At the age of the Reformation, Scotland was sunk into barbarism and ignorance, and on this account never did the witch-mania enter a country better suited for its reception. James VI. of Scotland, before he became the First of England, had taken an active part in several witch-trials, but especially in the inquisition directed to discover the guilt of Dr. Fian and others, to whom he had ascribed his stormy passage with his Norwegian consort from Denmark. It is unnecessary to enter on a recital of the horrible tortures inflicted upon the accused, for all the torments known to the Scottish law were successively applied. But it is evident that a monarch who had participated in such horrors, and had further committed himself by the publication of his notable work, the “Dæmonology,” must have come to the English throne decidedly predisposed to foster the popular delusions respecting witchcraft. Indeed, as Mr. Lecky observes, James “was continually haunted by the subject,” and “boasted that the devil regarded him as the most formidable of opponents.” The earliest statute against witchcraft appears to have been enacted in the reign of Henry VI., and additional penal laws were passed by Henry VIII. and Elizabeth. But there can be no doubt that in many cases witchcraft was a convenient excuse for carrying out a wicked policy. To this cause, as Sir Walter Scott says, we may impute the trial of the Duchess of Gloucester, wife of the good Duke Humphrey, accused of consulting witches concerning the mode of compassing the death of her husband’s nephew, Henry VI. The Duchess was condemned to do penance, and then banished to the Isle of Man. But the alleged witchcraft “was the only ostensible cause of a procedure which had its real source in the deep hatred between the Duke of Gloucester and Cardinal Beaufort, his half-brother.” The same pretext was used by Richard III. when he brought the charge of sorcery against the Queen-Dowager, Jane Shore, and the Queen’s kinsmen. The accusation in each case “was only chosen as a charge easily made and difficult to be eluded or repelled.” In the same way Charles, Count of Valois, uncle of Louis X., had much influence over him. Charles believed, or pretended to believe, in sorcery. By making a waxen image of a foe, which was pricked and tortured, the person represented was supposed to pine away and die. It was a belief of the age, and a fearful belief, for who could be secure against an act of malice that might be perpetrated in the most profound secrecy?[179] And on the Continent we find royalty tacitly in times past pandering to the superstitious spirit of their age, by sanctioning and upholding the cruelties to which supposed witches were subjected. And the most terrible scenes occurred in France, till happily the edict of Louis XIV. discharged all future persecutions for witchcraft, after which the crime was heard of no more.