The Law of Fear: A Judicial Audit of the 1612 Lancashire Witch Trials

The 1612 Lancashire witch trials were made possible by a change in the law and by a court willing to hear confessions and a child's evidence as proof of guilt. Twelve people were accused of witchcraft, and ten were executed. This audit looks at the legal mechanics: the statute that widened the capital offences, the examinations that produced the case, and the evidence heard at Lancaster.

This piece focuses on the law. For the human narrative of the case, see the story of the Pendle witches, and for what became of English witchcraft law in the century after the verdicts, see the case's legal aftermath.

Key Facts

• The 1604 Witchcraft Act made it capital to consult, covenant with, feed or reward an evil spirit, and to harm a person by witchcraft even short of death. The 1563 Act had made only killing by witchcraft capital, with a year in prison for lesser harm on a first offence. The 1604 Act was passed in James I's first parliament, before the Gunpowder Plot of November 1605.
• Roger Nowell, the Justice of the Peace who took the first statements on 30 March 1612, examined the accused before the trial. Early in 1612 every Lancashire JP had been instructed to compile a list of recusants. That is context, not proof of Nowell's motive.
• Jennet Device, aged about nine, gave evidence against her mother and brother. Potts reports her evidence in the third person. James I's Daemonologie (1597) argued for relaxed rules of evidence in witchcraft cases, but it was a treatise, not a statute.
• The Malkin Tower gathering of Good Friday, 10 April 1612, was presented by the prosecution as a witches' meeting to plan the destruction of Lancaster Castle. Its location has never been firmly identified.
• The Samlesbury defendants, three women accused by Grace Sowerbutts, were acquitted after her story collapsed and she was shown to have been coached by a Catholic priest.
• Ten of the twelve accused were executed. Nine were hanged at Lancaster on 20 August 1612 and Jennet Preston was hanged at York on 27 July. Elizabeth Southerns (Old Demdike) died in gaol before trial, and Alice Grey was acquitted. Sir James Altham and Sir Edward Bromley sat at the Lancaster trials on 18 and 19 August.

Study note: the Lancashire witches of 1604 to 1613 form a depth topic in Edexcel A-level History, Paper 3, Option 33 (The Witch Craze in Britain, Europe and North America, c1580 to c1750).

The Climate of 1612

Lancashire in the early seventeenth century had a large Catholic minority, and recusancy was a concern for the Crown. Early in 1612 every Justice of the Peace in the county was instructed to compile a list of those who refused to attend church or take communion. How far that instruction shaped the handling of the Pendle case is a matter of interpretation, and the sources do not settle it.

Most of those accused were poor. The Device family lived by begging and by a local reputation as healers and cunning folk, and the accusations that reached the court grew out of quarrels between neighbours and between rival families. The 1604 Act gave those quarrels a route into a capital trial.

Weaponising the Law: The 1563 to 1604 Legislative Shift

The Elizabethan statute of 1563 punished witchcraft by its results. Killing a person by witchcraft was capital, while lesser harm brought a year in prison for a first offence. The Act of 1604 went further, and made the relationship with a spirit capital in itself.

Comparative Jurisprudence: The 1563 Act and the 1604 Act

James I's treatise, Daemonologie (1597), set out his views on witchcraft and argued that ordinary rules of evidence should be relaxed in witchcraft cases. It was a book, not a law. The statute came from Parliament in 1604, and the two should not be confused.

The 'Magic Strike' Reconsidered

The trigger for the case was the meeting between Alizon Device and the pedlar John Law on 18 March 1612 (some modern sources say 21 March). Law collapsed after refusing her request for pins. Modern readers often take his collapse to have been a stroke. That is a modern reading: the record gives no medical detail, and apoplexy was a recognised condition in 1612.

What matters for this audit is the legal consequence. Under the 1563 Act, a confession that Alizon had lamed Law by witchcraft would have carried a year in prison. Under the 1604 Act, harming a person by witchcraft short of killing them was capital. The same words could now send her to the gallows.

The Magistrate and the Examinations

The magistrate Roger Nowell took statements from Alizon Device and members of her family on 30 March 1612, and went on to examine others. Alizon, James Device and Chattox all confessed to him before the trial, and those examinations were read out at Lancaster. The accused had no lawyers, and the confessions were taken from frightened prisoners by the magistrate who was building the case. That does not make them false, but it does make them weak evidence.

The examinations also drew out the feud between the Demdike and Chattox families, including John Device's agreement to give Chattox eight pounds of oatmeal (about 3.6kg) a year in return for her promise not to harm his family. Some modern writers read Nowell's handling of the case as career-driven. The sources record what he did, not why he did it.

Malkin Tower shows the same pattern. The prosecution's version was that around twenty witches met there on Good Friday to plan the blowing up of Lancaster Castle. A plainer reading is a family gathering among frightened, hungry people whose relatives had just been arrested. The evidence for the coven came almost entirely from statements by James Device and his young sister, taken by Nowell.

The Child Witness and the Rules of Evidence

The convictions of the Device family drew on the evidence of the child witness Jennet Device, who was about nine. Potts reports her evidence in the third person, so the wording is his. She said her mother was a witch and described her mother's familiar as a brown dog called Ball. The court accepted a child's evidence against her own mother and brother, and Daemonologie's argument for relaxed rules of evidence gave that a rationale. But it created no binding legal precedent, and Jennet was not the sole basis of the convictions: confessions and other testimony carried much of the case.

The Evidence Heard at Lancaster

Potts and the Making of the Record

Almost everything known about the trials comes from the account by Thomas Potts, The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster (1613). Potts was instructed by the trial judges to write it, and it is a partisan document. The case can be followed in four stages.

1. Stage 1: Raw Material: local quarrels, illness, and the reputations of the Device and Chattox families.
2. Stage 2: The Examinations: Nowell took statements and confessions before the trial.
3. Stage 3: The Assizes: Sir James Altham and Sir Edward Bromley presided at the trials on 18 and 19 August.
4. Stage 4: The Published Account: Potts published the case in 1613.

Pendle and Samlesbury Compared

Three women from Samlesbury were tried at the same assizes as the Pendle accused. Their accuser, Grace Sowerbutts, gave evidence that collapsed when she was shown to have been coached by a Catholic priest, and all three were acquitted.

The Diagnostic Matrix: Pendle and Samlesbury

The contrast shows that acquittal was possible at these assizes when a witness's account failed. Why the Pendle evidence held and the Samlesbury evidence did not cannot be settled from the sources, and explanations that rest on the political usefulness of one case over the other go beyond them.

The Final Toll

Twelve people were accused and ten were executed. On 20 August 1612, at Gallows Hill in Lancaster, nine were hanged: Anne Whittle (Old Chattox), Elizabeth Device, Alizon Device, James Device, Anne Redferne, Alice Nutter, Katherine Hewitt, Jane Bulcock and John Bulcock. Jennet Preston was tried at York and hanged there on 27 July 1612. Elizabeth Southerns (Old Demdike) died in Lancaster gaol before trial, and Alice Grey was acquitted.

The case shows how a change in the statute, confessions taken by a magistrate, and a court willing to hear a child against her own family could combine to send poor people to the gallows.

People Also Ask

What was the difference between the 1563 and 1604 Witchcraft Acts?

The 1563 Act made only killing by witchcraft a capital crime, with a year in prison for lesser harm on a first offence. The 1604 Act, passed in James I's first parliament and before the Gunpowder Plot of November 1605, made it capital to consult, covenant with, feed or reward an evil spirit, and to harm a person by witchcraft even short of death. That widening meant that a confession to laming a man, which would earlier have carried a prison term, could carry the death penalty.

Who was Roger Nowell and what did he do in the Pendle case?

Roger Nowell of Read Hall was the Justice of the Peace who took statements from Alizon Device and members of her family on 30 March 1612, and who examined the accused before the trial. Early in 1612 every Lancashire JP had been instructed to compile a list of recusants, which is context for the year but not proof of Nowell's motive. The sources record what he did, and they do not establish why.

Why was Jennet Device allowed to testify as a child witness?

Jennet Device, aged about nine, gave evidence against her mother and brother. James I's Daemonologie (1597) argued that the usual limits on evidence should be relaxed in witchcraft cases, and the court accepted her evidence. But Daemonologie was a treatise, not a statute, and it set no legal precedent. Potts reports her evidence in the third person, so the wording is his, and confessions and other testimony carried much of the case.

What was Malkin Tower and what actually happened there?

Malkin Tower was the home of Elizabeth Southerns (Old Demdike) in Pendle Forest. On Good Friday, 10 April 1612, friends and relatives of the Device family met there. The prosecution said it was a witches' meeting to plan the destruction of Lancaster Castle. A plainer reading is a family gathering among frightened, hungry people whose relatives had just been arrested. The site of the tower has never been firmly identified.

Why were the Samlesbury women acquitted when the Pendle accused were not?

The Samlesbury and Pendle cases were heard at the same Lancaster assizes in August 1612. The Samlesbury women were acquitted after the evidence of Grace Sowerbutts collapsed and she was shown to have been coached by a Catholic priest. Why the Pendle evidence held is a question the sources cannot fully answer.

What was Thomas Potts's role in the Pendle witch trials?

Thomas Potts was the clerk of the court at Lancaster. He was instructed by the trial judges to write an account of the proceedings, and published it in 1613 as The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster. It is the main source for the case and a partisan document, written to justify the verdicts.

Are the Pendle witch trials included in Pearson Edexcel A-Level History?

Yes. They form part of Paper 3, Option 33: The Witch Craze in Britain, Europe and North America, c1580 to c1750, within the depth topic on the Lancashire witches of 1604 to 1613. Students study the background to the trials, the 1604 Act, the conflict between the Device and Chattox families, Roger Nowell's investigation, the Lancaster assizes, Jennet Device's evidence, and Thomas Potts's account.

Where can I buy books about the Pendle witch trials?

The Pendle Witch Conspiracy is available on Amazon in paperback and on Kindle. An Investigated History digital download is available exclusively from Histories and Castles.

Primary Sources and Further Reading

Potts, Thomas (1613): The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster, W. Stansby for John Barnes. The court clerk's account of the 1612 trials, the foundational primary source, though written to justify the verdicts. Available via Early English Books Online and WorldCat.

Lumby, Jonathan (1995): The Lancashire Witch-Craze: Jennet Preston and the Lancashire Witches, 1612, Carnegie Publishing. A detailed study of the wider 1612 Lancashire prosecutions.

Poole, Robert, ed. (2002): The Lancashire Witches: Histories and Stories, Manchester University Press. An academic collection examining the trials, their sources, and their afterlife in popular culture.

Sharpe, James (1996): Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in England 1550 to 1750. A study that places Pendle within the wider pattern of English prosecutions.

James I (1597): Daemonologie, Robert Walde-grave. The king's treatise on witchcraft, available via Project Gutenberg.

The legal analysis in this article draws on the statutes and on Potts's account. Where it discusses motive, it offers interpretation, not settled fact, and readers should distinguish that from the embellishments and folklore that later grew up around the case.

This article is part of the Pendle Witch series.

Deepen Your Understanding

• Pendle Witches: The Real Story Behind England's Most Notorious Witch Trials: the full account of the 1612 trials, from a pedlar's collapse to the gallows at Lancaster.
• Jennet Device: The Child Witness of the 1612 Pendle Witch Trials: the nine-year-old whose evidence was central to the Lancaster convictions, and what became of her.
• Roger Nowell's Role and the 1612 Pendle Witch Trials: the magistrate who took the statements and built the case.
• Thomas Potts and the 1612 Pendle Witch Trials: the court clerk whose 1613 account is the main source for the case.
• The 1612 Lancashire Pendle Witch Trials: A Systemic Judicial Failure: what happened after the verdicts and the case's legal aftermath.
• The Pendle Witch Trials: Surprising Truths: the myths that popular retellings still repeat.
• Witchcraft in the Middle Ages: Myths, Fears and Trials: the older beliefs about witches that shaped the world of accusers and accused.
• The Witch’s Familiar: From Demonic Imps to Beloved Pets: how belief in animal helpers grew in England, including the familiars named in the Pendle case.
• Trial by Water: The Dark History of Witch Ducking and Other Ordeals: the ordeals used to test suspected witches.

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