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Two of the accused witches, Anne Whittle (Chattox), with her daughter Ann Redferne. Illustration from William Harrison Ainsworth\'s 1849 novel, The Lancashire Witches.
The Pendle witch trials of 1612 are among the most famous witch trials in English history, and some of the best recorded of the 17th century. The 12 Pendle witches were charged with murdering 10 people in and around the Pendle Hill area of Lancashire by the use of witchcraft. One of the accused, Jennet Preston, lived in Gisburn, just over the border from Pendle, in Yorkshire. She was convicted at York Assizes on 27 July 1612, and sentenced to death by hanging. The remainder were tried, together with the Salmesbury witches and others, at Lancaster Assizes 17–19 August 1612, in what became known as the Lancashire witch trials.
One of the Pendle witches, Old Demdike, died in jail before her trial. All but one of the surviving ten were found guilty, and hanged at Lancaster Moor on 20 August 1612. The Lancashire witch trials were unusual for England at that time in two respects: the official publication of the trial proceedings by the clerk to the court, Thomas Potts, and in the number of witches hanged together, ten at Lancaster and one at York. It has been estimated that in all of the English witch trials between the early 15th and late 18th centuries, less than 500 witches were executed, so this one series of trials over three days in the summer of 1612 accounts for more than 2% of that total.Poole, The Lancashire Witches: Histories and Stories, p. 3.
Six of the Pendle witches came from one of two families, each headed by a female in her eighties at the time of the trials: Elizabeth Southerns, also known as Demdike, her daughter Elizabeth Device, and Elizabeth\'s children, James and Alizon Device; Anne Whittle, also known as Chattox, and her daughter Anne Redferne. The others accused were Jane Bulcock and her son John Bulcock, Alice Nutter, Katherine Hewitt, Alice Gray, and Jennet Preston.
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Lancashire at the end of the 16th century was regarded by the authorities as a wild and lawless region, an area "fabled for its theft, violence and sexual laxity, where the church was honoured without much understanding of its doctrines by the common people."Hastead, The Pendle Witch Trial 1612, p. 5. The nearby Cistercian abbey at Whalley had been dissolved during the Reformation, a move strongly resisted by the local people, over whose lives the abbey had until then exerted an important influence. Despite the closure of the abbey and the execution of its abbot, the people of Pendle remained largely faithful to their Roman Catholic beliefs, and openly reverted to Catholicism on Queen Mary\'s ascent to the throne in 1553. When Mary\'s half-sister Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558 the priests were once again expelled, but in remote areas like Pendle they continued to conduct mass in secret. The Protestant establishment, however, regarded Catholic practices as little more than conjuring, and their prayers as charms.Hasted, The Pendle Witch Trial, pp. 8–9.
On Elizabeth\'s death in 1603, she was succeeded by James I. A product of the Scottish Reformation, James had taken a great interest in the subject of witchcraft, and by the early 1590s he had become convinced that he was being plotted against by Scottish witches. After a visit to Denmark, he had attended the trial in 1590 of the North Berwick Witches, who were convicted of using witchcraft to send a storm against the ship which carried James and his wife Anne back home to Scotland. In 1597 he had written a book, Daemonologie, instructing his followers that they must denounce and prosecute any supporters or practitioners of witchcraft, and to let those who participated in such a crime know that they would face the death penalty. In 1604, just one year after James\' accession to the English throne, a new law was enacted calling for the death penalty to be imposed where it was proven that harm had been caused through the use of magic, or corpses had been exhumed for magical purposes.Martin, The History of Witchcraft, p. 96. By the time of the Pendle witch trials in 1612 though, James\' attitude towards witchcraft seems to have become more sceptical, even to the extent of personally involving himself in investigations to expose discrepancies in the evidence presented against some accused witches.Poole, The Lancashire Witches: Histories and Stories, pp. 23–24.
In early 1612, the year of the trials, every justice of the peace (JP) in Lancashire was ordered to compile a list of recusants in their area, those who refused to attend Church and to take communion, a criminal offence at that time.Hasted, The Pendle Witch Trial, p. 7. Roger Nowell of Read Hall, on the edge of Pendle Forest, was the JP for Pendle. It was against this background of seeking out religious nonconformists that in March 1612 Nowell investigated a complaint of causing harm by witchcraft made to him by the family of John Law.Poole, The Lancashire Witches: Histories and Stories, pp. 1–2. Many of those who subsequently became implicated as the investigation progressed did indeed consider themselves to be witches, in the sense of being village healers who practised magic, probably in return for payment. Such men and women were common in 16th-century rural England, and were an accepted part of village life.Poole, The Lancashire Witches, p. 67.
King James\' attitude towards witchcraft was perhaps difficult for the two judges tasked with hearing the cases of the Pendle witches – Sir James Altham and Sir Edward Bromley – to understand. Altham was nearing the end of his judicial career, and he had recently been accused of a miscarriage of justice at the York Assizes, which had resulted in a woman being sentenced to death by hanging for witchcraft. Bromley on the other hand was looking for promotion to a circuit nearer London, but how best to bring himself to James\' attention? Was it by aggressively testing the witnesses, or by encouraging convictions for witchcraft?Poole, The Lancashire Witches: Histories and Stories, p. 24.
The family of Elizabeth Southerns, known as Demdike.Hasted, The Pendle Witch Trial, p. 12.
The family of Anne Whittle, known as Chattox.
One of the accused, Demdike, had been regarded in the area as a witch for 50 years, and some of the deaths the witches were accused of had happened many years before Roger Nowell, the local magistrate, started to take an interest in 1612.Hasted, The Pendle Witch Trial, p. 11. The event which seems to have triggered Nowell\'s investigation, culminating in the Pendle witch trials, occurred on 21 March 1612, when Alizon Device encountered John Law.Poole, The Lancashire Witches, p. 1.
Law was a pedlar from Halifax who Alizon came across as she was on her way to Trawden Forest.Bennett, The Pendle Witches, p. 9. She asked him for some pins; whether she meant to buy them from him as she claimed, and Law refused to undo his pack for such a small transaction, or she had no money and was begging for them as Law\'s son Abraham claimed, is unclear. What is clear is that a few minutes after that encounter Law suffered a stroke, for which he blamed Alizon.Poole, The Lancashire Witches, p. 83. She appears to have been convinced of her own powers; when Abraham Law took her to visit his father a few days after the incident, she reportedly confessed and asked for his forgiveness.Bennett, The Pendle Witches, p. 10.
Alizon Device, her mother Elizabeth, and her brother James were summoned to appear before Roger Nowell on 30 March 1612. Alizon confessed that she had sold her soul to the Devil, and that she had told him to lame John Law after he had called her a thief. Her brother, James, stated that his sister had also confessed to bewitching a local child. Elizabeth was more reticent, admitting only that her mother, Demdike, had a mark on her body, something that many, including Roger Nowell, would have regarded as having been left by the Devil after he had sucked her blood.Bennett, The Pendle Witches, p. 11. When questioned about Anne Whittle (Chattox), the matriarch of the other family reputedly involved in witchcraft in and around Pendle, Alizon perhaps saw an opportunity for revenge. There appears to have been bad blood between the two families, possibly dating from 1601, when a member of Chattox\'s family broke into Malkin Tower, the home of the Devices, and stole goods worth about £1.Poole, The Lancashire Witches, p. 80. Alizon accused Chattox of murdering four men by witchcraft, and of killing her father, John Device, who had died in 1601. She claimed that her father had been so frightened of Old Chattox that he had agreed to give her 8 pounds (3.6 kg) of oat meal each year in return for her promise not to hurt his family. The meal was handed over annually until the year before John\'s death in 1601; on his deathbed John claimed that his sickness had been caused by Chattox because they had not paid for protection.Hasted, The Pendle Witch Trial, p. 15.
On April 2 1612, Demdike, Chattox, and Chattox\'s daughter Anne Redferne, were summoned to appear before Nowell. Both Demdike and Chattox were by then blind and in their eighties, and both provided Nowell with damaging confessions. Demdike claimed that she had given her soul to the Devil 20 years previously, and Chattox that she had given her soul to a "a Thing like a Christian man"Bennet, The Pendle Witches, p. 15. on his promise that "she would not lack anything and would get any revenge she desired". Although Anne Redferne made no confession, Demdike said that she had seen Anne making clay figures. Margaret Crooke, another witness seen by Nowell that day, claimed that her brother had fallen sick and died after having had a disagreement with Redferne, and that he had frequently blamed her for his illness.Hasted, The Pendle Witch Trial, pp. 17–19. Based on the evidence and confessions he had obtained, Nowell committed Demdike, Chattox, Anne Redferne and Alizon Device to Lancaster Gaol, to be tried for maleficium – causing harm by witchcraft – at the next assizes.Bennett, The Pendle Witches, p. 16.
The committal and subsequent trial of the four women might have been the end of the matter, had it not been for a meeting organised by Elizabeth Device at Malkin Tower, the home of the Demdikes, held on 6 April 1612.Hasted, The Pendle Witch Trial, p. 19.
Friends and others sympathetic to the Demdike family attended the meeting; when word of it reached Roger Nowell, he decided to investigate further. On 27 April 1612 an enquiry was held before Nowell and another magistrate, Nicholas Bannister, to determine the purpose of the meeting at Malkin Tower, who had attended, and what had happened there. As a result of the enquiry a further eight suspected witches were committed for trial: Elizabeth Device, James Device, Alice Nutter, Katherine Hewitt, John Bulcock, Jane Bulcock, Alice Gray and Jennet Preston. Preston lived across the border in Yorkshire, so she was sent for trial at York Assizes; the others were sent to Lancaster Gaol to join the four already imprisoned there.Bennett, The Pendle Witch Trial, p. 22.
Jennet Preston lived in Gisburn, in Yorkshire, so she was sent to York Assizes for trial. Her judges were Sir James Altham and Sir Edward Bromley.
| Name | Charge | Notes | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| \'Jennett Preston | Murder by witchcraft of Thomas Lister.Davies, The Trial of the Lancaster Witches, p. 177. | Jennet pleaded not guilty. She had previously appeared before Bromley in 1611, charged with murdering a child by witchcraft, but was found not guilty on that occasion. The most damning evidence given against her was that when she was taken to see Thomas Lister after his death, after she touched the corpse it "bled fresh bloud presently, in the presence of all that were there present".Davies, The Trial of the Lancaster Witches, p. 179. | Guilty |
The judges at the Lancaster Assizes were once again Altham and Bromley. The prosecutor was local magistrate Roger Nowell, who had been responsible for collecting the various statements and confessions from the accused.
| Name | Charge | Notes | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anne Whittle (Chattox) | Murder by witchcraft of Robert Nutter.Davies, The Trial of the Lancaster Witches, p. 34. | Chattox pleaded not guilty, but the confession she had made to Roger Nowell was read out in court, and evidence against her was presented by James Robinson, who had lived with the Chattox family 20 years earlier. He claimed to remember Robert Nutter\'s accusations against Chattox, that she had made his beer turn sour, and that she was commonly believed to be a witch. Confronted by the evidence, Chattox broke down and admitted her guilt, calling on God for forgiveness and the judges to be merciful to her daughter, Anne Redferne.Hasted, The Pendle Witch Trials, pp. 27–28. | Guilty |
| Elizabeth Device | Murder by witchcraft of James Robinson, John Robinson and, together with Alice Nutter and Demdike, the murder of Henry Mitton.Davies, The Trial of the Lancaster Witches, p. 52. | Potts records that "this odious witch" suffered from a facial deformity resulting in her left eye being set lower than her right.Davies, The Trial of the Lancaster Witches, p. 55. The main witness against Elizabeth was her daughter, Jennet, who was about nine years old at the time of the trial. When Jennet was asked to stand up and give evidence against her mother, Elizabeth began to scream and curse her daughter, forcing the judges to have her removed from the courtroom before Jennet\'s evidence could be heard. | Guilty |
| James Device | Murder by witchcraft of Anne Townley and John Duckworth.Davies, The Trial of the Lancaster Witches, p. 65. | James pleaded not guilty, but the evidence presented against him by his sister Jennet, who said that she had seen her brother asking a black dog he had conjured up to help him kill Townley, along with his earlier confession to Nowell, was sufficient to persuade the jury to find him guilty.Davies, The Trial of the Lancaster Witches, p. 70. | Guilty |
| Alizon Device | Causing harm by witchcraft to John Law.Davies, The Trial of the Lancaster Witches, p. 139. | Uniquely among the accused, Alizon was confronted in court by her alleged victim, John Law. She seems to have genuinely believed in her own guilt and that of her family; when Law was brought into court she fell to her knees in tears and confessed to her guilt.Hasted, The Pendle Witch Trial, p. 37. | Guilty |
| Alice Nutter | Murder by witchcraft of Henry Mitton.Davies, The Trial of the Lancaster Witches, p. 116. | Alice made no statement either before or during her trial, except to enter her plea of not guilty. She was unusual among the accused in being comparatively wealthy, the widow of a tenant yeoman farmer. The prosecution alleged that she had, together with Demdike and Elizabeth Device, caused the death of Henry Mitton after he had refused to give Demdike a penny she had begged from him. The only evidence against Alice seems to have been that James Device claimed Demdike had told him of the murder, and Jennet Device in her statement said that Alice had been present at the Malkin Tower meeting.Hasted, The Pendle Witch trials", p. 34. | Guilty |
| Jane Bulcock | Murder by witchcraft of Jennet Deane.Davies, The Trial of the Lancaster Witches, p. 131. | Guilty | |
| John Bulcock | Murder by witchcraft of Jennet Deane. | Guilty | |
| Anne Redferne | Murder by witchcraft of Christopher Nutter.Davies, The Trial of the Lancaster Witches, p. 108. | Late in the afternoon of 18 August Anne was tried for the murder of Robert Nutter, but she was acquitted because of the lack of evidence against her. The following day she was tried for the murder of Robert\'s father, Christopher. She pleaded not guilty, and refused to admit her guilt to the end. She had made no confession, and neither had she given evidence against any other of the accused.Bennett, The Pendle Witches, pp. 27–28. | Guilty |
| Katherine Hewitt (Mould-Heeles) | Murder by witchcraft of Anne Foulds.Davies, The Trial of the Lancaster Witches, p. 124. | Katherine Hewitt had attended the meeting at Malkin Tower with Alice Grey. According to the evidence given by James Device, both Hewitt and Grey told the others at that meeting that they had killed a child from Colne, Anne Foulds. Jennet Device also picked Katherine out of a line-up, and substantiated her attendance at the Malkin Tower meeting. | Guilty |
| Alice Gray | Murder by witchcraft of Anne Foulds. | Potts does not provide an account of Alice Gray\'s trial, simply recording her as one of the Salmesbury witches – which she was not, as she was one of those identified as having been at the Malkin Tower meeting – and naming her in the list of those found not guilty.Davies, The Trial of the Lancaster Witches, pp. 29, 167. | Not guilty |
Some of the accused made their confessions quite voluntarily, without any threat of torture. Alizon Device seems to have genuinely believed in her own guilt and that of her family; others of the suspected witches protested their innocence to the end. Ten of the accused – Alizon Device, Elizabeth Device, James Device, Anne Whittle, Anne Redferne, Alice Nutter, Katherine Hewitt, John Bulcock, Jane Bulcock & Isobel Robey – were found guilty of murder by witchcraft and were hanged at Lancaster Moor on 20 August 1612. Elizabeth Southerns died while awaiting trial, but was nevertheless considered to be a witch on the basis of evidence already given. Margaret Pearson was found guilty of witchcraft, but not of murder, and was sentenced to stand in the pillory at Clitheroe, Padiham, Whalley, and Lancaster on four market days "with a Paper upon your head, in great Letters, declaring your offence",Davies, The Trial of the Lancaster Witches, p. 166. followed by one year\'s imprisonment.
Title page of the original edition published in 1613
Thomas Potts, the clerk to the Lancaster Assizes, wrote an account of the trials of the Lancaster witches, making them some of the most famous and best recorded witch trials of the 17th century. Potts was instructed to write his account by the trial judges, Sir James Altham and Sir Edward Bromley. He completed the work on 16 November 1612, only a few months after the trials, and submitted it to the judges for review. Bromley revised and corrected the manuscript before its publication in 1613, declaring it to be "truly reported" and "fit and worthie to be published".Davies, The Trial of the Lancaster Witches, p. xli.
Historian Robert Poole has suggested that Bromley and Altham "worked very closely with Potts in the writing of The Wonderfvll Discoverie of Witches in the Covntie of Lancaster to manipulate the extraordinary records into an account that would protect and advance their careers."Poole, The Lancashire Witches, p. 32.
Questions are still being raised by these well-recorded events in Lancashire all those years ago. Some parts of the witches\' confessions appear similar to what a psychiatrist would now recognize as being symptoms of a psychotic illness, possibly schizophrenia, with its associated delusions and hallucinations.
It has also been suggested that the alleged witches were innocent dupes, sacrificed by ambitious, powerful Lancastrian political figures in order to impress and curry favor with the reigning monarch James I.
Pendle Hill, which dominates the landscape of the area, continues to be associated with witchcraft. Every Halloween, large numbers of visitors climb it. Several local corporate bodies and businesses use a \'flying witch\' logo to link themselves to the area, somewhat to the distaste of some local people who claim the area could be identified by other events and groups. Pendle College at Lancaster University also has its logo of a witch on a broom wearing the college scarf.
In 2004, the television show Most Haunted produced a Halloween Special on the Pendle Witches and the hauntings surrounding Pendle Hill. Certain members of the production crew said that at times they felt unwell, and that they were being strangled. Derek Acorah, the show\'s host, became "possessed" by Elizabeth Southworth; a glass was thrown and the legs of a table were torn off during a séance. Some viewers watching via the the live web cams placed in various locations around Pendle Hill claimed to have seen black figures. The final hour of the Halloween special was the most watched show on UK television that evening.Most Haunted crew has a spooky visit to Pendle. The Clitheroe Advertiser and Times (2004-11-05). Retrieved on 2007-01-05.
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