PAST CRIMESOne of the accused witches, a woman known as Demdike, had long had the
reputation of being a local healer or‘cunning woman’; her granddaughter
Alizon Device one day met a pedlar, John Law, and tried to buy some pins
from him. He refused–perhaps because he mistrusted her or because he was
unwilling to stop and unpack for such a small sale. As he walked away he fell,
possibly having suffered a stroke, but got back to his feet and managed to
reach a local alehouse. Some days later, Law laid accusations of witchcraft
against Alizon, who with her mother and brother was summonsed to appear
before the Justice of the Peace. Under pressure, Alizon confessed to having
sold her soul to the devil and caused John Law to go lame.
Her mother Elizabeth only admitted that her own mother, Demdike, had a
mark on her body that could have been left by the devil. Alizon then named
Anne Whittle, known as Chattox, from another local family reputed to dabble
in witchcraft. She accused Chattox of murdering four men and her own father,
John Device, and claimed that the Chattox family had demanded protection
payments from the Devices in return for not harming them with witchcraft. By
the time they were arrested, both old women–Demdike and Chattox–were
over eighty years old and blind, and both confessed to being in league with the
devil. They further accused others, including Chattox’s daughter Anne.
A meeting of friends and supporters of the Demdike family was held at
their home, Malkin Tower–suspicious of this, the magistrates ordered the
arrest of a further eight people who had been present and charged them
with witchcraft. A trial was held at Lancaster Assizes, hearing testimony
and evidence from a number of witnesses, including the nineyearold sister
of Alizon, Jennet Device, who testified against her sister, brother and
mother, telling the court that her mother and her brother spoke to familiars
in the form of dogs. She also claimed that several of the other accused had
been present at the Malkin Tower meeting, despite their denials. Nine of the
accused were found guilty at Lancaster, and one at York Assizes. All were
hanged except for one who died during the trial, and one who was
acquitted.
An account of the trial was published by Thomas Potts, the Assize Court
clerk in 1613. Recently, engineers working near Pendle Hill discovered the
ruins of a seventeenthcentury cottage apparently buried under an earth
mound. Inside the building was a sealed room with the skeleton of a cat
bricked into the wall. Despite the presence of a Victorian kitchen range and
pottery, it has been speculated that the building might originally have been the
notorious Malkin Tower. This is unlikely to be the case, however, as this
building is not old enough to be the house that Demdike’s family had lived in