The Lancashire Witch Trials of 1612 are commonly held to have been the most important event of their type within British history. Carried out by religious zealots, and those in search of fame and fortune, the witch-hunts of our Medieval and Early Modern past were protracted and often brutal. Little wonder, then, that the Pendle Witches still hold a strong influence over the forest psyche; the local historian can carry out very little research without bumping up against the legend of the Witches.

In 1911 a historian by the name of Frank Hird published a collection of stories relating to the county of Lancashire. This publication, entitled 'Lancashire Stories,' can still be found in local studies libraries and included an essay covering the legend of the Lancashire Witches. Because of the clear and concise nature of Hird's text it is fitting to include it here as a 'potted' introduction to the subject. Furthermore, it is interesting to see the approach of a writer from almost one-hundred years ago; it is apparent from this that the subject of the Pendle Witches has progressed little in the interim. Until now little has been known of the lives of the main cast within the story that was not known in the nineteenth century.

Here, then, is Frank Hird's essay:

The Lancashire Witches


In the early part of the seventeenth century the inhabitants of the Forest of Pendle, with few exceptions, must have been miserably poor and ignorant, since they had little communication with the outside world. Superstition exists in the district to this day. When James I was on the throne it held absolute domination over the simple minds of the inhabitants. And no belief was stronger than that in witchcraft. Upon this belief two old women, called Elizabeth Southerns and Anne Whittle, but better known in the chronicles of witchcraft as Old Demdike and Old Chattox, had played for many years with great success. Both these women were old, and both pretended to possess supernatural powers, and were therefore bitterly opposed to one another.

Each woman had her following amongst the credulous peasantry, and in their anxiety to outvie one another each represented herself as more death-dealing, destructive and powerful than her neighbour, and the one who could show the most damage done to man or beast (whether real or not was quite immaterial) was more likely to get a larger custom for her charms and philtres, and horrible incantations. It is a curious fact that, despite the bitter rivalry existing between these two women, the son-in- law of one of them, whose own wife was afterwards executed as a witch, paid the other an annual dole of meal to be exempt from her charms and witchcraft. As one of the many writers on the subject says, "Where the possession of a commission from the powers of darkness was thus eagerly and ostentatiously paraded, every death, the cause of which was not perfectly obvious, whether it ended in a sudden termination or a slow and gradual decline, would be placed to the general account of one of the two agents of the devil, in those parts, as the party responsible for these unclaimed dividends of mortality. Did a cow go mad, or was a horse unaccountabely affected with the staggers, the same solution was always at hand to clear negligence and save the trouble of inquiry; and so far from modestly disclaiming these atrocities, the only struggle on the parts of Mothers Demdike and Chattox would be which should first appropriate them. And in all this it must not be forgotten that their own credulity was at least as great as the credulity of their neighbours, and that each had the power in question was so much an admitted point that she had long ceased, in all probability, to entertain any doubt on the subject."

Little wonder therefore that the doings, real 0r imaginary, of these two old women should become a scandal throughout the Forest of Pendle, and when James I launched forth his famous treatise on witchcraft and demonology, "one of His Majesty's Justices in those parts, a very religious honest gentleman painful in the service of his country," Roger Nowell, took up the case of these self-accused witches. They were brought before him and both having made confession, they were committed to take their trial at the next Lancaster Assizes on charges of various murders and witchcrafts. At that time the Clerk of the Assize Courts was one Master Thomas Potts, who left a full record of the proceedings. Besides Mother Demdike and Mother Chattox, their two daughters, Alison Device and Anne Redfearne, were also committed. Master Potts tells us that the four women had not been in Lancaster Castle a week "when their children and friends being abroad at libertie, laboured a speciall meeting at Malking Tower in the Forrest of Pendle, upon goocl-fryday, within a weeke after they were committed, of all the most dangerous, wicked, and damnable witches in the country, farre and neare. Upon good-fryday they met, according to solemne appoyntment, solemnized this greate festivall day according to their former order, with great cheare, merry company, and much conference. In the end, in this great assemblie it was decreed that M. Covell. (he was the gaoler of Lancaster Castle) by reason of his Office, shall be slaine before the 'next Assises, the Cast!e of Lancaster to be blown up."

The evidence that this great meeting of witches ever took place was based solely upon the testimony of a child of nine, Jennet Device, the granddaughter of Mother Demdike. The child was intelligent and cunning and there is an ugly suspicion that she glibly repeated a lesson she had been taught. Who taught her the lesson can never be known, but the activity which Roger Nowell displayed in arresting all those who were said to have attended the witches' convention on Good Friday, casts considerable doubts upon his motives. Amongst those arrested was Alice Nutter, a lady of good family and a fair estate at Rough Lea. There is every reason to believe that she was in no way implicated in the doings of the so-called witches, and that the child Jennet Device was bribed by some of her relatives, who in the event of her death would inherit her property,to introduce her name. In addition to this Roger Nowell was one of her bitterest enemies: Alice Nutter won a lawsuit against him with regard to the boundary of their respective properties, he having claimed a portion of her land. The only charges made against her were that she had been present at the meeting at Malkin Tower on Good Friday, and had joined with Mother Demdike and Elizabeth Device in bewitching to death an old man called Mitton. The only witnesses against her were Elizabeth Device and her two children James and Jennet. As a result of Jennet Device's evidence Mr. Justice Nowell sent as prisoners to Lancaster, Elizabeth Device, daughter of Old Demdike, and her son James, Katherine Hewitt, John and Jane Bulrock, Isabel Robey, and Margaret Pearson, as well as Alice Nutter, making in all twelve persons accused of "the most barbarous and damnable Practises, Murthers wicked anddevilish conspiracies."

The confession made by Mother Demdike to Roger Nowell on the second of April could only have sprung from hallucination or have been deliberate lying. Master Potts says, "She was a very old woman, about the age of Fourscore yeares, and had been a Witch for fiftie yeares. She dwelt in the Forrest of Pendle, in waste places, fitte for her profession. What she's commited in her time no man knows." Mother Demdike in her confession fixed the period of her practice in witchcraft at twenty years. She said that one day as she was returning home from a begging expedition she met, near a stone pit in Gouldshey, a spirit or a devil in the shape of a boy, one half of his coat black and the other brown. He bade her stay, saying to her that if she would give him her soul, she should have anything she wanted. Old Demdike inquired the spirit's name and was told it was Tib, and "in hope of such gaine as was promised
by the sayd Devill or Tib, was contented to give her Soule to the said Spirit." During the next five or six years Tib appeared to Mother Demdike at various times and "always about Daylight Gate," that is towards the evening, asking her what she would have or do. She always answered nothing. But about the end of the sixth year, one Sunday morning as she sat asleep with a child upon her knee, the spirit appeared to her in the shape of a brown dog, and as she was only wearing a smock it succeeded in drawing blood from under her left arm. Awaking suddenly she cried, "Jesus, save my child," but she had no power to say "Jesus save me," whereupon the brown dog vanished and for a space of eight weeks, she was "almost stark mad."

The on]y name mentioned in Mother Demdike's confession is that of a man called Baldwyn, who, when he and her granddaughter Alison Device, went to ask for money, called them witches and drove them away. Mother Demdike was blind, but as her granddaughter was leading her away, Tib appeared and said to her "Revenge thee of him," to which Old Demdike replied "Revenge thee either of him or his." The spirit vanished out of her sight and she never saw him
again.The most curious fact about this case is the diabolical readiness with which the Device family not only confessed they were witches, but testified against other people and against their own flesh and blood. Old Demdike in her confession said nothing as to any evil befalling Richard Baldwyn, but her granddaughter, Alison Device, said that the day after Baldwyn ordered them off his land, she heard that one of his children had fallen ill, and that after languishing for about a year, had died, and upon oath this woman stated she verily thought "that her said grandmother did bewitch the said child to death."

Old Demdike at the end of her confession said, "That the speediest way to take a man's life away by Witchcraft, is to make a Picture of Clay, like unto the shape of the person whom they mean to kill, and dry it thoroughly; and when they would have them to be ill in any one place more than another, then take a Thorne or Pinne, and prick it in that part of the Picture you would so have to be ill: and when you would have any part of the Body to consume away, then take that part of the Picture and burne it. And when they would haye the whole Body to consume away, then take the remnant of the said Picture and burne it: and so thereupon by that means, the Body shall die." Mother Chattox whom Master Potts describes as "a very old, withered, spent, and decrepit creature, her sight almost gone," made her confession after a few weeks' imprisonment in Lancaster Castle. She declared that she was "seduced to condescend and agree to become subject unto that devilish abominable profession of Witchcraft" through the wicked persuasion
and counsel of Mother Demdike. She also had her familiar spirit, who was called Fancie. She declared that at the time of the initiation she heard Tib say to Mother Demdike that she should have "gold, Silver, worldly Wealth at her will. And at the same time she saith, there was victuals viz. Flesh, Butter, Cheese, Bread, and Drink and bid them eat enough. And after their eating, the devil called Fancie, and the other spirit calling himself Tib, carried the remnant away. And she saith that although they did eat, they were never the fuller, nor better for the same; and that at their said Banquet, the said spirits gave them light to see what they did, although they neither had fire nor candle light; and that there were both the spirits and devils."

The old woman admitted having bewitched to death one man. Nor were women alone concerned in this chapter of horrors. James Device, Old Demdike's grandson, not only confessed to his own participation in the craft, but testified against his mother, his grandmother and his sister Alison. His evidence was given in the matter-of-fact way which distinguishes that of all those who made confessions, they all speak as if witchcraft were an ordinary every-day reality, and as if evil spirits went about the countryside in various disguises. James Device declared that on a certain Shrove Tuesday, his grandmother bade him go to church to receive the sacrament. He was not to eat the bread but to bring it away with him, and hand it to "such a Thing" as he should meet on his way homeward. But he disobeyed and ate the wafer. On his way home, when about fifty-yards from the church, he was met by a "Thing in the shape of a hare" which asked him if he bad brought the bread according to his grandmother's directions. He answered that he had not, whereupon the Thing threatened to tear him to pieces, but when he called upon the name of God, it disappeared.
A few days later a thing in the shape of a brown dog met him near the new church in Pendle. It asked him for his soul, promising him in return that he should be avenged on his enemies. To this Device made answer that his soul was not his to give but was his Saviour Jesus Christ's, yet as much as was his to give he was contented to yield to the spirit.

Within two or three days of this meeting, James Device went to Carre Hall, where Mrs. Townley, after charging him and his mother with having stolen some of her turf, bade him begone. As he went "forth of the door the said Mistress Townley gave him a knock between the shoulders." A day or two later a black dog met him, and reminding him of the insult put upon him by Mrs. Townley, directed him to make a clay image like Mrs. Townley and he would help him to destroy her. Bidding Device to call him Dandy, the spirit disappeared. The next morning he made an image of clay of Mrs. Townley, and dried it the same night by the fire. Every day he crumbled away a piece of this image. At the end of a week it was all gone and two days later Mrs. Townley died. In the following Lent, one John Duckworth of the Lawnde promised James Device an old shirt, but when he went to get the gift, Duckworth refused to give it to him, and he was driven away. As he was going out of the house, the spirit Dandy appeared to him, and said "Thou didst touch the said Duckworth." This James Device denied but the spirit answered, "Thou didst touch him and therefore I haye power of him.... " whereupon Device expressed his wish to the spirit that Duckworth might be killed. Within a week Duckworth was dead.

"Who but Witches can be proofes, and so witnesses of the doings of Witches?" asks Master Potts, "since all their Meetings, Conspiracies, Practices, and Murthers are the works of darkness? But to discover this wicked fury God hath not only raised meanes beyond expectation by the voluntarie Confession and Accusation of all that are gone before to accuse this Witch ( eing Witches, and thereby witnesses of her doings), but after they were committed by meanes of a child to discover her to be one and a Principall in that wicked assembly at Malking Tower, and so devise such a damnable course for the deliverance of their friends from Lancaster, as to kill the Gaoler and blow up the Castle, wherein the Devill did but labour to assemble them together, and so being known, to send them all one way...." Such was the arraignment of Katherine Hewitt. She was accused of being present at the famous convention of Witches on the previous Good Friday at Malkin Tower. The only evidence against her was that of the Devices - mother, son and daughter. James Device swore that not only was Katherine Hewitt present at the meeting at Malkin Tower, but had there confessed that she had killed the child of a man named Foulds at CoIne. Elizabeth Device gave the same evidence.

That imp of unspeakable wickedness, Jennet Device, whom Master Potts conceived to have been divinely inspired for the rooting out of witches, completed the chain of evidence against the unhappy woman. Called into court, she was directed by the judge to identify Katherine Hewitt. Without the least hesitation, the child went up to her and, taking her by the hand, accused her of being a witch. She described the place in which she had sat at the witches' feast on Good Friday at Malkin Tower, and then proceeded to relate their conversation, "without any manner of contrarieties." Upon this evidence Katherine Hewitt was condemned to death, and because she protested her innocence to the end, was branded as an impenitent. Old Mother Demdike died in prison before the trials took place, a victim of ill-treatment. The "confessions" made by this old woman, her daughter, and two grandchildren, as well as that of Old Chattox, were, in all probability, given under the promise that if they told the truth their lives would be spared. There is no record of any of the Lancashire witches being put to the torture, although this horrible means of extorting confessions was resorted to in other parts of the country. Yet remembering the superstitious belief in witchcraft which characterised the age, a belief that in the opinion of some of the most enlightened men warranted any means being used to extract the truth, Master Potts' description of James Device's appearance when he was brought to trial, gives rise to the assumption that in his case, at any rate, torture had been employed. We must remember that Master Potts was an official of the court, and that great stress was laid, both in his account and in the judge's summing up, of the fact that the confessions were "voluntarie." Of James Device he says, "This wicked and miserable Wretch, whether by practise, or meanes, to bring himself to some untimely death and thereby to avoid his Tryall by his Countrey, and just judgement of the law; or ashamed to bee openly charged with so many devilish practises, and so much innocent blood as hee had spilt; or by reason of his imprisonment so long time before his Trial (which was with more favour, comisaration and reliefe than hee deserved) I know not: But being brought forward to the Barre, to receive his Tryal before this worthie judge, and so Honourable and Worshipfulle an assembly of justices for this service, was so insensihle, weake and unable in all thinges as he could neither speake, heare, or stand, but was holden up when hee was brought to the place of his arraignement to receive his trial!."

James Device certainly deserved his fate, for, in addition to testifying against his mother, Elizabeth Device and his sister Alison, he was instrumental in sending three absolutely innocent women to their death - Katherine Hewitt, whose case has been already mentioned, Anne Redfern, and Alice Nutter. There seems every reason to believe that these two last women were accused of witchcraft by the Nutter family. Anne Redfern was the daughter of Old Chattox, but there was nothing to show that she had taken any part in her mother's supposed magic arts of witchcraft. Some eighteen years previously a young man, named Robert Nutter, had made improper advances to Anne Redfern and had been repulsed. Six months later he died of a languishing sickness, and this was the evidence on which Anne Redfern was hanged! Old Demdike declared to Justice Nowell that she had seen Anne Redfern and Old Chattox making three clay figures of Robert Nutter, his wife, and his father. James Device said that he saw three figures of clay, half-a-yard in length, at the end of the Redferns' house; one of these figures Anne Redfern was crumbling in her hands. He could not say who the figures represented. Robert Nutter's sister declared that there had been a quarrel between her brother and Anne Redfern about Whitsuntide, some eighteen or nineteen years before. Her brother had told her of the quarrel, and within a week or a fortnight he had fallen ill, "and so languished until about Candlemas then next after, and then died." During the time of his sickness Robert Nutter "did a hundred times at least say that the said Anne Redfern and her associates had bewitched him to death." She also said that her father, Christopher Nutter, shortly after her brother's death, also fell sick, and after languishing for some months he, too, died. The elder Nutter likewise "did sundry times say that he was bewitched, but named nobodie that should have done the same."

The evidence of John Nutter, Robert's brother, completed the case against the unhappy Anne Redfern. He said that about Christmas time some eighteen or nineteen years previously, whilst riding from Burnley with his brother Robert and his father, he heard the former say "Father, I am sure I am bewitched by the Chattoxes, Anne Chattox and Anne Redfern her daughter; I pray you cause them to be layd in Lanc.aster Castle." To this the elder Nutter replied "Thou art a foolish lad, it is not so, it is thy miscarriage." Then Robert Nutter, weeping, said, "Nay, I am sure that I am bewitched by them, and if ever I come again (he was then ready to go to Sir Richard Shuttleworth in whose service he was), Iwill procure them to be layd where they shall be glad to bite lice in two with their teeth....." At this point occurred one of the most moving scenes in this horrible trial. Old Chattox wasbrought forward to be examined. She admitted making the clay figures, and falling upon her knees she confessed, and, with tears streaming down her withered cheeks, implored the mercy of the court for her daughter, whose innocence she protested. This appeal had no influence upon the besotted prejudices of the judge and jury who condemned this woman to death for the "murder" of Robert Nutter upon evidence that was only hearsay, and was clearly inspired by the spite of enemies.

A shadow even more sinister rests upon the case of Alice Nutter. In those days to be accused of witchcraft was practically to be condemned. The ordinary rules of evidence were of little or no avail to the accused. She might bring the most convincing proof that she was fifty miles away from the spot on which she was declared to have taken part in the witches' orgy. The firm belief in the power of witches to ride through the air, to transport themselves where they would in a few moments, discounted all such evidence. Amongst this band of wretched women Alice Nutter was the only person of any condition or degree. The Demdikes and Chattoxes were practically mendicants. Alice Nutter was a lady of considerable fortune, of good family, and as Heywood says in his Lancashire Witches, "I knew her a good woman and well bred, of an unquestion'd carriage, well reputed amongst her neighbours, reckoned with the best....."
Master Potts, in his description of the trial of Alice Nutter, declared there were two types of persons who practised witchcraft: one which was in great misery and poverty, "for such the Devill allures to follow him by promising great riches and worldly commodity; others though rich yet burn in a desperate desire of revenge," This he advances as the reason for Alice Nutter, "a rich woman who had a great estate, and children of good hope: in the common opinion of the world a good temper, free from envy or malice...." finding herself accused of witchcraft. The charges against her were both childish and absurd. She was accused of having killed Henry Mitton by witchcraft, because he had refused to give Old Mother Demdike a penny!

The judge and jury accepted the evidence of Elizabeth and James Device that they had heard Old Demdike say she and Alice Nutter had bewitched Henry Mitton to death. The second charge was that she had taken part in the meeting at Malkin Tower on Good Friday, and here again the evidence of Elizabeth and James Device and that of the horrible child Jennet, satisfied the jury. As in the ease of Katherine Hewitt, Jennet Device identified Alice Nutter in the court, and taking her by the hand accused her of being a witch, describing the place she had oecupied at the feast, and the whole of the conferences which took place, It was in vain that Alice Nutter protested her innocence, but to quote Master Potts, "Nothing would serve, for Old Demdike, Old Chattox and others had charged her with innocent blood which cries out for Revenge and will be satisfied. And therefore Almightie God, in his justice hath cut her down."

There can be little doubt but that Alice Nutter was the victim of a foul conspiracy. Her children showed the greatest anxiety that she should confess; neither they nor any member of her family made any effort to save her, 0r to clear her from the unsubstantiated charges brought against her. They accepted the finding of the court that their mother and kinswoman was a witch simply because the Devices, who were confessed witches, had said that she was one. Who
knows what bitter family quarrels lay behind this appalling passiveness? We have no record of the character of Alice Nutter. She may have been a hard woman, or, on the other hand, she may have had bad children; but whatever lies hidden, it is impossible to dismiss the conviction that, in order to secure her money, her own family were passive, if not active, agents in her destruction. Some one must have coached that child of darkness, Jennet Device, and rewards or promises of pardon doubtless bought the ridiculous evidence of Elizabeth and James Device. Alice Nutter
died maintaining her innocence. Potts says, "She died very impenitent; inasmuch as her owne children were never able to move her to confess any particular offence, or declare anything, even in articulo mortis, which was a very fearfull thing to all that were present."

The trial of Elizabeth Device followed that of Old Chattox, she is described as having been branded with a preposterous mark in Nature, even from her birth, which was her left eye standing lower than the other, the one looking down, the other looking up, so strangely deformed, as the best who were present in that honourable assembly and great audience did affirm, they had not often seen the like. When Jennet Device was put up to give evidence against her mother, the latter broke out into such a storm of curses and reproaches that the child "with weeping tears cried out to my Lord the judge, and told him she was not able to speak in the presence of her mother." Nothing would silence Elizabeth Device, and the learnedjudge, seeing in her curses and threats nothing but an attempt to terrify the child into
withdrawing the statements she had already made to Mr. Nowel, ordered her removal from the court, Jennet was then placed upon a table in the presence of the whole court, and there gave evidence that her mother was a witch, and that she had frequently seen her familiar spirit, which was called Ball, in the shape of a brown dog, James Device told practically the same story.

On August 13th, the day after their trial, Old Chattox, Anne Redfern, Elizabeth, James and Alison Device, Alice Nutter, Katherine Hewitt, John Bulcock ancl his mothor, were taken to Gallows Hill, amidst the insults and execrations of an infuriated populace, and there they were hanged. Old Chattox and the Devices were convicted on their own confession, but the others were legally murdered on the unsupported testimony of these miserable wretches. Nothing
marks more strongly the credulity of the age than the acceptance of the evidence of Jennet Device. Although she confessed to having taken part in her mother's practice of witchcraft, she was pardoned as King's evidence. What