The Shakespeare Code

(It’s best to read ‘Macbeth’ Decoded. Parts One and Two‘ first).

In January, 1607, nearly four years after he had become King of England (as well as Scotland) James granted an audience to Sir John Harington – famous for having invented the water closet and hence known by the name of Ajax (a jakes…)

The scholar King first questioned Harington about classical writers in a way that put Harington in mind of his old tutor at Cambridge…

But then the King, suddenly changing the subject…

….did much press for my opinion touching the power of Satan in matters of witchcraft; and asked me, with much gravity,  – ‘If I did truly understand, why the devil did work more with ancient women than others?

I did not refrain from a scurvy jest……

[‘Scurvy jest’ deleted]

More serious discourse did next ensue, wherein I wanted room to continue, and sometime room to escape; for the Queen his mother was not forgotten, nor Davison, neither.

[William Davison was Queen Elizabeth’s secretary who got the blame from Elizabeth for Mary Queen of Scot’s beheading]

His Highness told me her death was visible in Scotland before it did really happen, being, as he said, ‘spoken of in secret by those whose power of sight presented to them a bloody head dancing in the air’.

He then did remark much on this gift, and said he had sought out of certain books a sure way to attain knowledge of future chances…

This extract from Nugae Antiquae shows:

1. Even in 1607, when James had put an end to the wholesale persecution of witches, he still believed that Satan ‘worked with’ women, especially older women.

2. The execution of his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, was still an issue with him.

3. He believed that some poeple had a ‘gift’ of ‘power of sight’ [second sight] and clearly had been consulting with them before 1587 when his mother was beheaded.

James was trying to draw a distinction between witches who were ‘slaves of Satan’ and those men and women who had powers of prophesy. 

Unfortunately for James – but fortunately for Macbeth – those distinctions were often blurred….

Particularly in the case of Agnes Sampson, one of Scotland’s most talented midwives, who would heal through the power of Christian prayer….

At other times she would summon up ‘the Devil’…

To explain this conundrum, the Agents now call upon the expertise of  Trixie the Cat…

THE TRIXIE LECTURES (I)

First, Brothers and Sisters, a disclaimer . It’s true I’ve not led a blameless life. It’s true I’ve even done a stretch inside….

 

But I have never been a cat to a witch.  For one simple reason….

NO WITCH HAS EVER ASKED ME!

However, being a cat gives you ‘second sight’.  You can see into things….

The reason so many Scottish healers in Shakespeare’s time were ‘witches’ was mainly economic….

There had been famine in Scotland between 1585-7 and the currency had been completely mishandled by the King.

People were starving, not least the celebrated wise woman of Haddington, Agnes Sampson. She was in essence a ‘hired gun’ who would work both for the peasants and the nobility.

Often her clients wanted her to use her skills to do good.

But just as often they wanted her to do evil – especially her aristocratic clients who were in a power struggle with King James….

Agnes’s husband died, leaving her with children to support. It was then she made her pact with ‘the Devil…’

‘The Devil’, who could take the shape of a man, or even a black dog, ALWAYS approached a potential witch when he or she was alone. So, conveniently, there were never any witnesses…

‘The Devil’ ALWAYS offered financial secrity to his followers – and that was his great power….

If you let it be known to your clients that you had ‘the Devil’ on your side, your fees would go up.

But it was a dangerous game as your enemies could have you burnt to death….

Whether ‘the Devil’ really appeared to Agnes, whether she projected her own powers onto a man (or a dog) or whether she was conning everybody rotten, probably even Agnes, by the end, did not know…

She certainly threw a cat into the sea (how could she?) and a storm followed.  But whether the second event was dependent on the first was a question that was to intrigue James all his life…

But, as we shall see, James knew for certain Agnes had ‘second-sight’…

And it was this ‘second sight’ that has made her the secret star of Macbeth….

●

As King James approached his majority….

….people started to worry.

Young men were continually pouring from his bedchamber, but the King showed no interest in women.

Courtiers pointed out to him that without a wife, he couldn’t have children. And without children his position on the throne would become untenable.

So James agreed, reluctantly, to marry the teenage Anne of Denmark….

This was bad news for James’s cousin, the Catholic, 5th Earl of Boswell, Francis Stewart, who wanted to be King of Scotland.

He commissioned Agnes Sampson to create storms at sea so that James and Anne could not meet…

James moved to Seton, on the estuary of the Forth, where he could have a clear view of Anne’s arrival by sea. He stayed there a fortnight with his friend Robert, 6th Lord Seton, at Seton House…

But news came that storms had forced Anne to land in Norway and, having tried to sail once more, she had given up the journey.

At this point the timid, gay, bashful, stuttering James did an extraordinary thing….

He sailed through the storms to Norway to collect his bride himself…

Like a hero of romance…..

Why?

Six miles from Seton was the village of Haddington, where Agnes Sampson lived….

We know, from her later trial, that at the time the King was at Seton, Agnes was told by ‘the Sprite’ (‘The Devil’)…

that the Queen’s majesty would never come in this country except the king fetched her…

We also know that, although it was illegal, James had consulted a witch near Aberdeen in 1589…..

He’d certainly consulted in ‘secret’ with those with ‘the power of sight’ before his mother’s beheading…

So, Your Cat believes that James undertook the hazardous sea-journey because he was bolsted up by Agnes’s prophesy…

Agnes seems to have been playing the King and Bothwell off against each other…

To make more money…

James and Anne arrived back in Scotland in May, 1590.

On Lammas Eve (31 July) that year (at a Witches Sabbat at Acheson Haven) Agnes proposed the destruction of the King.  It was Bothwell’s idea and ‘The Devil’ suggested toad’s poison for the job…

Then, at All Hallows’ E’en (31 October), 140 witches, led by Agnes sailed, in sieves, to the Kirk at North Berwick….

They danced drunkenly in the graveyard and dug up bodies – bits of which they kept.

‘The Devil’ – ‘like a mickle black man’ – appeared in the pulpit and promised them a waxen image of King James which they could use to destroy him…

 

Then ‘The Devil’ stretched himself over the altar and forced each witch to kiss his bare posterior…

What really happened that night is anybody’s guess: the witches had consumed ‘flagons of wine’ and the ‘wise women’ knew all there was to know about local herbs…

 Perhaps the trip across the estuary of the Forth in sieves really was a ‘trip’…

As for ‘The Devil’ who appeared at the Sabbats and…

did greatly inveigh against the King….

The witches asked him at North Berwick…

Why he did bear such hatred to the King?….

….to which he replied…..

By reason that the King is the greatest enemy (I have) in the world…

Your Cat firmly believes that ‘The Devil’ was no other than the 5th Earl of Bothwell in disguise…

A conclusion (she discovered with delight) that was made in the 1920’s by the great (if now wildly unfashionable) anthroplogist, Margaret Murray….

 

And she should know.

She claimed she could turn herself into a cat…

‘Bye now…

(It’s best to read ‘Macbeth’ Decoded. Part Four now).