Famous or Infamous: Witches of Scotland — The North Berwick Trials
Scotland has always held a wild beauty — windswept cliffs, roaring seas, and a deep sense of ancient mystery that lingers in the mist. But in 1590, that beauty turned dark when the coastal town of North Berwick became the center of one of the most chilling witch hunts in Scottish history. What began as whispers of strange weather and royal paranoia spiraled into confessions wrung from torture and the execution of innocent souls.
The story begins with King James VI of Scotland (later James I of England), whose voyage to Denmark to marry Princess Anne was plagued by storms so violent they nearly sank his ship. Convinced these tempests were no coincidence, the King turned his suspicion toward the supernatural. When he heard that witches in North Berwick had gathered to cast spells against him, his fear ignited one of the darkest chapters in Scottish witchcraft history.
Dozens were accused — midwives, healers, and villagers who simply lived too close to nature or spoke too boldly. Among them was Agnes Sampson, known as the “Wise Wife of Keith,” a respected healer who was tortured into confessing that she and others had conjured storms to harm the King. Her supposed confession, given after brutal torment, only fueled James’s obsession. The King himself questioned Agnes, convinced she had revealed hidden knowledge no mortal could know.
In North Berwick Kirk — a church overlooking the sea — the accused were said to have met for a witches’ sabbath, attended by the Devil himself. They were accused of dancing in the churchyard, desecrating holy ground, and plotting the King’s demise. In truth, it was the perfect storm of fear, superstition, and power — a monarch desperate to control the unseen, and a society already primed to blame the vulnerable for every misfortune.
The trials spread beyond North Berwick, inspiring a wave of witch hunts across Scotland that lasted for decades. Hundreds more would suffer the same fate — accused, tortured, and executed in the name of purging evil. It wasn’t until centuries later that the victims began to be remembered not as witches, but as women and men caught in the grip of hysteria and control.
Today, if you walk along the old kirk or the coastline of North Berwick, you can almost feel the echoes of that fear in the wind — and perhaps, if you listen close enough, the whispers of those who refused to bow even in the face of fire. Their courage and suffering remain carved into Scotland’s story, a stark reminder of what happens when fear takes the throne over reason.