ad been of rather less importance, while the
ordeal by water was not in use.

The alleged witch-mark on the body had to do with the contracts between
witches and the Devil. This loathsome side of witch belief we cannot go
into. Suffice it to say that James insisted on the reality of these
contracts and consequently upon the punishment that should be meted to
those who had entered into them. All witches except children should be
sentenced to death. The king shows a trace of conventional moderation,
however, and admits that the magistrates should be careful whom they
condemned. But, while he holds that the innocent should not be
condemned, he warns officials against the sin of failing to convict the
guilty.[7] We shall see that throughout his reign in England he pursued
a course perfectly consistent with these principles.

A critical estimate of James's book it is somewhat hard to give.
Students of witchcraft have given utterance to the most extravagant but
widely divergent opinions upon it. The writer confesses that he has not
that acquaintance with the witch literature of the Continent which would
enable him to appraise the _Daemonologie_ as to its originality. So good
an authority as Thomas Wright has declared that it is "much inferior to
the other treatises on the subject," and that it was compiled from
foreign works.[8] Doubtless a study of the Continental literature would
warrant, at least in part, this opinion. Yet one gets the impression,
from what may be learned of that great body of writing through the
historians of witchcraft, that James's opinions were in some respects
his own. He had, of course, absorbed the current belief, but he did not
hesitate to give his own interpretation and explanation of phenomena.
That interpretation is not wanting in shrewdness. It seems to one who
has wandered through many tedious defences of the belief in witchcraft
that James's work is as able as any in English prior to the time of
Joseph Glanvill in 1668. One who should read Glanvill and James together
would get a very satisfactory understanding of the position of the
defenders of the superstition. Glanvill insisted upon what he believed
were well authenticated facts of experience. James grounded his belief
upon a course of theoretical reasoning.

We have already indicated that James's book was influential in its time.
It goes without saying that his position as a sovereign greatly enhanced
its influence. This was particularl