The Stone, the Kirk and the Hunt for Witches

Two Scottish cases show how tightly religion and rule were bound together. The Stone of Scone, a block of sandstone used in the inauguration of Scottish kings, was taken to Westminster by Edward I in 1296 and built into the English coronation chair, where it stayed apart from a brief removal by students in 1950 until its return to Scotland in 1996. It went south again for the coronation of 2023. A geological study has matched the stone to the Scone area itself, which settles one long-standing question about it and leaves the others open.

The second is the witch hunt. Scotland prosecuted witchcraft on a scale far out of proportion to its population between 1563 and 1736, and James VI took a personal part. He attended trials, and in 1597 published Daemonologie, a dialogue arguing that witchcraft was real, that it was treason against God as well as against the king, and that magistrates were obliged to act. The book is a primary document of the theory behind the prosecutions rather than a description of any practice, and it was reprinted in London once he became king of England as well.

Both cases show the same thing in different registers. Scottish religion was never a private matter running quietly alongside the state. It was the medium in which legitimacy, authority and obedience were argued out, and that continued long after the trials had stopped.