Lancashire Witches Views

Books

The trials of the Pendle witches in 1612 are among the most famous witch trials in English history, and some of the best recorded of the 17th century. The twelve accused lived in the area around Pendle Hill in Lancashire, and were charged with the murders of ten people by the use of witchcraft. All but two were tried at Lancaster Assizes on 18–19 August 1612, along with the Samlesbury witches and others, in a series of trials that have become known as the Lancashire witch trials. One was tried at York Assizes on 27 July 1612, and another died in prison. Of the eleven individuals who went to trial—nine women and two men—ten were found guilty and executed by hanging and one was found not guilty.

The accused witches lived in the area around Pendle Hill in Lancashire, a county which, at the end of the 16th century, was regarded by the authorities as a wild and lawless region: an area fabled for its theft, violence and sexual laxity, where the church was honoured without much understanding of its doctrines by the common people .[2] The nearby Cistercian abbey at Whalley had been dissolved by Henry VIII in 1537, a move strongly resisted by the local people, over whose lives the abbey had until then exerted a powerful influence. Despite the abbey's closure, and the execution of its abbot, the people of Pendle remained largely faithful to their Roman Catholic beliefs and openly reverted to Catholicism on Queen Mary's ascent to the throne in 1553. When Mary's half-sister Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558, the Catholic priests once again had to go into hiding, but in remote areas like Pendle they continued to celebrate mass in secret.[3]

In early 1612, the year of the trials, every justice of the peace (JP) in Lancashire was ordered to compile a list of recusants in their area, those who refused to attend the English Church and to take communion, a criminal offence at that time.[7] Roger Nowell of Read Hall, on the edge of Pendle Forest, was the JP for Pendle. It was against this background of seeking out religious nonconformists that, in March 1612, Nowell investigated a complaint made to him by the family of John Law, a pedlar, who claimed to have been injured by witchcraft.[8] Many of those who subsequently became implicated as the investigation progressed did indeed consider themselves to be witches, in the sense of being village healers who practised magic, probably in return for payment, but such men and women were common in 16th-century rural England, an accepted part of village life.[9]

These later Lancashire witchcraft trials were the subject of a contemporary play written by Thomas Heywood and Richard Brome, The Late Lancashire Witches.[71] More recently another play, Cold Light Singing, based on the story of the Pendle witches, has been touring the UK since 2004.[72] The writer and poet Blake Morrison treated the subject—albeit in a modern context—in his suite of poems Pendle Witches, published in 1996.