Pendle Witchcraft Trials of 1612

Here is a 16th-century woodcutting of a witch feeding blood to her familiars. In the wake of the Protestant Reformation, which sparked violent religious confrontation, patriarchal governance manifested in witchcraft accusations. These caused the deaths of tens of thousands of (mostly) women across Western Europe. In England, the most infamous of cases were the Pendle trials of 1612, which resulted in ten executions by hanging, one aquital, and one accused dying during imprisonment. The case was horrific, but even more macabre when we consider that a few of the accused women seemed to sincerely believe that they were in fact witches, and that some of the most damning testimony came from a 9-year old girl.

In 1612, a woman named Alizon Device cursed a man who refused to sell her some pins. A few moments later, the man fell down and was no longer able to walk. Alizon believed she had caused the man’s condition and, later confessing at his bedside, begged his forgiveness. This led to a spiraling web of accusations of witchcraft in the small community, drawing in the rivalries of two poor families, as well as testimony of daughters, mothers, sons, and an infamous nine-year-old granddaughter against each other.

Historians have found the causes of this bizarre trial multifaceted. Surely, the reputation of the Lancaster region (where Pendle was) for being a place of illegal Roman Catholic activity played a role. After all, the author of the chief source for the trial had ties to the man who had recently foiled a pro-Catholic plot to kill the Protestant king and his associates (the Gunpowder Plot). Also, King James the First was ultra-keen to detect and prosecute witches, having actually written a book to convince the public of their reality and the evil magic they practiced in his _Daemonologie_: it was his legislation that allowed for the testimony of nine-year-old Jennet Device, who accused her own mother and others of working with the devil and being witches. Finally, pervasive distrust of powerful women, and older women, was so rife in this era that some of the women from the Pendle trials truly believed in their own guilt.