Agnes Sampson

Disclaimer

This is NOT a page about Wiccans or neo-pagans, and I do not advocate the belief that Wiccans are Satan-worshippers and/or baby-killers. I am well aware that they are not. This is a starting point for historical research into the great witch craze of 1100-1700 AD. And please, don't ask me for spells.

Agnes Sampson

"'Wise wife of Keith.' Notorious Scottish witch of the sixteenth century" (Wedeck 209).

Agnis Sampson was arrested and thrown in prison where, under agonizing torture and sexual abuse, she revealed the details of an astonishing and insidious conspriacy by the Devil and a local coven of witches to murder King James VI of Scotland (James I of England in 1603). The monarch himself, appalled at the ghastly details of the plot, took an active part in the inquisition....

According to Newes from Scotland (1591), "[Agnis Sampson] confessed that upon Allhallows Eve last, she was accompanied...with a great many other witches, to the number of two hundred: and that all together went by sea each one in a riddle or sieve, and went in the same very substantially with flagons of wine making merry and drinking by the way...to the Church of North Barrick in Lowthian, and that after they had landed, took hands on the land and danced back-to-back...the Devil being then at North Barrick Church attended their coming in the habit or likeness of a man, and seeing that they tarried over long, he at their coming enjoined them all to a penance, which was, that they should kiss his buttocks, in sign of duty to him: which being put on the pulpit bare, every one did as he had enjoined them: and having made his ungodly exhortations, wherein he did greatly inveighed against the King of Scotland, he received their oaths for their good and true service towards him.... At which time the witches demanded of the Devil why he did bear such hatred to the King, who answered, by reason the King is the greatest enemy he has in the world: all which their confessions and depositions are still extant upon record."

Agnis Sampson also revealed startling details about dark deeds of sorcery directed at the King: "she confessed that at the time when his Majesty was in Denmark, she being accopmanied with the parties before specially named, took a cat and christened it, and afterwards bount to each part of that cat, the chiefest parts of a boat or vessel coming over from the town of Burnt Island to the town of Lieth, wherein was sundry jewels and rich gifts which should have been presented to the now Queen of Scotland at her Majesty's coming to Lieth."

Finally, Sampson declared that, "the said christened cat was the cause that the King's Majesty's ship at his coming forth of Denmark, had a contrary wind to the rest of his ships, then bing in his company, which thing was most strange and true, as the King's Majesty acknowledges, for when the rest of the ships had a fair and good wind, then was the wind contrary and altogether against his Majesty: and further the said witch declared, that his Majesty had never come safely from the Sea, if his faith had not prevailed above their intentions" (Sidky 55, 58).

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Agnes Sampson is copyrighted 1996-1998 to Shantell Powell.