Lancanshire Witches
From New Age Village
A story with many pathetic and pitiable features, and one which is eloquent of the ignorance and credulity of the age, is that of the Lancashire Witches. Not very far from Manchester lies Pendelbury Forest, a gloomy though romantic and picturesque spot.
At the time when it was inhabited by the witches—that is to say, about the beginning of the 17th century—it was held in such terror by law-abiding folks that they scarcely dared to approach it. They imagined it to be the haunt of witches and demons, the scene of all sorts of frightful orgies and diabolical rites. So that when Roger Nowel, a country magistrate, hit upon the plan of routing the witches out of their den, and thus ridding the district of their malevolent influence, he fancied he would be doing a public-spirited and laudable action. He promptly began by seizing Elizabeth Demdike and Ann Chattox, two women of eighty years of age, one of them blind, and the other threatened with blindness, both of them living in squalor and abject poverty. Demdike's daughter, Elizabeth Device, and her grandchildren, James and Alison Device, were included in the accusation, and Ann Redferne, daughter of Chattox was apprehended with her mother. Others were seized in quick succession—Jane Bulcock and her son John, Alice Nutter, Catherine Hewitt, and Isabel Roby. All of them were induced—by what means it were better not to enquire too closely—to make a more or less detailed confession of their communication with the Devil. When this had been extorted from them, they were sent to prison in Lancaster Castle, some fifty miles away, there to await trial for their misdeeds.
They had not lain in prison very long when the authorities were informed that about twenty witches had assembled on Good Friday, at Malkin's Tower, the home of Elizabeth Device, in order to compass the death of one Covel, to blow up the castle in which their companions were confined, and rescue the prisoners, and also to kill a man called Lister, which last purpose they accomplished by means of diabolical agency. In the summer assizes of 1612 the prisoners were tried for witchcraft, and were all found guilty. The woman Demdike had died in prison, and thus escaped a more ignominious death at the gallows. The principal witnesses who appeared against Elizabeth Device were her grandchildren, James and Jennet Device. Directly the latter entered the witness-box her grandmother set up a terrible yelling punctuated by bitter execrations. The child, who was only nine years of age, begged that the prisoner might be removed as she could not otherwise proceed with her evidence. Her request was granted, and she and her brother swore that the Devil had visited their grandmother in the shape of a black dog, and asked what were her wishes. She had intimated that she desired the death of one John Robinson, whereupon the fiend told her to make a clay image of Robinson and gradually crumble it to pieces, saying that as she did so the man's life would decay and finally perish. On such evidence ten persons were hanged, including the aged Ann Chattox.
It is shocking to reflect that, at a period when literature and learning were at their height, such cruelty could be tolerated, not only by the vulgar and uneducated, but by the learned judges who pronounced the sentence. The women were old and ignorant and probably weak-minded. No doubt they began in time to invest themselves with those powers, which their neighbors credited to them, and to believe themselves fit objects for the awe and terror of the people. It is even possible that they may have seen some sort of visions, or hallucinations, which they persuaded themselves were evil spirits attending on them Thus their own cunning and ignorance may have hastened their downfall.
Twenty-two years later a similar outrage, on the same spot, was narrowly avoided, by the shrewdness of the judge who tried the case. A certain misguided man, by name Edmund Robinson, thought to profit by the general belief in witchcraft. To this end he taught his young son, a boy of eleven to say that one day he encountered in the fields two dogs, with which he tried to catch a hare. But the animals would not obey his bidding, and at length he tied them to a post and whipped them, when they immediately turned into a witch and her imp. This monstrous story gained such credence that Robinson declared that his son possessed a sort of second-sight, which enabled him to distinguish a witch at a glance, no one thought of denying his statement. Accordingly, he took the boy to the neighboring churches, set him on a bench, and bade him point out the witches. No less than seventeen persons were thus accused and might have been hanged had not the judge's suspicions been aroused by the story, for the jury did not hesitate to convict them. However, the doubts of the worthy judge gained a respite for the prisoners, some of whom were sent to London for examination by the King's physician and by the king himself. The boy's story was investigated and found to be merely a tissue of lies, as, indeed, the child himself confessed it to be.
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