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|title=Witches: James I and the English Witch Hunts

|author=Tracy Borman

|publisher=Vintage

|date=October 2014

|website=http://www.tracyborman.co.uk/

|video=tU1jB0ozikc

|summary=An account of the case of the witches of Belvoir during the reign of King James I, though to a certain extent it is also a study of British attitudes and the authorities' response to witchcraft through the ages.

}}

Gossip is as old as human nature, but generally harmless. It was a different matter in medieval times, when what might start as relatively innocuous tittle-tattle could breed suspicion, paranoia, and ultimately accusations against women and girls of witchcraft. More often than not, it would end in a horrible death by execution - drowning, strangulation on the gallows, or being burned alive. The unsavoury business of witchcraft trials in early seventeenth-century England was encouraged by King James I, who with his obsession with and knowledge of the black arts and his firm belief in the threat of demonic forces believed that witches had been responsible for fierce storms that had come close to drowning his future bride on her voyage by sea from Scotland to England.