iter has
endeavored to show just how foreign ideas and conditions at home gave
the impulse to a movement which within a single reign took very definite
form.

Yet so much was the movement accelerated, such additional impetus was
given it by James I, that the view that James set the superstition going
in England, however superficial, has some truth in it. If Elizabeth had
ever given the matter thought, she had not at least given it many words.
James had very definite opinions on the subject and hesitated not at all
to make them known. His views had weight. It is useless to deny that the
royal position swayed the courts. James's part in the witch persecution
cannot be condoned, save on the ground that he was perfectly honest. He
felt deeply on the matter. It was little wonder. He had grown up in
Scotland in the very midst of the witch alarms. His own life, he
believed, had been imperilled by the machinations of witches. He
believed he had every reason to fear and hate the creatures, and we can
only wonder that he was so moderate as we shall later find him to have
been. The story of the affair that stirred up the Scottish king and his
people has often been told, but it must be included here to make his
attitude explicable. In 1589 he had arranged for a marriage with the
Princess Anne of Denmark. The marriage had been performed by proxy in
July, and it was then provided that the princess was to come to England.
She set out, but was driven on to the coast of Norway by a violent
storm, and detained there by the continuance of the storms. James sailed
to Upsala, and, after a winter in the north of the Continent, brought
his bride to Scotland in the spring, not without encountering more rough
weather. To the people of the time it was quite clear that the ocean was
unfriendly to James's alliance. Had Scotland been ancient Greece, no
doubt Neptune would have been propitiated by a sacrifice. But it was
Scotland, and the ever-to-be-feared Satan was not so easily propitiated.
He had been very active of late in the realm.

Moreover it was a time when Satanic and other conspiracies were likely
to come to light. The kingdom was unsettled, if not discontented. There
were plots, and rumors of plots. The effort to expose them, as well as
to thwart the attacks of the evil one on the king, led to the conception
and spread of the monstrous story of the conspiracy of Dr. Fian. Dr.
Fian was nothing less than a Scottish Dr. Faustus. He was a s