Lancashire Witches

A famous episode of ignorance, superstition, and persecution in Lancashire, England, which involved a mass trial of 20 alleged witches. Not far from Manchester lies Pendelbury Forest, where, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, witches were said to live. Terrified townspeople avoided the place, imagining it to be the scene of frightful orgies and diabolical rites. Roger Nowel, a country magistrate, hit upon the plan of routing the witches out of their den and ridding the district of their malevolent influence, and he believed he would be performing a public-spirited and laudable service.

He promptly seized Elizabeth Demdike and Ann Chattox, two women of 80 years of age, one blind and the other threatened with blindness, both living in squalor and abject poverty. Demdike's daughter, Elizabeth Device, and her grandchildren, James and Alison Device, were included in the accusation, and Ann Redferne, daughter of Chattox, was apprehended with her mother.

Also seized in quick succession were Jane Bulcock and her son John, Alice Nutter, Catherine Hewitt, and Isabel Roby. All of them were induced to make a more or less detailed confession of the communication with the Devil. It is not known how these confessions were obtained, but considering the age and condition of the women, their confessions were probably extorted. Afterward they were sent to prison in Lancaster Castle, some 50 miles away, to await trial.

Soon after the authorities were informed that about 20 witches assembled on Good Friday at Malkin's Tower, the home of Elizabeth Device, in order to arrange the death of one Covel, to blow up the castle in which their companions were confined and rescue the prisoners, and also to kill a man called Lister by means of a diabolical agency.

In summer 1612, the prisoners were tried for witchcraft and were all found guilty. The woman Demdike had died in prison and thus escaped a more ignominious death at the gallows. The principal witnesses against Elizabeth Device were her grandchildren, James and Jannet Device. When Jannet entered the witness-box, her grandmother set up a terrible yelling punctuated by bitter execrations.

The child, who was only nine years of age, begged that the prisoner be removed so that she could proceed with her evidence. Her request was granted, and she and her brother swore that the devil had visited their grandmother in the shape of a black dog and asked what were her wishes. She said she desired the death of one John Robinson, whereupon the fiend told her to make a clay image of Robinson and gradually crumble it to pieces, saying that as she did so the man's life would decay and finally perish. On such evidence, 10 persons were hanged, including the aged Ann Chattox.

The story of the Lancashire witches became the subject of Thomas Shadwell's play of that name in 1681, and a novel by W. H. Ainsworth in 1848. Twenty-two years after the events of 1612, a similar outrage in the same area of Lancashire was narrowly avoided, by the shrewdness of the judge who tried the case. A man by the name of Edmund Robinson thought to profit by the general belief in witchcraft. He told his young son, a boy of 11, to say that he had encountered two dogs in the field, and he tried to get them to catch a hare. When the animals would not obey his bidding, he tied them to a post and whipped them, when they immediately turned into a witch and her imp.

The fiction gained such credence that Robinson declared that his son possessed a sort of second-sight, which enabled him to distinguish a witch at a glance. He took the boy to the neighboring churches, set him on a bench, and bade him point out the witches. The boy identified 17 persons, and the jury convicted them. They might have been hanged were it not for the judge's suspicions about the story.

The judge postponed their sentences and sent some of them to London for examination by the king's physician and by King Charles I himself. The boy's story was investigated and found to be false, and the child himself admitted the lie.