Got a cat? Then you MUST be a witch

HISTORY THE LANCASHIRE WITCHES: A CHRONICLE OF SORCERY AND DEATH ON PENDLE HILL by Philip C. Almond (I.B. Tauris £19.99 £12.99) %

ALmoST exactly 400 years ago, on Thursday August 20, 1612, ten people — eight women and two men — were hanged at Gallows Hill, on bleak moorland just outside Lancaster.

Though their crimes ranged from theft to murder, what they all had in common was being found guilty of using witchcraft to commit them.

Their arraignment in the Lancaster assizes remains England’s most notorious witch-trial and today provides a thriving tourist attraction in the villages around Pendle Hill.

The trial was recorded in detail by the clerk of the court, Thomas Potts, in his Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches, first published in 1613.

According to Potts, the seeds of suspicion that the area was teeming with witches were sown when a woman called Alizon Device stopped pedlar John Law as he passed her on the road to ask for some pins. it was clear to him she had no intention of paying, so he refused.

Alizon grew very angry, and shortly afterwards John had a seizure and fell down. He managed to drag himself to the nearest alehouse, where he lay in great pain and unable to move. He was further terrified, he testified, by the arrival of a great black dog and then of Alizon herself.

To modern ears, it sounds as though he’d had a stroke, but to John and his relatives it looked like witchcraft. And as Alizon was known to come from a ‘cunning’ family — both her mother and grandmother used herbal and magical medicine to heal the sick, find buried treasure, tell fortunes, induce love or exact revenge — it stood to reason that she had bewitched him.

With alarming speed the Lancashire witch-hunt was launched, led by the 62-year-old magistrate Roger nowell, a staunch Protestant eager to find the works of Satan in the Catholic-ridden villages around Pendle Hill. Accusations and counter- accusations spread throughout the small community, often inflamed by the testimony of family members.

Alizon’s own nine-year- old sister, Jennet, alleged that their mother, Elizabeth, controlled ‘a thing’, in the shape of a brown dog called Ball, and that Ball had murdered two men at Elizabeth’s bidding.

Elizabeth was also accused of making a clay ‘ picture’ of another man who had spread rumours that she’d had an illegitimate child, and of crumbling the picture away until he died, too.

At the heart of all the trouble was Elizabeth’s mother, the widow Demdike, considered ‘a sink of villainy and mischief’, who lived at malkin Tower in the forest of Pendle.

She, so it was said, had bewitched a cow to death. She was rumoured to have become a witch after meeting ‘a Spirit or Devil in the shape of a Boy’ who had promised her whatever she wanted in return for her soul.

Demdike’s rival in witchcraft was another old crone, Anne Whittle, whose appearance fitted the stereotype of a witch perfectly. ‘A very old withered, spent and decrepit creature’ who mumbled to herself, she was alleged to have dug the scalps of corpses out of their graves and used their teeth in black magical rites.

( Jennet’s grandmother, mother, sister and brother were all executed but there is no record of what happened to the little girl afterwards.)

Another local woman was accused by her granddaughter of having thrust a nail into the navel of a small child in order to suck out its blood. The granddaughter also claimed that several of the local women used to fly across the River Ribble on broomsticks to take part in Witches’ Sabbaths. Simply being acquainted with anyone who was accused was enough to be placed under suspicion, and a lack of evidence was no bar to conviction. on the contrary, the very fact that witchcraft could be invisible made it all the harder to disprove.

MAnY of the socalled witches were claimed to have ‘familiars’ or spirits who would appear to do their bidding, often in the shape of animals with pet-names like ‘Tibb’, ‘Fancie’ and ‘Dandie’.

So what are we, in 21st- century Britain, to make of this infamous trial?

it is, in part, a tale of close-knit village life with all its jealousies, hatreds and runs of bad luck such as spoiled crops, accidents or illnesses. Who better to blame than one’s ‘neighbours from hell’? A witch-trial presented the perfect opportunity to denounce them.

But why did so many of the witches confess? Almond suggests that some simply may not have realised the implications of what they were confessing — to admit to being visited by a strange animal, for instance, was tantamount to admitting a pact with the Devil.

Torture was not used in witchcraft trials, but promises ( mostly empty) of lighter sentences for confessing or incriminating others may have been given.

Ultimately, however, in these dark times, it was because both accusers and the accused really believed they were ‘witches’ — and that the most likely explanation for a man suddenly falling ill, like John Law, or for a baby dying, was that a witch had been offended and was taking her revenge.