Witches: James I and the English Witch Hunts

September 1613: at Belvoir Castle, the heir to one of England’s great noble families is struck by a sudden, terrifying illness. His body is “tormented” by violent convulsions, and within weeks he dies in agony. Soon, the rest of the family begins to show the same symptoms.

Witches are blamed. The Earl of Rutland’s sons will not be the last to die, and the second son, the final male heir, also succumbs. Witches follows the shocking events that unfolded at one of England’s oldest and most spectacular castles four hundred years ago.

Set against the wider European witch craze of the 15th to 18th centuries, this is a story of superstition, paranoia and injustice. But as Tracy Borman reveals, Belvoir’s case was anything but ordinary: a powerful and deeply Machiavellian figure at the Jacobean court had his own reasons to shape what happened.