A more melancholy tale does not occur in the annals of necromancy
than that of the Lancashire witches in 1612. The scene of this story
is in Pendlebury Forest, four or five miles from Manchester,
remarkable for its picturesque and gloomy situation. Such places were
not sought then as now, that they might afford food for the
imagination, and gratify the refined taste of the traveller. They
were rather shunned as infamous for scenes of depredation and murder,
or as the consecrated haunts of diabolical intercourse. Pendlebury
had been long of ill repute on this latter account, when a country
magistrate, Roger Nowel by name, conceived about this time that he
should do a public service, by rooting out a nest of witches, who
rendered the place a terror to all the neighbouring vulgar. The first
persons he seized on were Elizabeth Demdike and Ann Chattox, the
former of whom was eighty years of age, and had for some years been
blind, who subsisted principally by begging, though she had a
miserable hovel on the spot, which she called her own. Ann Chattox
was of the same age, and had for some time been threatened with the
calamity of blindness. Demdike was held to be so hardened a witch,
that she had trained all her family to the mystery; namely, Elizabeth
Device, her daughter, and James and Alison Device, her grandchildren.
In the accusation of Chattox was also involved Ann Redferne, her
daughter. These, together with John Bulcock, and Jane his mother,
Alice Nutter, Catherine Hewit, and Isabel Roby, were successively
apprehended by the diligence of Nowel and one or two neighbouring
magistrates, and were all of them by some means induced, some to make
a more liberal, and others a more restricted confession of their
misdeeds in witchcraft, and were afterwards hurried away to Lancaster
Castle, fifty miles off, to prison. Their crimes were said to have
universally proceeded from malignity and resentment; and it was
reported to have repeatedly happened for poor old Demdike to be led
by night from her habitation into the open air by some member of her
family, when she was left alone for an hour to curse her victim, and
pursue her unholy incantations, and was then sought, and brought again
to her hovel. Her curses never failed to produce the desired effect.
These poor wretches had been but a short time in prison, when
information was given, that a meeting of witches was held on Good
Friday, at Malkin's Tower, the habitation of Elizabeth Device, to
the number of twenty persons, to consult how by infernal machinations
to kill one Covel, an officer, to blow up Lancaster Castle, and
deliver the prisoners, and to kill another man of the name of Lister.
The last was effected. The other plans by some means, we are not told
how, were prevented.
The prisoners were kept in jail till the summer assizes; and in the
mean time it fortunately happened that the poor blind Demdike died
in confinement, and was never brought up to trial.
The other prisoners were severally indicted for killing by witchcraft
certain persons who were named, and were all found guilty. The
principal witnesses against Elizabeth Device were James Device and
Jennet Device, her grandchildren, the latter only nine years of age.
When this girl was put into the witness-box, the grandmother, on
seeing her, set up so dreadful a yell, intermixed with bitter curses,
that the child declared that she could not go on with her evidence,
unless the prisoner was removed. This was agreed to; and both brother
and sister swore, that they had been present, when the devil came
to their grandmother in the shape of a black dog, and asked her what
she desired. She said, the death of John Robinson; when the dog told
her to make an image of Robinson in clay, and after crumble it into
dust, and as fast as the image perished, the life of the victim should
waste away, and in conclusion the man should die. This evidence was
received; and upon such testimony, and testimony like this, ten
persons were led to the gallows, on the twentieth of August, Ann
Chattox of eighty years of age among the rest, the day after the
trials, which lasted two days, were finished. The judges who presided
on these trials were sir James Altham and sir Edward Bromley, barons
of the exchequer. [217]
From the whole of this story it is fair to infer, that these old women
had played at the game of commerce with the devil. It had flattered
their vanity, to make their simpler neighbours afraid of them. To
observe the symptoms of their rustic terror, even of their hatred
and detestation, had been gratifying to them. They played the game
so long, that in an imperfect degree they deceived themselves. Human
passions are always to a certain degree infectious. Perceiving the
hatred of their neighbours, they began to think that they were worthy
objects of detestation and terror, that their imprecations had a real
effect, and their curses killed. The brown horrors of the forest were
favourable to visions; and they sometimes almost believed, that they
met the foe of mankind in the night.--But, when Elizabeth Device
actually saw her grandchild of nine years old placed in the
witness-box, with the intention of consigning her to a public and
an ignominious end, then the reveries of the imagination vanished,
and she deeply felt the reality, that, where she had been somewhat
imposing on the child in devilish sport, she had been whetting the
dagger that was to take her own life, and digging her own grave. It
was then no wonder that she uttered a preternatural yell, and poured
curses from the bottom of her heart. It must have been almost beyond
human endurance, to hear the cry of her despair, and to witness the
curses and the agony in which it vented itself.
Twenty-two years elapsed after this scene, when a wretched man, of
the name of Edmund Robinson, conceived on the same spot the scheme
of making himself a profitable speculation from a similar source.
He trained his son, eleven years of age, and furnished him with the
necessary instructions. He taught him to say that one day in the
fields he had met with two dogs, which he urged on to hunt a hare.
They would not budge; and he in revenge tied them to a bush and
whipped them; when suddenly one of them was transformed into an old
woman and the other into a child, a witch and her imp. This story
succeeded so well, that the father soon after gave out that his son
had an eye that could distinguish a witch by sight, and took him round
to the neighbouring churches, where he placed him standing on a bench
after service, and bade him look round and see what he could observe.
The device, however clumsy, succeeded, and no less than seventeen
persons were apprehended at the boy's selection, and conducted to
Lancaster Castle. These seventeen persons were tried at the assizes,
and found guilty; but the judge, whose name has unfortunately been
lost, unlike sir James Altham and sir Edward Bromley, saw something
in the case that excited his suspicion, and, though the juries had
not hesitated in any one instance, respited the convicts, and sent
up a report of the affair to the government. Twenty-two years on this
occasion had not elapsed in vain. Four of the prisoners were by the
judge's recommendation sent for to the metropolis, and were examined
first by the king's physicians, and then by Charles the First in
person. The boy's story was strictly scrutinised. In fine he confessed
that it was all an imposture; and the whole seventeen received the
royal pardon. [218]