#Repost #DeborahHarkness FB page SHADOW OF NIGHT read along chapters 4-6 “It must have to do with Berwick,” Hancock declared. “Bloody witches. Always causing trouble.” “Berwick?” My pulse kicked up a notch. I recognized the name. One of the most notorious witch trials in the British Isles was connected to it.” -SHADOW OF NIGHT “There are almost as many theories about the causes of witchcraft trials as there are historians, but there is no question that witches made convenient scapegoats for human problems during the period of the witch-hunts. The changing whims of rulers and others in political power could also affect the status of witches. King James VI of Scotland had initially been tolerant of witches but changed his mind after experiencing terrible storms on the way back from Copenhagen with his new Danish queen in 1589. The Danes who were escorting the couple home blamed witchcraft, and trials were held in Denmark to punish the malefactors. James then set up his own tribunal in Scotland, which came to be known as the North Berwick Witch Trials. In the Berwick trials, officials arrested a young Scottish servant on suspicion of witchcraft in 1590. Under torture she named many others, including John Fian, a local schoolmaster; Agnes Sampson, a cunning woman (actually a weaver), healer, and midwife; and Barbara Napier, the widow of Earl Archibald of Angus….Witch trials took place in various European countries and in the American colonies from the fourteenth through the eighteenth centuries. It is difficult to know how many witches were executed. Modern scholars put the number at roughly forty to fifty thousand.” -THE WORLD OF ALL SOULS, p 61 #ShadowOfNightreadalong2022 #TheWorldOfAllSouls #SONch4 #SONch5 #SONch6 https://www.instagram.com/p/Ckv7i3ioy9t/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
