The Spark That Lit the Fire - Bonus
Before Eleanor Neale’s name appeared in the Virginia court records, a storm raged across the North Sea. And this storm would change the course of history.
In 1590, King James VI of Scotland and his new bride, Anne of Denmark, faced what the king himself described as “the most fearful tempest that ever I saw in my life.”
Their marriage had been meant to strengthen political and religious alliances between Scotland and Denmark. But chaos quickly took hold of Anne’s fleet as she tried to make her way to Scotland. The storm was so violent that it forced her to take refuge in Norway.
James, hearing of his bride’s peril, decided to sail to her himself. He too was caught in bad weather but finally made it Norway. They married and then settled there for a bit until it was safe to return to Scotland. However, their safety was in jeopardy as they found themselves caught in yet another violent storm.
This storm was so violent that they almost lost their lives. This near death experience convinced King James that witches had raised this storm to destroy him and his crown.
But this idea didn’t begin with James. It came from Denmark.
Anne’s father, King Frederick II, ruled a court where superstition and politics intertwined. Just before Anne’s voyage, Denmark had been shaken by its own witch trials: the Copenhagen Witch Trials of 1589.
When the Danish royal fleet was battered by storms, local authorities blamed six women from the coastal town of Kronborg. They were accused of conjuring the weather to sabotage the royal ships and confessed under torture.
These confessions, and the investigations that followed, deeply influenced James. He heard men discussing the Devil’s power to raise tempests. When he returned home, that fear, and those ideas, traveled with him.
What began as a maritime misfortune quickly became a moral panic, one that crossed borders and claimed dozens of lives.
In the months that followed, Scotland erupted into hysteria.
King James ordered an inquiry that would become one of the most infamous witch hunts in Europe: the North Berwick Witch Trials (1590–1592).
At least 70 people were accused of witchcraft, including Gilly Duncan, a young maid whose supposed healing abilities drew suspicion, and Agnes Sampson, a respected midwife and widow.
Both women were tortured until they confessed to raising storms, meeting with the Devil, and conspiring to kill the king.
When Agnes Sampson was brought before James himself, she reportedly recited details of his wedding night, words James believed no one else could know. To him, it was proof that witchcraft was real.
From that moment, his obsession became policy.
In 1597, he published Daemonologie, a manual on how to identify, prosecute, and punish witches. In it, he declared:
“The fearful aboundinge at this time in this country, of these detestable slaves of the Devil...”
He described witches as servants of Satan who could raise storms, cast sickness, and bear the Devil’s mark. And when James became King James I of England in 1603, he carried that fear across the border and eventually across the ocean.
His laws, rooted in paranoia and piety, formed the foundation for early witchcraft prosecutions in the English colonies, including Virginia, where Eleanor Neale would one day stand accused.
Sources and References
Primary Sources:
James VI of Scotland. Daemonologie, in Forme of a Dialogue. Edinburgh, 1597.
Pitcairn, Robert. Ancient Criminal Trials in Scotland, Vol. 1. Edinburgh, 1833.
The Witchcraft Act of 1563. Acts of the Parliament of Scotland.
Trial records of the Copenhagen Witch Trials (1589), Danish National Archives.
Secondary Sources:
Goodare, Julian. The Scottish Witch-Hunt in Context. Manchester University Press, 2002.
Larner, Christina. Enemies of God: The Witch-Hunt in Scotland. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981.
Maxwell-Stuart, P.G. Satan’s Conspiracy: Magic and Witchcraft in Sixteenth-Century Scotland. Dundurn Press, 2001.
Levack, Brian P. The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe. Routledge, 3rd ed., 2006.
Wilby, Emma. The Visions of Isobel Gowdie: Magic, Witchcraft, and Dark Shamanism in Seventeenth-Century Scotland. Sussex Academic Press, 2010.
