A really interesting book, explaining the case as well as giving a good amount of information about general witch trials around the same time. The author is engaging and sympathetic to the subject matter, which is pretty horrible, and this was a book I would recommend to anyone interested in the history surrounding witchcraft.

Here we go after 242 pages of Witches: James I and English Witch Hunts. While the book provides valuable insight, it doesn't delve deeply into King James' orchestration of the witch hunts. I guess it's really up to the imagination of the reader what truly was going through the thought process of King James as they can speculate their own clarity. The events began when King James travelled to Denmark to marry Princess Anne as she was held back from coming to England because of the storms. It would say that King James stayed in Denmark he would develop his fascination for witch hunting while he got speaking to many of the enchelons of the danish elites and their views and beliefs of witches and witchcraft When King James returned home to Scotland he established small boxes in villages and towns around Scotland and England for civilians to write people's names who they suspected as being witches and this would be how many innocent women were first accused of witchcraft as most of the them would've been accused by jealous neighbours or their social status as being poor and illiterate for unable to speak up or write to defend themselves. The book focuses on the Flower sisters' trials as they were accused of the death of the Manners sons, who were well esteemed family. The women endured many horrific and barbaric ordeals one of the methods used by King James involved tying a rope around the accused and have them thrown into a lake and if they floated, they were deemed possessed by the devil, while those who drowned were considered innocent. Some other horrible ordeals these innocent women had to endure were sexual acts and rape by those of religious figures claiming it would rid them of their evil spirits. There were many who opposed this method and treatment, were then seen as heretics, and were either killed or imprisoned. The Flower sisters were broken and lost hope with no more fight left, and both sisters would confess to everything as they thought death was there only solice left in their life.