"Monarchy is the greatest thing on earth. Kings are rightly called gods
since just like God they have power of life and death over all
their subjects in all things. They are accountable to God only ...
so it is a crime for anyone to argue about what a king can do"
(King James I)
James I of Scotland was a fervent beliver in the Divine Right of Kings. Henry IV of France dubbed him "the wisest fool in Christendom". The Scottish King published Daemonologie in 1597.James was an early opponent of painless childbirth. In The Warfare of Science with Theology (1896), A.D. White outlines how one of the King's subjects, a gentlewoman named Eufame MacAlyane, was suffering unbearable pain during the birth of her twin sons. In desperation, she sought pain-relief from Agnes Sampson, reportedly a witch. MacAlyane thereby violated God’s command in Gen. 3:16: "Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."
The King ordered her execution. Eufame MacAlyane was burned alive on Castle Hill, Edinburgh in 1591.
In the contemporary world, the authorities no longer burn women who seek pain-relief as witches. The last "witch" in Scotland was burned in 1722. But millions of pain victims who self-medicate to blot out the unpleasantness of Darwinian life are persecuted and imprisoned - and often demonised in all but name.
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