September 27, 2025 • 28 mins
(Host: Kristin)
In 1612, nine-year-old Jennet Devize accused her mother in court of witchcraft. Her testimony led to the conviction of 11 people, 10 of whom were sent to the gallows. Find out about the most famous witchcraft event in English history that you may never have heard about in this episode of Footnoting History!
For further reading suggestions and more, please visit: https://www.footnotinghistory.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
What made nine-year-old Jennet Devize accuse her mother and siblings of witchcraft in 17th-century
England? Find out about the Pendle Witch trials of 1612 on this episode of Footnoting History!
(00:23):
Hello, Footnoting History friends, it’s Kristin, back to kick off Spooky Season
with a bit of witchcraft history from early modern Europe. Although, I’m gonna be honest,
it’s always Spooky Season if you’re like me, so if you’re listening to this on release day or not,
doesn’t matter. Welcome to the witch show, and in this episode, we’re going to be focusing on one
(00:45):
of the more curious cases – I think – to come out of England during the height of the witch craze,
and for England, its biggest witch incident. I’m certainly not alone, historians love this
one – and people at the time loved it too. Or were fascinated by it. Or were scared to death of it.
Or all of the above. Don’t forget that if you’d like a captioned version of this episode you can
(01:10):
find it on our YouTube channel or on our website – and if you can’t get enough of the Pendle witches
(and who really can?), you can find a bibliography of Further Reading at Footnotinghistory.com
I’m going to slightly change up the order of how I usually do things by
telling you the story of the Pendle witches and then tell you about the source material,
(01:33):
the “how we know what we know” segment that Kristin is so fond of. As are many
of you – so don’t worry, we’ll get to the sources, I promise.
The Pendle witch trials are also called the Lancashire witch trials – and as things go,
they’re pretty famous, most especially in Lancashire where the castle where the witches
(01:54):
were held still stands. The well tower where they were imprisoned still has iron rings on the walls
where accused and convicted witches were shackled and a lot of the surrounding landscape – roads
and a pub – was there 1612 when it all went down. And kind of like Salem, the town really leans into
(02:17):
its witch history and there are witchy boutiques and lots of merch and tours, some … better than
others. Just … FYI. Lancashire is a county in England, sort of in the north-western
upper third of England, a bit above Wales, a bit below Scotland – and Pendle sits inland,
on the eastern end of the county. It’s a stunning area of rolling hills and woods and rivers, and
(02:44):
take a Google Earth tour, it’s worth it just for the atmosphere of the story I’m about to tell you.
So, it all began on March 21, 1612 when young Alizon Devize came across a peddler named John
Law. Alizon’s last name is spelled variously in the sources with a CE, a ZE, and an SE but her
(03:10):
first name is always Alizon with Z. John the peddler was selling pins, Alizon demanded he
give her one – it’s unclear if she wanted to pay for it or not – and John refused for one reason
or another. And Alizon cursed him. Immediately, John fell down in a fit that was later described
(03:31):
as caused by Alizon’s witchcraft and John (who survived the attack) pressed charges with the
local Justice of the Peace, a man named Roger Nowell. And thus began the legal proceedings.
The first people questioned were Alizon and her mother, Elizabeth, and her brother,
James. John Law’s son, Abraham, was also questioned. In the arraignment,
(03:55):
Abraham is described as assisting his father, who could not stand on his own,
in court. Abraham said he got a letter from his father, who was paralyzed on his left side (all
but his eye) and who couldn’t speak. Abraham came and his father recovered enough to tell
him that Alizon had pricked him with knives, elsons (elson is a word for an awl – which
(04:17):
is a little stabby tool for making holes in leather), and she pricked him with sickles,
and you know what a sickle is if you’ve ever seen a drawing of the Grim Reaper, it’s that thing he’s
carrying. At least I hope you’ve only seen a picture of him. And it just went from there.
As these things so often went, interrogations led to more people being named and being caught up in
(04:39):
the drama and this case was no different. Notably, Alizon’s grandmother, also named Elizabeth but
who was known around town as “Old Demdike,” was questioned, as was their neighbor Anne Whittle,
who was also known as “Chattox.” I know you’re wondering what those nicknames mean. I did too.
“Demdike” means “Demon-Woman” soooooooo. Yeah, this goes to show you that Grandma
(05:03):
had a pretty witchy reputation already. That is usually the case with these trials: people have
an established reputation, sometimes going back years, and when you see them in court, it’s not
their first rodeo. The nickname “Chattox” is a little more unclear – it could be another word
for “mumbler” or “chatterer” because this lady was known for muttering to herself a lot or it could
(05:28):
be a variation of the last name “Chadwick” but she is described as always walking around talking
to herself, so, if I had to guess, I’d guess that one, but I really don’t know for certain.
Turns out that Chattox was in a family feud with the Devizes, which is, again, kind of how these
things often go. Alizon confessed to being a witch, she then accused her neighbors, who then
(05:54):
turned the finger back to Demdike. There ended up being a lot of confessions which the sources label
as “voluntarie” but how voluntary they really were, I have my doubts. Alizon, Demdike, Chattox,
and Chattox’s daughter, Anne, were arrested and sent to await trial in Lancaster Castle. The
(06:15):
trial would happen at the next meeting of the Assizes, which were periodic legal proceedings
that happened in the counties of England, and the next one was scheduled for August of 1612. The
arrests were April 4. So, they had months to wait. They were not wealthy people and they could not
afford to pay to improve their confinement or get better food, so their stay was not a pleasant one.
(06:40):
According to the sources, a few days later, on April 10, Elizabeth Devize – Alizon’s mother and
Demdike’s daughter – made the interesting decision to host a party, on Good Friday,
in the family home which was called Malkin Tower. Malkin Tower seems to no longer exist, I looked.
In some of the source material, it’s described as being in the Pendle Forest – that’s all we
(07:02):
really know but that sounds pretty on-brand for a witch meet up spot to me, and it seems it sounded
that way to people at the time too. Maybe it was a party, maybe it was just a gathering to debrief
on the arrests, but it didn’t look good, and the rumor was the witches were plotting to blow up the
tower at the castle where their colleagues were being held with gunpowder (and it’s 1612, it isn’t
(07:27):
so very far away from the more famous Guy Fawkes’ Gunpowder Plot to blow up the parliament in 1605,
that may be why gunpowder was one the mind). Personally, I wonder why Elizabeth would want to
help Chattox and her daughter, but that reasoning is not explained. People first heard about this
Malkin meeting at the further questioning of Elizabeth and then her other two children, Jennet
(07:51):
and James, and they all talked about the Malkin meeting and more names were added and the witch
circle widened and even more people were arrested. This was turning into a major witchcraft panic,
more justices of the peace became involved and the accusations were flying – and some of them were
about things that had happened years earlier. And though Lancaster tends to get top billing, there
(08:15):
were people in Salmesbury and arguably one woman in York who were part of this witchcraft episode.
The trials happened on August 18 and 19, 1612 at the Lancaster Assizes, as promised. The guys in
charge, the judges, were Sir Edward Bromley and Sir James Altham. Bromley was about 50 years old,
(08:38):
and he was very active in the Elizabethan/Jacobean legal scene, he worked at the Inns of Court,
he also worked at the Exchequer, and he had a few stints as an MP in Parliament. Altham was about 10
years older and had a similar CV. In July of 1612, they were sitting at the Assizes of York – these
towns are not very close to one another bt it’s England, so nothing is that far away,
(09:03):
and also that’s how assize courts worked, the judges were itinerant and moved around. In
those York sessions, Bromley and Altham oversaw the trial of a woman named Jennet Preston for
witchcraft; so when they got to Lancaster a few weeks later, they were ready to go.
On August 18, Elizabeth, her son James, Chattox and Chattox’s daughter, Anne, were tried. Where
(09:28):
was Demdike, you ask? Demdike died in prison which was something that often happened, especially to
the poor, who could not afford to pay for any sort of quality confinement. She was also pretty old,
so that, unfortunately, is not that surprising to witchcraft historians that she died in gaol.
Everyone but Anne was found guilty, but Anne, was tried again on the next day. (There’s no
(09:51):
“no double jeopardy” here, people can be re-tried after being found not guilty and then subsequently
found guilty, and it happens – it’s shocking especially for Americans to hear but that’s
part of why that the Fifth Amendment was a big deal.) On August 19, Anne, Alizon and several
other people caught up in the panic were all tried and found guilty. There were 11 people in total,
(10:13):
and 10 of them were executed. One woman named Margaret Pearson was convicted of non-capital
witchcraft (meaning, she didn’t kill anyone with her witchy-ness) and she was sentenced to being
pilloried for 4 consecutive market days in 4 nearby towns (where she also had to make a full
confession of her crimes) and to be imprisoned for a year. I could not tell you if she made
(10:34):
it through all that, but it would surprise me if she had. Sounds like a year of hell to me.
The thing that is so exceptional about these trials – apart from the scope and the many
tragic outcomes – is that some of the evidence that clinched the case was provided by a child:
Jennet Devize, who was only about 9 years old at the time. According to a contemporary
(10:59):
description of the trial written by a clerk of the court, James Potts – and hang tight,
we’ll come back to him in more detail soon – according to Potts,
during her examination by Nowel, the justice of the peace, Elizabeth Devize – that “barbarous
and inhumane monster” – wouldn’t confess a thing (despite Nowel’s “very circumspect and
(11:20):
exceeding carefull dealing” with her). That is “until it pleased G-d to raise up a young maid,
Jennet Devise, her own daughter … (a witness unexpected) to discover all their practices,
meetings, consultations, murders, charms and villanies.” That, combined with her other
daughter Alizon’s testimony and her son James’ testimony against her did Elizabeth in and she
(11:44):
starting singing. I kind of suspect that Jennet didn’t come forward on her own but whether that
was divine intervention or if divine intervention had a little help from the JP, or if Jennet had
a really bad relationship with her family, who can really say what made her come forward? So,
to answer the question posed at the outset of the episode – what made Jennet Devize testify against
(12:07):
her own mother? My good little historians, you already know the answer to that is we just don’t
know for sure because Jennet never tells us but we need to consider all the possibilities.
The whole thing sounds just really traumatic. Jennet was brought into the courtroom and was
told to give her evidence, against her mother, who stood at the bar. Elizabeth started crying
(12:29):
and shouting – and “outrageously cursing” – and Jennet started crying and she told
the judges that she couldn’t speak in the presence of her mother. All of this sounds
perfectly reasonable – if not super messed up – to me. Like of course that’s what would happen.
The description of the trial also found it necessary to add in the very next paragraph
(12:51):
that Elizabeth’s left eye sat lower than her right, and that one eye looked up and the
other looked down. Potts calls her an “odious witch … strangely deformed” and is all like,
no one had ever seen anything like it. And no one could calm her down and get her to stop
shouting and threatening Jennet and so they had to take her out of the courtroom. After
(13:14):
which they stood Jennet up on a table and had her tell them what she knew.
And she talks about how her witchy mom had a demon visit her in the form of a brown dog
named Ball – and Ball wanted mom to help him kill a man named John Robinson of Barley – and her mom
did it. A few years later, Jennet said Elizabeth called for Ball and asked him to help her kill
(13:41):
James, John Robinson’s brother, and another time, a guy named Mitton of Rough-Lee. And Ball,
according to Jennet, was like, I gotcha. And both these guys died 3 weeks after her mom put in the
request. Jennet also talked about that Good Friday party at Malkin Tower – which happened at midnight
and during which the witches feasted on beef, bacon, and mutton – and how her mother taught
(14:05):
her two prayers, one to cure the bewitched and one to get a drink. For purely informational purposes,
I’d like to know what those prayers were but we do not get details on them.
Jennet also testified against James. James, it seems, had a black demon dog named Dandy who
did his dirty work. And again, it was because of “the wonderful work of G-d to raise up a
(14:27):
young infant” to provide the evidence that helped lead to a conviction and execution.
It was not normal for a child to provide evidence in pre-modern English courts – or courts outside
of England, for that matter. It was highly unusual – kids weren’t thought to give the most accurate
information, especially little girls. But this is at a juncture in witchcraft history where
(14:50):
extraordinary crimes called for extraordinary measures – and this devilish conspiracy that
stretched far and went back years – was just that kind of situation for these Lancaster trials.
And here, friends, is where we talk about the source material for the trials – that book
published by James Potts, an associate clerk of the Northern Circuit, who witnessed the Lancaster
(15:13):
trials and who claimed he was asked to write about them by the judges. That book is “The
Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster,” written in November of 1612 and
published in 1613. Because this book was written by an eyewitness, relatively close in time to the
events it describes, and because it contains a lot of official court records – what happened in
(15:36):
August but also depositions and confessions taken earlier – people treated it as a faithful account
of what happened here. And it is and it isn’t. Historian Marion Gibson talks about Potts’ “dusty
memory” and explains how his account isn’t really that straightforward. Potts used formulaic legal
(15:57):
documents to tell us what happened here but those aren’t giving you what people actually said, they
aren’t word-for-word, you miss a lot of details, and he also adds in his own editorializing
comments – like the thing about Elizabeth’s eyes and calling people monsters and saying G-d was
involved – and sometimes the order of how things appear in his book wasn’t the order they happened
(16:20):
in and the documents that are reproduced aren’t necessarily how they were originally, which again,
was an editorial choice. It was meant to make you think about these trials in a certain way.
When the assize judges came into town, they got a list of people being held for trial and
the indictments. What Potts gives you – with an official heading and dates,
(16:42):
looks like a gaol delivery record, sorta, but he’s only talking about these witches and not
everyone else awaiting trial, so you just get an edited version that maybe was what
the judges got in August of 1612 or maybe was an approximation from memory. He does deliberately
leave some things out. If this were a trial like other trials, convicted prisoners were allowed
(17:05):
to make a statement before sentencing, to raise any special mitigating circumstances that might
grant them mercy. Potts leaves this out – maybe it didn’t happen in this case but if it didn’t,
it would be unusual, and you’d think Potts would explain its glaring absence. Potts was
an expert – so he is a very attractive source in many ways: he’d been around in the system awhile,
(17:28):
he was involved in the drafting of those formulaic legal documents, he knew his way around the
process, he’s not just some schmo sitting in the back or hearing about it from Kevin down
at the pub. He likes to say things like “upon the record” a lot and throw in Latin phrases, just so
you don’t forget that he’s A Professional – and Gibson argues that his publisher and printer maybe
(17:53):
encouraged that but at the very least, probably really liked that. Discoverie was supposed to be
a step up from the more common pamphlets that were printed about witch trials in the 17th century.
There is also the consideration that Potts had an agenda in the way he crafted Discoverie,
and it wasn’t all about sales. It was about getting King James on board with the idea
(18:17):
that there was an extensive satanic conspiracy at work within England. So,
King James is pretty well known for being an enthusiastic persecutor of witches,
especially in Scotland where he was known as James VI. He wrote a whole book about it – Daemonologie,
which was first printed in 1597 and it was reprinted in London in 1603. Very famously,
(18:40):
King James thought witches tried to sabotage his wedding to Anne of Denmark in 1589,
and he personally attended the North Berwick witch trials in Scotland shortly after in 1590. There is
a lot of Continental witchcraft theory in his Daemonologie book, and Continental witchcraft
theory is all about the satanic pacts and conspiracies. So, most people do tend to
(19:05):
assume that James didn’t need further buttering up to get him on board with witch trials in England,
but (19:10):
England was not Scotland and it was not Denmark, and people did tend to be a little
bit more skeptical of witchcraft charges in England. And there is an idea that James maybe
had a period of skepticism around the turn of the 17th century regarding witch stuff, and James felt
that he personally uncovered fraud in several witchcraft cases. In the Lancaster case, people
(19:34):
were convicted and executed based on the testimony of a little girl, and there was a lot of unease
about that, and 5 people who were caught up in the larger, surrounding panic were later reprieved.
James opened an investigation into the “fraud” and there were general grumblings about how judges
were handling witchcraft cases, in Pendle and elsewhere. Stephen Pumfrey writes that this is
(19:56):
speculative and we can’t know one way or the other how skeptical James was overall about witchcraft
at this time, and I do tend to agree with that. Moreover, the judges, Altham and Bromley,
thought that Lancastershire was a backward place filled with residual, superstitious-y activity
that was thanks to Catholicism, and that hanging “a coven of witches accused of making diabolic
(20:20):
compact was a risky career move.” The phrasing makes me chuckle but the point is totally serious.
[Another possibility to cut?] So, essentially Altham and Bromley maybe commissioned Discoverie
as a kind of public damage control – and maybe the story of the Pendle witches in this book are
how they Pendle witches really were, or the book makes the Pendle witches conform to James’ vision
(20:41):
of witchcraft from that Daemonologie book – Continental European beliefs on how witches
worked (20:47):
servants of Satan, Satanic worship and pacts, diabolical Sabbath gatherings, “Malleus
Maleficarum” witchcraft treatise 101 stuff, the more “learned theories of witchcraft.” England
had a different judicial system that required someone to bring an accusation or a charge against
someone (unlike inquisitorial procedure in most of Continental Europe where judges could just do it),
(21:10):
and you also had to convince a jury in England, so witchcraft charges tend to follow more popular,
folkloric ideas of what witches did, rather than the top-down theories about Devil worship
and apostacy and heresy. Discoverie is the first introduction of Continental ideas into England
and it models itself off of Daemonologie, and Pumfrey gives you a bunch of similarities of
(21:34):
what the Pendles witches “did” according to those judges and what James writes about.
Most interesting to me is that King James talks about how essentially extraordinary crimes require
extraordinary measures – witchcraft is often talked about as a “crimen exceptum” in the sources
and it’s kind of an “all bets are off, fight dirty because every soul is in danger” sort of idea. So
(21:59):
yeah, you can have a child testify in court, you can have a girl testify in court, that’s fine.
Before this, courts in England said you had to be 14 or older to swear the proper oath in court
(14 was the age of reason) but Jennet’s testimony changed that in cases of accused witchcraft. When
you see child witches and child accusers, it’s mostly in the 17th century when the accusations
(22:22):
had peaked – and they probably also factored into the decline of witchcraft accusations,
too. People were really uncomfortable with this, and it struck them as particularly messed up.
What was it about the English counties of Lancashire and Yorkshire that made for such
fertile ground for a witchcraft outbreak in 1612? It’s kind of hard to say why any
(22:45):
of these things happened because it’s usually a mix of a lot of factors that
sometimes take off and sometimes fizzle out. In this case, historians often look
first to Lancaster and the trial of Jennet Preseton, who I mentioned a bit earlier.
Her story is told in an appendix to Potts’ Discoverie, kind of as an afterthought to
the whole Chattox-Demdike-Devize story. In this section with Jennet Preston’s story,
(23:09):
Potts says that he’s writing in response to Jennet’s supporters – her husband, her family,
and her friends – who were outraged at how she was treated at her first trial, and Potts is
like “I’m going to explain why Jennet is actually guilty and actually a witch” And he does explain.
It’s a pretty convoluted story of witchcraft and murder and interesting relationships, but in that
(23:30):
first trial, Preston was acquitted. After the acquittal, she allegedly went to Malkin Tower
on that Good Friday and that’s her connection to the Pendle witches and it’s James Devize who tells
the authorities about it. And this time Preston is not so lucky about getting off. Roger Nowell,
knew the family that was allegedly affected by Preston’s witchcraft and he’s the magistrate
(23:51):
who questioned Alizon and Demdike and Chattox and Elizabeth and James and then little Jennet.
Other historians have theories about what happened in Pendle that revolve around the social and
economic pressures of the area in the early 1600s. Pendle’s economy was dependent on cattle and cloth
and those were seeing a hit at this time and a lot of accusations had to do with misfortunes
(24:12):
that befell cows and milk production – and the witches are described as goring on these things.
There were also a lot of religious tensions in the area of Pendle – and historians often point out
the tendency for witchcraft accusations to erupt when Catholics and Protestants clashed. Pendle was
in Whalley Parish and it used to have an important and large abbey before Henry VIII got to it – and
(24:38):
when it was gone, there was a hit to the local economy that Pendle still hadn’t recovered from
in 1612. Whalley Abbey had a residual influence over the local populations and Catholic sentiments
were still present in the early 17th century but there were also a lot of Protestant reformers
trying to stamp them out and that created a lot of unease and social tension. Roger Nowell was one of
(25:03):
these reforming Protestants who really wanted to destroy any vestiges of Catholic practice.
And there’s also the strong possibility that the Pendle witches were practicing a type of local,
folkloric magic. There were a lot of cases in the lower courts that had to do with what historians
call “low” magic, regular people engaging in charms and spells and things like that – that
(25:27):
had nothing to do with a grand demonic conspiracy or a pact with Satan – but was magical practice.
People just kind of did this – and sometimes it was prosecuted in the courts and sometimes it
wasn’t. The Pendle witches probably were doing it too – it just took on a different life once
“learned,” Continental theories about Satanic pacts and demonic worship were introduced.
(25:52):
As for Jennet, you’re probably wondering what happened to her. Again, I do and don’t have
answers for you. You don’t always get to follow the end of the thread for characters you meet
in historical sources, especially for young girls and for women. But Jennet, we do know something of
what happened to her, and unfortunately, it’s not good. Jennet fell victim to the precedent she set
(26:14):
and she was accused in 1633, along with 10 other people, of witchcraft by a 10 or 11 year old boy,
named Edmund Robinson. He claimed that a woman had taken him to a witches’ Sabbath where there
were 60 people were making meat, butter, and milk by pulling on ropes that were attached to the top
of a barn. His father suggested some people and the boy agreed – yes! those were the people! 19
(26:38):
people were convicted, one of whom was Jennet, who was about 30 years old in 1633. Doubts about the
verdicts led the justices of the peace to request an investigation by the Privy Council, the bishop
of Chester was brought in, and the boy admitted he made it all up and that his father’s suggested
names were for “envy, revenge, and the hope of gain” and that was the end of that trial. You’d
(27:02):
think that’d be a happy-ish ending for Jennet. But the last known record we have of Jennet is in 1636
– and she was still in gaol in Lancaster Castle – she couldn’t leave until she paid for her room
and board and for someone like Jennett, that was probably impossible. Pretty much nobody comes out
good in this story – unless you count the clerk and the judges and the publisher of Discoverie.
(27:25):
It was not uncommon, especially in England, for witch trials to have a life outside the courtroom.
Printers were busy making leaflets or pamphlets about the trials and they sold pretty well. But,
the Pendle story was incredibly popular, and people wrote about it a lot and fictionalized
it in print and on the stage, it was this sensational thing that had a life of its
(27:48):
own. And Potts’ Discoverie made its way over to the American colonies and it was
one of the things the acting judges in Salem were reading when they were trying to figure
out how they should deal with their own outbreak of witchcraft and child witnesses.
Thanks for staying spooky with me, Footnoting History friends. If you enjoyed the podcast,
(28:08):
please be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on social media.
Thank you to all our Patreon and Ko-Fi supporters – if you’re not part of our
Patreon, please consider helping us keep Footnoting History open access by joining,
or by making a one-time Ko-Fi donation, or by purchasing some of our merch.
And until next time, remember, the best stories are in the Footnotes.
What made nine-year-old Jennet Devize accuse her mother and siblings of witchcraft in 17th-century
England? Find out about the Pendle Witch trials of 1612 on this episode of Footnoting History!
(00:23):
Hello, Footnoting History friends, it’s Kristin, back to kick off Spooky Season
with a bit of witchcraft history from early modern Europe. Although, I’m gonna be honest,
it’s always Spooky Season if you’re like me, so if you’re listening to this on release day or not,
doesn’t matter. Welcome to the witch show, and in this episode, we’re going to be focusing on one
(00:45):
of the more curious cases – I think – to come out of England during the height of the witch craze,
and for England, its biggest witch incident. I’m certainly not alone, historians love this
one – and people at the time loved it too. Or were fascinated by it. Or were scared to death of it.
Or all of the above. Don’t forget that if you’d like a captioned version of this episode you can
(01:10):
find it on our YouTube channel or on our website – and if you can’t get enough of the Pendle witches
(and who really can?), you can find a bibliography of Further Reading at Footnotinghistory.com
I’m going to slightly change up the order of how I usually do things by
telling you the story of the Pendle witches and then tell you about the source material,
(01:33):
the “how we know what we know” segment that Kristin is so fond of. As are many
of you – so don’t worry, we’ll get to the sources, I promise.
The Pendle witch trials are also called the Lancashire witch trials – and as things go,
they’re pretty famous, most especially in Lancashire where the castle where the witches
(01:54):
were held still stands. The well tower where they were imprisoned still has iron rings on the walls
where accused and convicted witches were shackled and a lot of the surrounding landscape – roads
and a pub – was there 1612 when it all went down. And kind of like Salem, the town really leans into
(02:17):
its witch history and there are witchy boutiques and lots of merch and tours, some … better than
others. Just … FYI. Lancashire is a county in England, sort of in the north-western
upper third of England, a bit above Wales, a bit below Scotland – and Pendle sits inland,
on the eastern end of the county. It’s a stunning area of rolling hills and woods and rivers, and
(02:44):
take a Google Earth tour, it’s worth it just for the atmosphere of the story I’m about to tell you.
So, it all began on March 21, 1612 when young Alizon Devize came across a peddler named John
Law. Alizon’s last name is spelled variously in the sources with a CE, a ZE, and an SE but her
(03:10):
first name is always Alizon with Z. John the peddler was selling pins, Alizon demanded he
give her one – it’s unclear if she wanted to pay for it or not – and John refused for one reason
or another. And Alizon cursed him. Immediately, John fell down in a fit that was later described
(03:31):
as caused by Alizon’s witchcraft and John (who survived the attack) pressed charges with the
local Justice of the Peace, a man named Roger Nowell. And thus began the legal proceedings.
The first people questioned were Alizon and her mother, Elizabeth, and her brother,
James. John Law’s son, Abraham, was also questioned. In the arraignment,
(03:55):
Abraham is described as assisting his father, who could not stand on his own,
in court. Abraham said he got a letter from his father, who was paralyzed on his left side (all
but his eye) and who couldn’t speak. Abraham came and his father recovered enough to tell
him that Alizon had pricked him with knives, elsons (elson is a word for an awl – which
(04:17):
is a little stabby tool for making holes in leather), and she pricked him with sickles,
and you know what a sickle is if you’ve ever seen a drawing of the Grim Reaper, it’s that thing he’s
carrying. At least I hope you’ve only seen a picture of him. And it just went from there.
As these things so often went, interrogations led to more people being named and being caught up in
(04:39):
the drama and this case was no different. Notably, Alizon’s grandmother, also named Elizabeth but
who was known around town as “Old Demdike,” was questioned, as was their neighbor Anne Whittle,
who was also known as “Chattox.” I know you’re wondering what those nicknames mean. I did too.
“Demdike” means “Demon-Woman” soooooooo. Yeah, this goes to show you that Grandma
(05:03):
had a pretty witchy reputation already. That is usually the case with these trials: people have
an established reputation, sometimes going back years, and when you see them in court, it’s not
their first rodeo. The nickname “Chattox” is a little more unclear – it could be another word
for “mumbler” or “chatterer” because this lady was known for muttering to herself a lot or it could
(05:28):
be a variation of the last name “Chadwick” but she is described as always walking around talking
to herself, so, if I had to guess, I’d guess that one, but I really don’t know for certain.
Turns out that Chattox was in a family feud with the Devizes, which is, again, kind of how these
things often go. Alizon confessed to being a witch, she then accused her neighbors, who then
(05:54):
turned the finger back to Demdike. There ended up being a lot of confessions which the sources label
as “voluntarie” but how voluntary they really were, I have my doubts. Alizon, Demdike, Chattox,
and Chattox’s daughter, Anne, were arrested and sent to await trial in Lancaster Castle. The
(06:15):
trial would happen at the next meeting of the Assizes, which were periodic legal proceedings
that happened in the counties of England, and the next one was scheduled for August of 1612. The
arrests were April 4. So, they had months to wait. They were not wealthy people and they could not
afford to pay to improve their confinement or get better food, so their stay was not a pleasant one.
(06:40):
According to the sources, a few days later, on April 10, Elizabeth Devize – Alizon’s mother and
Demdike’s daughter – made the interesting decision to host a party, on Good Friday,
in the family home which was called Malkin Tower. Malkin Tower seems to no longer exist, I looked.
In some of the source material, it’s described as being in the Pendle Forest – that’s all we
(07:02):
really know but that sounds pretty on-brand for a witch meet up spot to me, and it seems it sounded
that way to people at the time too. Maybe it was a party, maybe it was just a gathering to debrief
on the arrests, but it didn’t look good, and the rumor was the witches were plotting to blow up the
tower at the castle where their colleagues were being held with gunpowder (and it’s 1612, it isn’t
(07:27):
so very far away from the more famous Guy Fawkes’ Gunpowder Plot to blow up the parliament in 1605,
that may be why gunpowder was one the mind). Personally, I wonder why Elizabeth would want to
help Chattox and her daughter, but that reasoning is not explained. People first heard about this
Malkin meeting at the further questioning of Elizabeth and then her other two children, Jennet
(07:51):
and James, and they all talked about the Malkin meeting and more names were added and the witch
circle widened and even more people were arrested. This was turning into a major witchcraft panic,
more justices of the peace became involved and the accusations were flying – and some of them were
about things that had happened years earlier. And though Lancaster tends to get top billing, there
(08:15):
were people in Salmesbury and arguably one woman in York who were part of this witchcraft episode.
The trials happened on August 18 and 19, 1612 at the Lancaster Assizes, as promised. The guys in
charge, the judges, were Sir Edward Bromley and Sir James Altham. Bromley was about 50 years old,
(08:38):
and he was very active in the Elizabethan/Jacobean legal scene, he worked at the Inns of Court,
he also worked at the Exchequer, and he had a few stints as an MP in Parliament. Altham was about 10
years older and had a similar CV. In July of 1612, they were sitting at the Assizes of York – these
towns are not very close to one another bt it’s England, so nothing is that far away,
(09:03):
and also that’s how assize courts worked, the judges were itinerant and moved around. In
those York sessions, Bromley and Altham oversaw the trial of a woman named Jennet Preston for
witchcraft; so when they got to Lancaster a few weeks later, they were ready to go.
On August 18, Elizabeth, her son James, Chattox and Chattox’s daughter, Anne, were tried. Where
(09:28):
was Demdike, you ask? Demdike died in prison which was something that often happened, especially to
the poor, who could not afford to pay for any sort of quality confinement. She was also pretty old,
so that, unfortunately, is not that surprising to witchcraft historians that she died in gaol.
Everyone but Anne was found guilty, but Anne, was tried again on the next day. (There’s no
(09:51):
“no double jeopardy” here, people can be re-tried after being found not guilty and then subsequently
found guilty, and it happens – it’s shocking especially for Americans to hear but that’s
part of why that the Fifth Amendment was a big deal.) On August 19, Anne, Alizon and several
other people caught up in the panic were all tried and found guilty. There were 11 people in total,
(10:13):
and 10 of them were executed. One woman named Margaret Pearson was convicted of non-capital
witchcraft (meaning, she didn’t kill anyone with her witchy-ness) and she was sentenced to being
pilloried for 4 consecutive market days in 4 nearby towns (where she also had to make a full
confession of her crimes) and to be imprisoned for a year. I could not tell you if she made
(10:34):
it through all that, but it would surprise me if she had. Sounds like a year of hell to me.
The thing that is so exceptional about these trials – apart from the scope and the many
tragic outcomes – is that some of the evidence that clinched the case was provided by a child:
Jennet Devize, who was only about 9 years old at the time. According to a contemporary
(10:59):
description of the trial written by a clerk of the court, James Potts – and hang tight,
we’ll come back to him in more detail soon – according to Potts,
during her examination by Nowel, the justice of the peace, Elizabeth Devize – that “barbarous
and inhumane monster” – wouldn’t confess a thing (despite Nowel’s “very circumspect and
(11:20):
exceeding carefull dealing” with her). That is “until it pleased G-d to raise up a young maid,
Jennet Devise, her own daughter … (a witness unexpected) to discover all their practices,
meetings, consultations, murders, charms and villanies.” That, combined with her other
daughter Alizon’s testimony and her son James’ testimony against her did Elizabeth in and she
(11:44):
starting singing. I kind of suspect that Jennet didn’t come forward on her own but whether that
was divine intervention or if divine intervention had a little help from the JP, or if Jennet had
a really bad relationship with her family, who can really say what made her come forward? So,
to answer the question posed at the outset of the episode – what made Jennet Devize testify against
(12:07):
her own mother? My good little historians, you already know the answer to that is we just don’t
know for sure because Jennet never tells us but we need to consider all the possibilities.
The whole thing sounds just really traumatic. Jennet was brought into the courtroom and was
told to give her evidence, against her mother, who stood at the bar. Elizabeth started crying
(12:29):
and shouting – and “outrageously cursing” – and Jennet started crying and she told
the judges that she couldn’t speak in the presence of her mother. All of this sounds
perfectly reasonable – if not super messed up – to me. Like of course that’s what would happen.
The description of the trial also found it necessary to add in the very next paragraph
(12:51):
that Elizabeth’s left eye sat lower than her right, and that one eye looked up and the
other looked down. Potts calls her an “odious witch … strangely deformed” and is all like,
no one had ever seen anything like it. And no one could calm her down and get her to stop
shouting and threatening Jennet and so they had to take her out of the courtroom. After
(13:14):
which they stood Jennet up on a table and had her tell them what she knew.
And she talks about how her witchy mom had a demon visit her in the form of a brown dog
named Ball – and Ball wanted mom to help him kill a man named John Robinson of Barley – and her mom
did it. A few years later, Jennet said Elizabeth called for Ball and asked him to help her kill
(13:41):
James, John Robinson’s brother, and another time, a guy named Mitton of Rough-Lee. And Ball,
according to Jennet, was like, I gotcha. And both these guys died 3 weeks after her mom put in the
request. Jennet also talked about that Good Friday party at Malkin Tower – which happened at midnight
and during which the witches feasted on beef, bacon, and mutton – and how her mother taught
(14:05):
her two prayers, one to cure the bewitched and one to get a drink. For purely informational purposes,
I’d like to know what those prayers were but we do not get details on them.
Jennet also testified against James. James, it seems, had a black demon dog named Dandy who
did his dirty work. And again, it was because of “the wonderful work of G-d to raise up a
(14:27):
young infant” to provide the evidence that helped lead to a conviction and execution.
It was not normal for a child to provide evidence in pre-modern English courts – or courts outside
of England, for that matter. It was highly unusual – kids weren’t thought to give the most accurate
information, especially little girls. But this is at a juncture in witchcraft history where
(14:50):
extraordinary crimes called for extraordinary measures – and this devilish conspiracy that
stretched far and went back years – was just that kind of situation for these Lancaster trials.
And here, friends, is where we talk about the source material for the trials – that book
published by James Potts, an associate clerk of the Northern Circuit, who witnessed the Lancaster
(15:13):
trials and who claimed he was asked to write about them by the judges. That book is “The
Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster,” written in November of 1612 and
published in 1613. Because this book was written by an eyewitness, relatively close in time to the
events it describes, and because it contains a lot of official court records – what happened in
(15:36):
August but also depositions and confessions taken earlier – people treated it as a faithful account
of what happened here. And it is and it isn’t. Historian Marion Gibson talks about Potts’ “dusty
memory” and explains how his account isn’t really that straightforward. Potts used formulaic legal
(15:57):
documents to tell us what happened here but those aren’t giving you what people actually said, they
aren’t word-for-word, you miss a lot of details, and he also adds in his own editorializing
comments – like the thing about Elizabeth’s eyes and calling people monsters and saying G-d was
involved – and sometimes the order of how things appear in his book wasn’t the order they happened
(16:20):
in and the documents that are reproduced aren’t necessarily how they were originally, which again,
was an editorial choice. It was meant to make you think about these trials in a certain way.
When the assize judges came into town, they got a list of people being held for trial and
the indictments. What Potts gives you – with an official heading and dates,
(16:42):
looks like a gaol delivery record, sorta, but he’s only talking about these witches and not
everyone else awaiting trial, so you just get an edited version that maybe was what
the judges got in August of 1612 or maybe was an approximation from memory. He does deliberately
leave some things out. If this were a trial like other trials, convicted prisoners were allowed
(17:05):
to make a statement before sentencing, to raise any special mitigating circumstances that might
grant them mercy. Potts leaves this out – maybe it didn’t happen in this case but if it didn’t,
it would be unusual, and you’d think Potts would explain its glaring absence. Potts was
an expert – so he is a very attractive source in many ways: he’d been around in the system awhile,
(17:28):
he was involved in the drafting of those formulaic legal documents, he knew his way around the
process, he’s not just some schmo sitting in the back or hearing about it from Kevin down
at the pub. He likes to say things like “upon the record” a lot and throw in Latin phrases, just so
you don’t forget that he’s A Professional – and Gibson argues that his publisher and printer maybe
(17:53):
encouraged that but at the very least, probably really liked that. Discoverie was supposed to be
a step up from the more common pamphlets that were printed about witch trials in the 17th century.
There is also the consideration that Potts had an agenda in the way he crafted Discoverie,
and it wasn’t all about sales. It was about getting King James on board with the idea
(18:17):
that there was an extensive satanic conspiracy at work within England. So,
King James is pretty well known for being an enthusiastic persecutor of witches,
especially in Scotland where he was known as James VI. He wrote a whole book about it – Daemonologie,
which was first printed in 1597 and it was reprinted in London in 1603. Very famously,
(18:40):
King James thought witches tried to sabotage his wedding to Anne of Denmark in 1589,
and he personally attended the North Berwick witch trials in Scotland shortly after in 1590. There is
a lot of Continental witchcraft theory in his Daemonologie book, and Continental witchcraft
theory is all about the satanic pacts and conspiracies. So, most people do tend to
(19:05):
assume that James didn’t need further buttering up to get him on board with witch trials in England,
but (19:10):
England was not Scotland and it was not Denmark, and people did tend to be a little
bit more skeptical of witchcraft charges in England. And there is an idea that James maybe
had a period of skepticism around the turn of the 17th century regarding witch stuff, and James felt
that he personally uncovered fraud in several witchcraft cases. In the Lancaster case, people
(19:34):
were convicted and executed based on the testimony of a little girl, and there was a lot of unease
about that, and 5 people who were caught up in the larger, surrounding panic were later reprieved.
James opened an investigation into the “fraud” and there were general grumblings about how judges
were handling witchcraft cases, in Pendle and elsewhere. Stephen Pumfrey writes that this is
(19:56):
speculative and we can’t know one way or the other how skeptical James was overall about witchcraft
at this time, and I do tend to agree with that. Moreover, the judges, Altham and Bromley,
thought that Lancastershire was a backward place filled with residual, superstitious-y activity
that was thanks to Catholicism, and that hanging “a coven of witches accused of making diabolic
(20:20):
compact was a risky career move.” The phrasing makes me chuckle but the point is totally serious.
[Another possibility to cut?] So, essentially Altham and Bromley maybe commissioned Discoverie
as a kind of public damage control – and maybe the story of the Pendle witches in this book are
how they Pendle witches really were, or the book makes the Pendle witches conform to James’ vision
(20:41):
of witchcraft from that Daemonologie book – Continental European beliefs on how witches
worked (20:47):
servants of Satan, Satanic worship and pacts, diabolical Sabbath gatherings, “Malleus
Maleficarum” witchcraft treatise 101 stuff, the more “learned theories of witchcraft.” England
had a different judicial system that required someone to bring an accusation or a charge against
someone (unlike inquisitorial procedure in most of Continental Europe where judges could just do it),
(21:10):
and you also had to convince a jury in England, so witchcraft charges tend to follow more popular,
folkloric ideas of what witches did, rather than the top-down theories about Devil worship
and apostacy and heresy. Discoverie is the first introduction of Continental ideas into England
and it models itself off of Daemonologie, and Pumfrey gives you a bunch of similarities of
(21:34):
what the Pendles witches “did” according to those judges and what James writes about.
Most interesting to me is that King James talks about how essentially extraordinary crimes require
extraordinary measures – witchcraft is often talked about as a “crimen exceptum” in the sources
and it’s kind of an “all bets are off, fight dirty because every soul is in danger” sort of idea. So
(21:59):
yeah, you can have a child testify in court, you can have a girl testify in court, that’s fine.
Before this, courts in England said you had to be 14 or older to swear the proper oath in court
(14 was the age of reason) but Jennet’s testimony changed that in cases of accused witchcraft. When
you see child witches and child accusers, it’s mostly in the 17th century when the accusations
(22:22):
had peaked – and they probably also factored into the decline of witchcraft accusations,
too. People were really uncomfortable with this, and it struck them as particularly messed up.
What was it about the English counties of Lancashire and Yorkshire that made for such
fertile ground for a witchcraft outbreak in 1612? It’s kind of hard to say why any
(22:45):
of these things happened because it’s usually a mix of a lot of factors that
sometimes take off and sometimes fizzle out. In this case, historians often look
first to Lancaster and the trial of Jennet Preseton, who I mentioned a bit earlier.
Her story is told in an appendix to Potts’ Discoverie, kind of as an afterthought to
the whole Chattox-Demdike-Devize story. In this section with Jennet Preston’s story,
(23:09):
Potts says that he’s writing in response to Jennet’s supporters – her husband, her family,
and her friends – who were outraged at how she was treated at her first trial, and Potts is
like “I’m going to explain why Jennet is actually guilty and actually a witch” And he does explain.
It’s a pretty convoluted story of witchcraft and murder and interesting relationships, but in that
(23:30):
first trial, Preston was acquitted. After the acquittal, she allegedly went to Malkin Tower
on that Good Friday and that’s her connection to the Pendle witches and it’s James Devize who tells
the authorities about it. And this time Preston is not so lucky about getting off. Roger Nowell,
knew the family that was allegedly affected by Preston’s witchcraft and he’s the magistrate
(23:51):
who questioned Alizon and Demdike and Chattox and Elizabeth and James and then little Jennet.
Other historians have theories about what happened in Pendle that revolve around the social and
economic pressures of the area in the early 1600s. Pendle’s economy was dependent on cattle and cloth
and those were seeing a hit at this time and a lot of accusations had to do with misfortunes
(24:12):
that befell cows and milk production – and the witches are described as goring on these things.
There were also a lot of religious tensions in the area of Pendle – and historians often point out
the tendency for witchcraft accusations to erupt when Catholics and Protestants clashed. Pendle was
in Whalley Parish and it used to have an important and large abbey before Henry VIII got to it – and
(24:38):
when it was gone, there was a hit to the local economy that Pendle still hadn’t recovered from
in 1612. Whalley Abbey had a residual influence over the local populations and Catholic sentiments
were still present in the early 17th century but there were also a lot of Protestant reformers
trying to stamp them out and that created a lot of unease and social tension. Roger Nowell was one of
(25:03):
these reforming Protestants who really wanted to destroy any vestiges of Catholic practice.
And there’s also the strong possibility that the Pendle witches were practicing a type of local,
folkloric magic. There were a lot of cases in the lower courts that had to do with what historians
call “low” magic, regular people engaging in charms and spells and things like that – that
(25:27):
had nothing to do with a grand demonic conspiracy or a pact with Satan – but was magical practice.
People just kind of did this – and sometimes it was prosecuted in the courts and sometimes it
wasn’t. The Pendle witches probably were doing it too – it just took on a different life once
“learned,” Continental theories about Satanic pacts and demonic worship were introduced.
(25:52):
As for Jennet, you’re probably wondering what happened to her. Again, I do and don’t have
answers for you. You don’t always get to follow the end of the thread for characters you meet
in historical sources, especially for young girls and for women. But Jennet, we do know something of
what happened to her, and unfortunately, it’s not good. Jennet fell victim to the precedent she set
(26:14):
and she was accused in 1633, along with 10 other people, of witchcraft by a 10 or 11 year old boy,
named Edmund Robinson. He claimed that a woman had taken him to a witches’ Sabbath where there
were 60 people were making meat, butter, and milk by pulling on ropes that were attached to the top
of a barn. His father suggested some people and the boy agreed – yes! those were the people! 19
(26:38):
people were convicted, one of whom was Jennet, who was about 30 years old in 1633. Doubts about the
verdicts led the justices of the peace to request an investigation by the Privy Council, the bishop
of Chester was brought in, and the boy admitted he made it all up and that his father’s suggested
names were for “envy, revenge, and the hope of gain” and that was the end of that trial. You’d
(27:02):
think that’d be a happy-ish ending for Jennet. But the last known record we have of Jennet is in 1636
– and she was still in gaol in Lancaster Castle – she couldn’t leave until she paid for her room
and board and for someone like Jennett, that was probably impossible. Pretty much nobody comes out
good in this story – unless you count the clerk and the judges and the publisher of Discoverie.
(27:25):
It was not uncommon, especially in England, for witch trials to have a life outside the courtroom.
Printers were busy making leaflets or pamphlets about the trials and they sold pretty well. But,
the Pendle story was incredibly popular, and people wrote about it a lot and fictionalized
it in print and on the stage, it was this sensational thing that had a life of its
(27:48):
own. And Potts’ Discoverie made its way over to the American colonies and it was
one of the things the acting judges in Salem were reading when they were trying to figure
out how they should deal with their own outbreak of witchcraft and child witnesses.
Thanks for staying spooky with me, Footnoting History friends. If you enjoyed the podcast,
(28:08):
please be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on social media.
Thank you to all our Patreon and Ko-Fi supporters – if you’re not part of our
Patreon, please consider helping us keep Footnoting History open access by joining,
or by making a one-time Ko-Fi donation, or by purchasing some of our merch.
And until next time, remember, the best stories are in the Footnotes.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Cardiac Cowboys
The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind? Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.