King James I of England

When James I became the King of England, he did not like the mild Elizabethan laws against witches. He therefore found a defect in the statute. .. by which none died for witchcraft but they only who by that means killed, so that such were executed rather as murderers than witches. In other words, until then, alleged witches had been punished only for what they did James had the law changed so that they were punished for who they were. 

King James I of England expresses a rather different opinion in his Counterblast to Tobacco, which denies the substance has any real medicinal value. The king also tries to reduce the growing popularity of smoking by taxing tobacco, a practice that is soon taken up by other European nations. 

Witch-finding by the water ordeal, or swimming as it was often called, became an accepted method in England during the first half of the seventeenth century, when it was recommended by King James. So it appears, proclaimed James I, that God has appointed, for a supernatural sign of the monstrous impiety of witches, that the water shall refuse to receive them in her bosom, that have shaken off them the sacred water of baptism and willfully refused the benefit thereof. ... 

The association of smoking with health problems is almost as old as the use of tobacco. In 1604, King James I of England issued the first... 

---