His plans did not exclude the possibility of a rapprochement between the Churches of the Reformation and Rome — even though James's own religious and political writings involved him in a series of bitter exchanges with leading Roman Catholic controversialists. From the beginning of his reign in England James had wanted to approach the problem of religious disunity through an international assembly of divines — or an ecumenical council, and he took care to make his intentions clear through diplomatic channels. During the years 1610–1614 he made use of the celebrated classical scholar Isaac Casaubon, then resident in England, in stimulating support for his ideas, especially in learned circles on the continent. Casaubon's death in England in the summer of 1614 deprived James of a zealous ally in the cause of Christian reunion, but it did not bring the campaign to which they had committed themselves to an end. By this time James was involved in the most ambitious reunion plan of his career, the result of his collaboration with Pierre Du Moulin, pastor of the Reformed Church in Paris and one of the leading theologians in France

scholarly journals The witches and the witch: Verdi's Macbeth

2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
DANIEL ALBRIGHT
Keyword(s):  
James I ◽  
Musical Patterns ◽  
Lady Macbeth ◽  
King James I ◽  
The Witch

The witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth equivocate between the demons of random malevolence and ordinary (if exceptionally nasty) old women; and both King James I, whose book on witchcraft may have influenced Shakespeare, and A. W. Schlegel, whose essay on Macbeth certainly influenced Verdi, also stress this ambiguity. In his treatment of Lady Macbeth, Verdi uses certain musical patterns associated with the witches; and like the witches, who sound sometimes tame and frivolous, sometimes like incarnations of supernatural evil, Lady Macbeth hovers insecurely between roles: she is a hybrid of ambitious wife and agent of hell.

A Literary Link between Thomas Shadwell and Christian Felix Weisse

PMLA ◽  
1906 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 808-830 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfred E. Richards
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Sort It ◽  
Witch Trials ◽  
Doctor Faustus ◽  
The Witch

Witchcraft in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a subject upon which the dramatists from Marlowe to Shadwell seized with the greatest avidity. There was material of the most pliable sort; it could be moulded into a magnificent tragedy or distorted into the wildest buffoonery. In the sixteenth century it was the darker side of magic which we find in the drama, and though we note as early as 1604 the effort to brighten up Marlowe's tragedy of Doctor Faustus by the introduction of broadly comic scenes taken from the prose tale, yet one can well believe that the theatre audiences from 1590 to 1610 remembered too vividly the cruelties of the witch trials in 1590 to appreciate the buffoonery of Ralph in the comic scenes as deeply as they felt the dark despair of the protagonist Faustus.

XLIII. Original Letters of King James I. to Sir George More, Lieutenant of the Tower, respecting the Trial of the Earl of Somerset. Communicated by William Bray, Esq. Treasurer, in a Letter to Samuel Lysons, Esq. F.R.S. V.P.

Archaeologia ◽  
1817 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 352-358
Author(s):  
William Bray
Keyword(s):  
James I ◽  
The Public ◽  
Great Fear ◽  
King James I

The conduct of King James the First, respecting the trials of the Earl and Countess of Somerset, for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury in the Tower, and his great fear, that if Somerset was brought to a public trial, some things might be told which he most anxiously wished to prevent, has been represented by Weldon in so strong a light, that the candid Rapin seems almost to doubt the truth of the representation. But I am enabled to lay before the Society copies which I have made from some original letters of the King to Sir George More, then Lieutenant of the Tower, which strongly corroborate what Weldon has said. They were written during the King's anxiety and suspense, whether Somerset could be prevailed on to confess his guilt, which would have prevented the public appearance of the witnesses, and any thing which Somerset might reveal.

XII. Copies of Two Manuscripts on the most proper Method of Defence against Invasion, by Mr. Waad. Communicated by the Rev. Samuel Ayscough, F.A.S. in a Letter to the Rev. John Brand, Secretary

Archaeologia ◽  
1800 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 169-184
Author(s):  
Samuel Ayscough
Keyword(s):  
British Museum ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
James I ◽  
Proper Method ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The Law ◽  
King James I ◽  
In The Beginning

In my researches amongst the MSS. in the British Museum I met with the two following, which under the present circumstances I am induced to think will be acceptable communications to our Society, and for that purpose have transcribed them. They are both written by Mr. William Waad, of whom Dr. Birch, in his Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, (Vol. I. p. 45,) gives the following account. “Mr.William Waad was son of Armigel Waad, Esq. a gentleman born in Yorkshire, and educated at St. Magdalen College in Oxford, who was clerk of the council to king Henry VIII. and Edward VI. and employed in several campaigns abroad, and died at Belsie or Belsise House, in the parish of Hampstead, near London, on the 20th of June 1568. His son William succeeded him in the place of Clerk of the Council, and was afterwards knighted by king James I. at Greenwich, May 30, 1603, and made Lieutenant of the Tower. The occasion of his journey into Spain in the beginning of the year 1583−4, was upon the discovery of the Spanish ambassador Mendoza being concerned in the plot of Francis Throgmorton, and other English catholics, in favour of the queen of Scots, and being ordered to depart England immediately, of which he loudly complained, as a violation of the law of nations.

Stuart Royal Proclamations. Vol. 1. Royal Proclamations of King James I, 1603-1625

1975 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 232
Author(s):  
David S. Berkowitz ◽  
James F. Larkin ◽  
Paul L. Hughes
Keyword(s):  
James I ◽  
King James I

Blood the Witch, Swim the Wizard

2019 ◽  
pp. 9-37
Author(s):  
Thomas Waters
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Witch Trials ◽  
The Witch ◽  
The Masses

This chapter shows that in early 1800s Britain, witchcraft was widely believed in. Magical traditions, traceable to the period of the witch trials and before, were strong. Villagers and townsfolk ducked, mobbed, attacked, and bullied witches. Privately, many sophisticated and wealthy people sympathised. Not with victims of superstitious violence, but with the perpetrators. Indeed, witchcraft troubled many well-to-do folk during the early 1800s. This chapter explores a remarkable area of common ground between the masses, the upper classes, and those in the middle. More often than one might expect, they agreed with each other: sorcery was real, and witches deserved to be punished.

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