The Anatomy of a Witch-Hunt: The Pendle Trials of 1612 (Course 2601)

The course provides insights into the following key areas:

1. The Legal and Political Environment

Learners will understand the "Perfect Storm" of 1612, including:

• The Weaponisation of Law: How the Witchcraft Act of 1604 removed the need for "tangible evidence" of physical harm, making a mere "pact with the Devil" a capital offence.
• Monarchical Influence: The role of King James I and his book, Daemonologie, which served as a practical guide for identifying witches and justified using children as star witnesses—a direct violation of normal 17th-century legal standards.
• Political Ambition: How local magistrates like Roger Nowell used the trials to curry royal favour by identifying "recusant" Catholics and uncovering "satanic conspiracies."

2. Socio-Economic and Psychological Factors

The course explores the human reality behind the folklore:

• Poverty as Pathology: Learners will see how the trials were essentially a criminalisation of severe poverty, where the desperate survival tactics of marginalised women (begging and intimidation) were reclassified as demonic warfare.
• Family Rivalries: Insights into the bitter, generational feud between the Demdike and Chattox families, and how their competition for the local "healing" market led to mutual legal destruction.
• Forensic Reality vs. Myth: Learners will apply modern forensic analysis to historical accounts, identifying that the "magic strike" against pedlar John Law was likely an acute neurological stroke and that Alizon Device’s "glassy stare" may have been a contemporary marker of autism/neurodivergence.

3. Archaeological and Analytical Techniques

Students will learn how modern science investigates "cold cases" from the 17th century:

• Geophysical Geolocation: The course reviews the use of Lidar, magnetometry, and resistivity to locate the lost site of Malkin Tower and identifies remains of clay floors where ritual items were allegedly buried.
• Deconstructing the "Sabbat": Learners will analyse how a simple meeting of impoverished subtenants to eat a stolen sheep was transformed by prosecutors into a demonic plot to blow up Lancaster Castle.

4. Comparative History and the Rise of Skepticism

The final modules provide a broader context for the "witch-craze":

• The Diagnostic Matrix: By comparing the Pendle executions with the Samlesbury Witches (who were acquitted after their accuser was found to be coached by a Jesuit priest), students will see that the courts were often politically motivated rather than blindly superstitious.
• Global Contexts: Learners will compare the events in Pendle to mass hunts in Bamberg, Germany and Salem, Massachusetts, examining how war and religious tension drove similar hysterias.

The End of the Era: The course concludes by showing how the Scientific Revolution and thinkers like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke introduced materialism and empiricism, leading to the repeal of witchcraft laws in 1736.