The Witches of North Berwick

North Berwick, East Lothian, Scotland

In 1590, over two hundred witches were accused of gathering at the North Berwick Kirk to raise storms and sink the ship carrying King James VI back from Denmark.

The North Berwick Witch Trials of 1590 are among the most dramatic episodes in Scottish legal history and mark the beginning of a serious royal obsession with witchcraft. King James VI had sailed to Denmark to collect his bride, Anne of Denmark. The return voyage was beset by violent storms. Shortly after his return, a servant of a local official confessed under torture to participating in a mass witches' sabbath at St Andrew's Old Kirk in North Berwick. According to the confessions — extracted under significant duress — over two hundred witches had gathered at the church. They danced, passed a wax image of the king from hand to hand, and raised storms at sea by tying the severed joints of corpses to a cat and casting it into the waves. Several confessed to meeting the Devil himself, who appeared as a black man and preached a sermon in the pulpit, commanding them to harm the king. James VI interrogated the principal accused himself, including Agnes Sampson, who allegedly whispered the words spoken in private between James and Anne on their wedding night — words James declared only two people could know. Twenty-two people were executed. The witch trials became the model for the Scottish witch persecution that followed. James was so shaken that he later wrote Daemonologie, his treatise on witchcraft, which influenced the framers of the English witchcraft laws and later, indirectly, the Salem trials. The old kirk at North Berwick still stands, roofless and cold, overlooking the sea.

Folklore Disclaimer: These accounts are drawn from local tradition, oral history, and community memory. They are not presented as factual claims.

Location accuracy: Approximate. Coordinates indicate the general area.