The Pendle Hill Witches23:08 Jan 30 2019
Times Read: 533
Eighty years before the well-known and well-documented Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts were the Pendle Hill Witch Trials in Lancashire. Twelve were accused, ten were hanged, one died in prison, and one was found not guilty. The most disturbing thing? Six of the accused witches came from the same family and were condemned by the testimony of nine-year-old Jennet Device.
Our tale begins with Granny Demdike (Elizabeth Southerns), and eighty-something cunning woman and beggar, and her family. Her daughter Elizabeth Device, and her grandchildren James, Alison, and Jennet Device (recognize that name?). They were beggars living in one house on Pendle Hill. Innocuous enough, until 21 March, 1612, when Alison tried to beg pins off a traveling peddler, John Law. He refused, allegedly because pins were quite expensive and also known to be used in various spells, and they parted ways.
Here’s where the “witchcraft” comes in. According to Alison, as she walked away from Law, she cursed him under her breath. The man immediately fell to the earth, unconscious, and had to be carried off. Alison assumed that she had killed him and was terrified and convinced of her guilt. Law, upon waking, claimed that when he refused Alison, a large black dog had come from the woods and asked the girl what harm it should do to the man. She cried out, “Lame him!” Law felt extreme burning pain along the entire left side of his body before collapsing. With a more modern understanding of the human body, we can conclude that Law simply, though quite coincidentally, had a stroke on the road. But with Alison’s belief that she had somehow caused his ailment, and his account of a demonic familiar, the foundation for a panic was set.
Alison, James, and their mother were ordered to appear in court following this incident, on 30 March, 1612. Alison confessed to having sold her soul to the Devil. James claimed that Alison had bewitched a local child. When asked about Anne Whittle (Chattox), a neighboring cunning woman and rival of their grandmother - a relative of whom had robbed Demdike’s home years prior - Alison claimed that her father’s illness and subsequent death had been a result of his failure to pay Chattox a protection fee of 8 pounds of oatmeal. Alison accused Chattox of having murdered four other men.
Seven others, including Chattox’s daughter Anne Redferne, Jane Bullock and her son John, Alice Nutter, Katherine Hewitt, Alice Grey, and Jennet Preston, were accused after Jennet Device gave testimony in court of a meeting in her home, Malkin Tower, on Good Friday. She claimed that the witches had gathered and recited prayers and rituals to the devil, which the child quoted word-for-word. Other alleged crimes committed by the Pendle Hill Witches include cannibalism (a mockery of the Holy Eurcharist), murder, summoning demons, causing sickness, and turning beer sour. Alice Grey was the only accused witch to be found not-guilty and released.
It should be noted that the law at the time forbade a child from giving testimony in court, but an exception had been stipulated in King James’ Daemonologie, in the case of witchcraft trials. Jennet Device, after being responsible for the execution of her entire family, would later be accused and tried for witchcraft, twenty years later.
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