nobody insisting in the pursute of her, she
was set at libertie." It seems also that the jury that had before
condemned her had acquitted her of the main charge, that of treasonable
witchcraft against the king. The king was angered at the default of
justice, went to the Tolbooth, and made an address on the subject. He
spoke of "his own impartiality, the use of witchcraft, the enormity of
the crime, ... the ignorance of thinking such matters mere fantasies,
the cause of his own interference in the matter, the ignorance of the
assizes in the late trial, his own opinion of what witches really
are."[3]

It was only a few years later that James put that opinion into written
form. All the world knows that the king was a serious student. With
unremitting zeal he studied this matter, and in 1597, seven years after
the Dr. Fian affair, he published his _Daemonologie_.[4] It was expressly
designed to controvert the "damnable opinions of two principally in our
age"--Scot, who "is not ashamed in publick Print to deny that there can
be such a thing as witchcraft," and Wierus, "a German physician," who
"sets out a publicke apologie for all these craft-folkes whereby ... he
plainly bewrayes himself to have been one of that profession."

It was to be expected that James would be an exponent of the current
system of belief. He had read diligently, if not widely, in the
Continental lore of the subject and had assimilated much of it. He was
Scotch enough to be interested in theology and Stuart enough to have
very definite opinions. James had, too, his own way of putting things.
There was a certain freshness about his treatment, in spite of the fact
that he was ploughing old fields. Nothing illustrates better his
combination of adherence to tradition, of credulity, and of originality
than his views on the transportation of witches, a subject that had long
engaged the theorists in demonology. Witches could be transported, he
believed, by natural means, or they could be carried through the air "by
the force of the spirit which is their conducter," as Habakkuk was
carried by the angel.[5] This much he could accept. But that they could
be transformed into a "little beast or foule" and pierce through
"whatsoever house or Church, though all ordinarie passages be closed,"
this he refused to believe. So far, however, there was nothing original
about either his belief or his disbelief. But his suggestion on another
matter was very probably his own