S4: E13 - The Pendle Witches: The True Crime Story Behind England’s Most Famous Witch Trial

Journey back to Lancashire in 1612 as we uncover the true story behind England’s most famous witch trial. Meet the people at the heart of the accusations, explore the fear and family betrayals that shaped their fate, and discover why the Pendle Witch Trials continue to fascinate us over 400 years later.

Because behind every accusation was a real person whose story deserves to be remembered.

🕯️ If this episode resonates with you, I invite you to light a candle for the Pendle Witches and for everyone who suffered during the witch trials. May they be remembered not for the labels placed upon them, but for the lives they lived.

✨ In this episode:

• The true story of the Pendle Witches
• What happened during the 1612 Lancashire witch trials
• The lives of Old Demdike, Old Chattox, Alison Device and Alice Nutter (and more)
• How fear, family conflict and religion fuelled the accusations
• Why the Pendle story still matters more than 400 years later

If you enjoy true crime-style witch trial stories, don’t forget to subscribe, and join me each Tuesday as we continue exploring The Witch Wound Files: Why Am I Like This?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Witchy Wii podcast. So I hope you have been having a wonderful time since I was last in your ears or on your screen. And today I want to go back to one of our true crime-style witch trial stories. And I want to start by saying that these are really, really important for me personally because I believe that every time we can tell the story of someone who was perhaps lied about in the past, who was persecuted, who was treated awfully simply for being a little bit different or standing out. I believe every time we tell their story, every time we think of them, that we send them our love, we send them our well-wishes, we are ultimately helping to heal the witch wound, which I think is just beautiful. So that's why these stories are so important to me. On top of the fact that I find them really interesting as well. I love history. And being a witch myself, obviously the witch trials really draws me in. And if you're here right now, if you've clicked on this video or on this audio, then you obviously find it fascinating as well. So let's dive in to the story. Today we're going to be talking about the Pendle Witches, the women who are behind one of England's most famous witch trial cases. So in the shadow of Pendle Hill in Lancashire, the story of the Pendle Witches began long before the courtroom of Lancaster Castle. The women who were later accused in 1612 didn't come from one single household or one single story. Some were poor, some begged to survive, some were known locally as the healers, the charmers, the cunning women. And one in particular, Alice Nutter, appears to have been a much higher social position than the other people were. Yet all of them were pulled into the same deadly web of fear, of suspicion, of poverty, of family history, of family rivalry, religious tension, and of course, our legal system that believed that witchcraft wasn't only real, which obviously we, us sitting here right now, know it to be real as well, but they believed it to be punishable by death as well. And the Pendle case is one of the best recorded witch trowel in English history, largely because Thomas Potts, who was the clerk of the Lancaster Assizes, published an account of the proceedings in 1613. However, as we learn from a lot of these cases, his account would not have been neutral. It was written to please powerful men, including those close to King James I, who had a strong personal interest in witchcraft. And this means that while the names, the accusations, the confessions, and the outcomes can be traced and will all be true, the inner lives of the women themselves are much harder to recover. What we can do though is follow the surviving records really carefully and place these women back into their human story. So before the accusations, the Pendle Witches lived around the area of Pendle Forest, and it was in the early 17th century in Lancashire, and it was a region that was described as remote, as poor, and really difficult to govern. The roads were poor, the education was really limited, and loads of people lived in scattered hamlets where old customs, folk beliefs, and unofficial healing practices had survived alongside Christianity. And at the centre of the story were two older women, Elizabeth Southens, known as Old Demdike, and Anne Whittle, known as Old Chattocks. And Elizabeth Southens, she was said to be around 80 years old by the time of the trials. She had reportedly been known as a witch for many decades, although this doesn't mean that she was a witch in what we perceive to be a witch in modern spiritual sense. So in early modern England, the word witch was often used for feared or suspected people who were believed to cause harm through supernatural means. So Demdike may also have been part of a world of folk healing, begging, charms, and local magical services where that line between helper and threat could become very dangerously thin. And Anne Whittle or Old Chatcks was also elderly and she was poor. And she was described in very hostile language by the court record as old, as withered, as nearly blind, and she and Demdike appeared to have known one another for many years, and there may have been tension between the two families. Later accounts suggest that Demdike and Chattox families may have been rivals in a harsh economy where you know their reputation, fear, local influence could all be used to help them survive. And the Device family were connected to Demdike, and Elizabeth Device was Demdike's daughter, and her children included Alison Device, James Device, and the young Janet DeVice. And the family seemed to live in poverty, and begging appears repeatedly throughout the records that we can find. And Alison DeVice, likely a younger woman or a teenager in 1612, is one of the most tragic figures in this story. So she appears to have believed, or at least confessed, that she had caused harm through witchcraft. Whether this was a genuine belief that she held, or fear or pressure, or confusion, or religious guilt, or just a survival response, is really impossible to know, especially for such a young girl. And Alice Nutter stands apart from many of the others. She was a widow from roughly and appears to have been relatively wealthy compared to all of the others who were accused. And she didn't fit the usual image of that poor, that marginalized witch that we often hear about in these stories. And her silence during the trial has made her one of the most mysterious figures in the case. So moving on to Catherine Hewitt, who was also known as Mould Hills, Jane Bullock and Janet Preston were also drawn into all of these accusations. And of their early lives, very little evidence or information survives, as we find with so many of these cases, because record keeping obviously wasn't as easily done or accessible as it is today. And I feel like with them this silence mattered because these women weren't preserved as full human beings in the record, they were preserved as just defendants. So in March 1612, there was an encounter that sparked the case. So the immediate chain of events that occurred happened in March of 1612. And this was when Alison Device met a peddler who was named John Law on the road near Colm. And Alison asked him for some pins. And pins were small but valuable objects at the time, and they were also associated with folk magic, healing, and charms. And John Law refused, or at least he didn't give her what she wanted. And soon afterwards he collapsed and apparently suffered some form of paralysis. It could have been something like a stroke. So Alison was brought to him, and according to the court record, she confessed that she had caused his illness through witchcraft. She asked for his forgiveness and he gave it. And this was the moment of the spark. What might have remained a fright and confession under disturbing illness became the beginning of a much wider investigation. And Roger Noel began questioning Alison Device. And the accusations, as they did in so many of these cases, quickly spread because women were encouraged to bring more and more and more women in, in under the understanding that it would help them in some way. And Alison ended up implicating her grandmother, who was old Demdike. And under questioning, Demdike made statements that appeared to confirm her involvement with witchcraft, and she also named other people. So you can see how when it goes from one person to another, and then they accuse other people, and then it goes to them, and then they accuse other people. You can imagine just how big this could become. Like the Demdike and the Chattox lines became all tangled together through confession, through suspicion, and through blame. And a lady named Anne Redfern, who was the daughter of Old Chattocks, was accused in connection with the death of Robert Nutter. Elizabeth Device, who was the daughter of Demdike, was accused of multiple murders by witchcraft. And James Device also became entangled within all of these accusations. So by early April, several of the accused had been committed to Lancaster Castle to await trial. And one of the most damaging and important events in the Pendle case was the alleged meeting at Malkin Tower, which was on Good Friday on the 10th of April of 1612. And Malkin Tower was the home that was associated with the Device family. And according to a later testimony, a gathering took place which involved around 20 people. And the prosecution claimed that this was a witches meeting. It was said that those present discussed freeing the prisoners from Lancaster Castle and killing the governor and committing further acts of witchcraft against everyone that they could. And modern historians are very cautious about this. It may have been a family gathering. It may have been connected to concern over the arrests. It may have been exaggerated into something that was far more sinister and frightening than it actually was. And these frightened witnesses could have very easily told this story to a court that was already prepared to believe in this witchcraft and in its spreading. However, in 1612, the alleged meeting became central to the whole prosecution case. And the young Janet Device, who was only about nine years old, would later testify that people she claimed were present at Malkin Tower. And it was her testimony that helped condemn several members of her own family. Which I think is just heartbroken. I mean, imagine being that little girl, nine years old, scared, terrified, being questioned by these men in power when she herself is a child of no power, really, and who is obviously very easily influenced. Imagine the terror that she must have felt at that moment. It's just heartbreaking. So moving on, those who were accused in Lancaster were held at Lancaster Castle until the summer. And old Demdike never reached trial because she died in prison before the court proceedings began. And this is, I feel, really significant because one of the most famous Pendle witches was never convicted by a jury. So she was accused, she was imprisoned, but she died before she could face the formal trial. So, you know, I guess I kind of think to myself, maybe she would have preferred it that way. Not the dying part necessarily, but she was never, she never formally was convicted of being a witch. She was never condemned in that way. And the conditions in early modern prisons in those times were horrific, as you can imagine. Prisoners were not cared for in the way that we might imagine that they are today. And it could be cold, it could be filthy, it could be really overcrowded and disease-ridden. And for an elderly woman like Demdike, imprisonment itself was probably a death sentence at her age in her health. And Janet Preston was connected to the wider pendle case. But because she lived in Gisburn, which was then in Yorkshire, she was tried separately at York. And she was accused of murdering Thomas Lister by witchcraft. She'd previously faced an accusation of witchcraft in 1611, and she'd been acquitted of this charge. But this earlier accusation would have made her especially vulnerable when suspicion started rising around her again. And at her trial in 1612, one of the pieces of evidence that was used against her was the belief that Thomas Lister's corpse bled the moment that she touched it. And in early modern belief, this was sometimes treated as a sign that the accused had murdered the deceased person. So Janet Preston was found guilty, and she was hanged at York on the 29th of July in 1612. And I just want to take a moment to honour Janet Preston, who lost her life due to these accusations, which we know now to be overly dramaticised, and we know the pressure that was put on people to confess to crimes that they had apparently committed. So with the main pendle trials, they took place at Lancaster on the eighteenth and nineteenth of August in 1612, and the judges were Sir James Awtham and Sir Edward Bromley, and Roger Nowell's examination formed a lot of the evidence, and Thomas Potts recorded the proceedings. So the accused included Anne Whittle, Elizabeth Device, James Device, Anne Redfern, Alice Nutter, Catherine Hewitt, John Bulcock, Jane Bulcock, Alison Device, Margaret Pearson, and Isabel Robbie. And Alice Gray was also tried at this, but she was later acquitted. And although men were among the accused, the story is remembered largely through the women, many of whom were poor, who were elderly, who were socially vulnerable, or who were caught up in all of the family accusations that were going on. So Anne Whittle, who, as we've already said, was known as Old Chattox, was tried for murder of Robert Nutter, who had died many years earlier. And she pleaded not guilty at first, but the pressure of the previous statements, the accusations, and the courtroom environment worked against her. The records present her as confessing, although it's difficult to know how freely any confession was made in those times. Old Chatex was at that point found guilty. So moving on to Elizabeth Device, who was the daughter of old Demdike and the mother of Alison James and Janet, she was accused of multiple murders by witchcraft, and her own young daughter, Janet Device, gave evidence against her. And this is one of the most haunting elements of the whole case. In many courts at the time, a child so young wouldn't usually have been allowed to give such evidence. Yet in witchcraft cases, especially under the influence of beliefs who were promoted by King James I, usual rules were loosened. And Jennet's testimony was just devastating. Elizabeth reportedly became so distressed and so angry in court that she had to be removed. And as you can probably guess, Elizabeth Device was found guilty. So moving on to her son James, James Device was also tried and he was also found guilty. Although he wasn't one of the women, his role matters because his statements helped to implicate others, including members of his own family. So the surviving record suggests that he may have been physically weak or ill by the time of the trial. And like others, he was caught in a process where confession, accusation, and family betrayal all fed into one another. So let's now take a look at Anne Redfan, who was the daughter of old Chattux. She was tried in connection with the death of Christopher Nutter, who had died many years earlier. And she'd already been acquitted on one accusation, but she was then tried again on another. And the evidence against her included claims to old suspicions, family accusations, and alleged image magic. And as you can probably guess, she was also found guilty. And now moving on to Alice Natter, who was one of the strangest and perhaps most troubling cases. And unlike many of the others, as we mentioned before, she wasn't poor. She was a gentlewoman, she was a widow, and socially she was more respectable than most of the other people who were accused. And the evidence against her appears to have been not very much. She was accused of being involved in the death of Henry Mitten after he supposedly refused to give Demdike a penny. And Alice said very little throughout. She pleaded not guilty and seems to have remained largely silent throughout the whole process. There has been speculation that Alice Nutter may have been connected to Catholic networks because Lancashire had a strong Catholic survival after the Reformation and members of the Nutter family had Catholic associations. Some historians have wondered whether she stayed silent to avoid exposing others, but this of course remains an interpretation and it's not proven. Fact. What is clear is that Janet Device identified Alice as having been present at the alleged Malkin Tower gathering, and Alice Nutter was also found guilty. So the trial of Catherine Hewitt, she was the one that was known as Mouldhills, was accused of killing Anne Folds, a child from Cone. And again, the alleged Malkin Tower meeting became really important in her case as well. Janet Device's evidence placed Catherine among the supposed gathering of witches, and Catherine Hewitt was also found guilty. The trial of Jane Bulcock. She was tried alongside her son, John Bulcock, and they were accused in connection with causing the madness and attending the alleged gathering at Malkin Tower. And the evidence against them appears again to be not very much at all. Janet Device claimed that John had turned the spit at the Good Friday gathering, where stolen meat was supposedly roasted. And in the logic of the court, even assisting the witches could be treated as criminal. So Jane Balcock and her son were both found guilty. So let's now move on to the trial of Alison Device. And she was among the last of the Pendle Witches who were accused. John Law, who was the peddler whose collapse had triggered this whole investigation in the first place, appeared in court. And Alison again asked for his forgiveness. And he appears to have forgiven her, but forgiveness from the victim didn't save her from the law. And the court asked whether she could heal him. And she replied that she could not, but suggested that her grandmother, Demdike, might have been able to had she have still been alive. Alison Device was found guilty. And her story, all of them are heartbreaking. But her story is especially painful because she seems less like, you know, this calculating villain that she was made out to be, and more like a really frightened young woman who was trapped by belief, by guilt, by poverty, and within a system that turned that fear into evidence for those in power. So on the twentieth of August of 1612, ten people were convicted at Lancaster, and they were taken to the moors above the town, and they were all hanged. The Pendle related people executed at Lancaster were Anne Whittle, known as Old Chattox, Elizabeth Device, James Device, Anne Redfern, Anne Nutter, Catherine Hewitt, John Bulcock, Jane Bulcock, Alison Device, Isabel Robby, who was from Windle and tried alongside the others. Janet Preston had already been executed at York on the twenty ninth of July as we spoke about, and old Demdike had died in prison before the trial. Margaret Pearson was not executed. She was convicted in relation to witchcraft involving a horse and was sentenced to stand in the pillory and face imprisonment. Alison Grey was acquitted. So for most of the accused, there was no after because they were executed. Their lives ended at the gallows, and their stories were preserved mainly through the words of the men who examined, judged, and condemned them. So, of course, as we said at the start, they were very one-sided. But one figure did continue into the shadows of history, and that is Jeanette DeVice. Jeanette had been the child who was witness, whose evidence helped to condemn her mother, her brother, her sister, her neighbours, and in 1634, a woman named Jeanette Device was herself accused of witchcraft during another Lancashire witchcraft case. And it's not absolutely certain that this was the same Janet, but many historians consider that it is definitely a possibility. And in that later case, the evidence began to collapse when a child witness admitted fabrication. Several accused people were not executed, but some remained imprisoned. And if the Jennet device from 1634 was the same child from 1612, then it's almost like her story came full circle in the cruelest possible way, from witness to accused. And the Pendle Witch trials were not simply a story of superstition, they were one of poverty and fear and gender and family conflict, religion, law, power, all of those things. And they show how easily vulnerable people could be turned into monsters when society needed someone to point the finger at, someone to blame. And they show how women, especially poor women, elderly women, outspoken women, healing women, could become dangerous in the eyes of authority. And they also show how accusations could become contagious. One confession led to another. One family blamed another family, and a child's words became a weapon. Old grudges became legal evidence, and this is the case for so many of these witch trial stories. Accusing someone of being a witch was an easy way to pay them back for something, to settle an old score, or to simply get them out of your life. And the women of Pendle were not storybook villains. They were mothers and daughters and widows and healers and beggars and neighbors. They were survivors of a really hard world, and not, of course, forgetting the gentlemen as well. Their names remain because the court regarded them and recorded them as witches. But perhaps we remember them now because underneath all of that accusation, we can still feel the human beings who were never given the chance to tell their own stories. So I invite you to light a candle for all of the accused Pendle witches and for anyone who suffered during the witch trial era to light a candle for them, to send them a loving thought, to send them healing. And as I said at the very start, that's why this is so important to me because I believe that we can help heal up our timelines, which will ultimately help healing down our timelines as well. So if you feel called, light a candle for these accused, send them a healing thought, and allow their souls to rest at ease. Thank you so much for joining me for today's podcast. And until the next time, I'll speak to you soon.