The Pendle Witches: Britain’s Most Famous Witch Trials
Little Jennet Device’s life was full of demons and dark magic. She’d grown up in a family that practiced witchcraft. But their practice went far behind the folk healing kind that was common in rural parts of the United Kingdom in the seventeenth century. No, they used their powers to kill.
And, in 1612, their suspected powers, and the rivalries it caused within their communities, came to a head when 12 people from the Pendle area were tried for witchcraft. This is the story of the Pendle Witches and of the little girl who became the case’s star witness.
Jennet’s Early Life
Court transcriber Thomas Potts, in his transcription of the Pendle Witch Trials, which he later published as The Wonderful Discoverie of Witches in Lancaster, describes Jennet as a child of about nine years old. But Carol Ann Lee, the author of Something Wicked, found Jennet’s baptism record in The Lancashire Parish Register Society, which showed she had been born in 1600, making her around 11 or 12 in 1612. Given the family’s poverty, Jennet may well have been smaller and thinner than other girls her age.
She was the youngest of four children to Elizabeth and John Device. They’d married around 1590. Their eldest son James was born sometime between 1590 and 1593. Their second child, Alicea, better known as Alizon, was baptised in 1593. A second son, Henry, was born around 1595, with Jennet completing the family in 1600.
Whether John Device was indeed Jennet’s biological father has been the subject of much speculation. Testimony during the trial would reveal that John Robinson, an alleged victim of Elizabeth Device, had taunted Elizabeth about her illegitimate child. This is often taken to mean Jennet. While there is no evidence that this was the case, Jennet did seem to harbour a hatred for her family. Could her illegitimacy and subsequent different treatment, be the reason for this?
John Device died around 1601. He believed that he had been bewitched by Old Chattox, his mother-in-law’s rival. Some time before his death, a member of the Chattox family had broken into Malkin Tower and stole goods worth £1(approximately £100 today). John had been so scared of Old Chattox that he offered to pay her a protection fee in grain every year. He had failed to pay this fee in 1600 and thought Old Chattox had taken revenge by bewitching him to death.
Anne Whittle and Anne Redferne
Anne Whittle, better known as Old Chattox, had once been a friend of the Device family, but a rivalry between Old Chattox and Old Demdike (Elizabeth Device’s mother, real name Elizabeth Southerns) had developed, possibly over their profession as cunning women. The suspicion this rivalry caused would result in the destruction of both families.
Lancaster and England in the Early Seventeenth Century
The Devices and the Chattoxes were caught up in a time of massive change and dislocation. England had undergone a religious conversion in the reign of Henry VIII. This was followed by decades of religious tensions, with the throne passing between Protestant and Catholic monarchs until the Union of the Crowns in 1603.
Then tension spilled over into outright hostility. James VI and I was incredibly paranoid about the threat of both Catholic non-conformists and witches, which became indistinguishable in the coming decades. He had survived several assassination attempts, including the Gunpowder Plot and, in his mind, the attempted sinking of the ship that carried him and his bride back to Scotland. The latter incident would lead to the North Berwick Witch Trials and cement James’ obsession with purging Scotland, and then England, of the evil influence of witchcraft.
Lancashire became a hotspot of suspicion. It was a remote corner of England, far from London, that clung to the old traditions. James came to believe that this area was harbouring Catholic agitators. So, in early 1612, he wrote to magistrates in Lancashire and asked them to make a list of all the people who refused to take communion, which was a crime. Roger Nowell, the magistrate who would investigate the Pendle Witches later that year, did just that. He was an ambitious man who believed that prosecuting witches would find him favour with James I.
How Did the Pendle Witch Trials Start?
In 1612, the Device family were living with Old Demdike at Malkin Tower in Pendle Forest. They survived mostly by begging, although Carol Ann Lee suggested that Old Demdike may have supplemented their begging income by charging the locals a fee for their protection from witchcraft.
On 18 March 1612, Alizon was out begging near Colne when she came across a pedlar called John Law. She begged him for some pins, but he refused. Under her breath, she cursed him. Soon after, John Law collapsed. Alizon was convinced her curse had worked and begged for his forgiveness, which he gave.
But his son wasn’t so forgiving. He reported the incident to Roger Nowell. Nowell interviewed Alizon, who confessed immediately. She said that, when John Law refused her request, a black dog appeared and asked,
‘What would you have me do?’
Alizon replied, ‘lame him.’
She hadn’t expected this to work and had been guilt ridden ever since. She accepted her fate, but she wasn’t going to go down alone. In her confession, she implicated her grandmother for killing John Nutter’s cattle and for the murder of Richard Baldwin’s daughter. She also threw blame towards Old Chattox, accusing her of multiple murders.
Under questioning, Old Demdike and Old Chattox confessed to selling their soul to the devil. It’s not clear under what circumstances the two women confessed. While torture was illegal under English law, many got round this by inflicting types of torture that didn’t leave marks. Deprivation of sleep and food being two of the most common types.
All three of them were arrested and taken to a prison cell in Lancaster Castle.
The meeting at Malkin Tower
Despite the suspicions hanging over the family, on Good Friday 1612, Elizabeth Device threw a party at Malkin Tower, with a sheep that James stole to feed the guests. The local constable heard about this party, or rather he heard there was a gathering of witches, and arrested all its attendants over the next couple of days.
The authorities would later say that, at this meeting, the guests planned how they could break Demdike, Alizon and Chattox out of Lancaster Castle. This, the authorities claimed, involved murdering the gaoler and blowing up the castle. All of the guests at the Good Friday lunch denied this.
Jennet had been present at the meeting at Malkin Tower, but she wasn’t arrested with the rest of her family. It’s not entirely clear what happened to her between the arrests and the trials. In a documentary about the Pendle Witch Trials, Simon Armitage suggests that Jennet was taken in by Nowell.
Of course, this leaves the question: if this is true, how much did Roger Nowell shape her story to get a conviction? How much pressure did he put on this young girl to essentially sign her family’s death warrant?
Imprisonment
The prisoners were taken to Lancaster Castle, where they were housed in a cell that measured 20 feet by 12 feet. In this cell were 20 prisoners:
Old Demdike
Elizabeth, Alizon and James Device
Old Chattox and her daughter, Anne Redferne
Isobel Robey
Margaret Pearson
Alice Nutter
John and Jane Bulcock
Katherine Hewitt
The other eight have become known as the Witches of Salmesbury. Their names were:
Jennet Brierley
Ellen Brierley
Jane Southworth
John Ramsden
Elizabeth Astley
Alice Gray
Isabel Sidegraves
Lawrence Hayes
These eight people had been accused of separate cases of witchcraft but were being brought to the same Assizes as the Pendle Witches.
Where did the Pendle Witch Trials take place?
The trial began on 18 August 1612 in Lancaster Castle in front of Sir Edward Bromley. The Pendle Witches were due to be tried at the Summer Assizes. Assizes usually happened twice a year: at Lent and in the Summer. They tried the most serious crimes like murder, burglary and witchcraft.
This meant that the accused had been in that cell for at least four months by the time of their trial. Old Demdike had not survived, probably due to the squalid and cramped conditions.
First in the dock was Old Chattox. She had been accused of killing Robert Nutter by witchcraft and had confessed (and then retracted her confession) to having killed Robert Nutter because he’d banned her from his house and to killing Anthony Nutter’s cow. Alizon accused Chattox of another five murders:
Her father, John
Anne Nutter
John Moore
Hugh Moore
John Nutter
Old Chattox broke down and confessed that everything that had been said about her was true. She was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging.
Who is the Pendle Witch Child?
Then Elizabeth Device was brought into court. She was accused of killing John Robinson, James Robinson and Henry Mytton by witchcraft.
Potts was vicious about her. He called her a ‘barbarous and inhumane Monster, beyond example’ and remarked: ‘this odious was Witch branded with a preposterous marke in nature, e[v]en from her birth, which was her left eye, standing lower then the other; the one looking downe, the other looking [u]p…’
In a time when looks alone could apparently determine a witch, Elizabeth Device really stood no chance. But her behaviour did not help. She cursed at anyone who came to testify against her, but none more so that her daughter, Jennet.
Jennet, the Pendle Witch Child, was brought into the court to testify against her mother. When her mother spotted her, she began to scream at the child, probably trying to get her to understand what she was doing. Jennet burst into tears and asked the judge if her mother could be removed while she gave testimony. The judge granted her this request. Once her mother was out of the room, Jennet climbed up onto a table and said,
‘My mother is a witch, and that I know to be true.’
She talked about seeing her mother’s familiar (a spiritual being often in the form of an animal that witches allegedly used in their magic), whom her mother asked to kill John Robinson. She also talked about the meeting at Malkin Tower on Good Friday. Her mother had told her that everyone there was a witch and that they had come to name Alizon’s familiar. Her mother had also taught her two spells, which could have actually been misunderstood Catholic prayers. Jennet’s testimony was devastating for Elizabeth’s case.
But Jennet wasn’t the only child of Elizabeth Device to testify against her. Her son James testified that he’d heard his mother confess to killing Henry Mytton and had seen her familiar, Ball.
With all of the evidence against her, and her own behaviour in court, it’s unsurprising Elizabeth was found guilty and sentenced to death.
What happened to Alice Nutter?
After James Device and Anne Redferne had been tried and found guilty, the gaoler brought Alice Nutter into court. Alice Nutter was not like the other prisoners. She was from a well-respected family, and so the judges wanted more evidence to convict.
Jennet was again brought into testify. She said that Alice Nutter had been at the Good Friday lunch and that she knew Alice was a witch. The judge wanted to make sure that Jennet was telling the truth, so he asked her to pick out Alice Nutter from all the female prisoners. Jennet did so confidently.
The judge then asked if Jennet had seen Joanna Style at Malkin Tower on Good Friday. Joanna Style was a made-up person, designed to catch Jennet out. Jennet told him that she’d never heard of Joanna Style.
Alice Nutter was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging.
Further testimony
Judge Bromley tried again to catch Jennet out. When he was trying Katherine Hewitt, he asked Jennet if she knew Joanna Downe (another made up person). She again said she didn’t know that person. Jennet’s testimony was unshakeable.
The last of the Devices to be tried was Alizon, and her trial was merely a formality. It seems like Alizon had accepted her fate because she confessed immediately to laming John Law using witchcraft. She said that her grandmother could have reversed his illness, but she wasn’t powerful enough. She begged for Law’s and the court’s forgiveness.
James Device also testified that his sister had bewitched a child a few years before. Alizon was never indicted for this crime, so it’s unclear why James’ evidence was included. Perhaps the authorities wanted to make sure Alizon would be convicted.
The verdicts and punishments
Of the 11 witches that were brought to trial, only one, Margaret Pearson, escaped execution. She was sentenced to the pillory for four weeks and then a one-year prison sentence.
The morning after the trials ended, the 10 Pendle Witches were led out to Gallows Hill where they were hanged. It’s likely that Jennet was encouraged to attend the execution, but we don’t know whether she did or not. After this, she disappears for the record for a while.
Why are the Pendle Witch Trials so famous?
The Pendle Witch Trials become a famous, or perhaps infamous, historical story of injustice. But why did it become so famous? The reason, I believe, is two-fold.
Discovery of Witches in Lancashire
Thanks to Potts’ The Discoverie of Witches in Lancashire, we have one of the most detailed, albeit biased, accounts of a witchcraft trial in this period. And, by dedicating this account to Robert Knyvet, the man who arrested Guy Fawkes, he irretrievably linked Catholicism and witchcraft. The trial spawned countless other witch trials throughout the seventeenth century.
The testimony of a child
Allowing a child to testify in trial was unusual even for the time. But, in Daemonologie, James VI and I’s book about witch hunting, James VI and I made it clear that children could and should be called upon to testify against witches. Jennet, only 11 at the time, testified against her mother and her brother, plus several of their neighbours. It was shocking that a child so young was so instrumental in the conviction of 10 people.
Aftermath
An uneasy peace settled over Lancashire after the trials. But Pendle’s association with witchcraft was only just beginning. Stay tuned for part 2 of the Pendle Witches’ story: The Pendle Swindle.
