The Witches of Pendle Hill

Witches in fiction are such fun. We enjoy hating the nasty ones, and laugh when their magic fails and they disappear in a puff of smoke: POUF! But it was no fun at all, in the past, when real people were accused of witchcraft.

With their charms, remedies, spells and tricks, both witches and wizards play an important part in world folklore. 

The scary ones can often be vanquished with something as simple as a bucket of water, or the wave of a wand. In The Witches, the Grand High Witch is all-powerful and without mercy – so scary is she, in fact, that all the other witches are frightened of her, to say nothing of the children she plans to transform into mice.

We know now that such things can never really happen. But in the past people had little scientific knowledge. If someone claimed to have special powers, they tended to be believed. People turned to them for help in difficult times. Perhaps a ‘wise woman’ could cure your child’s cough, for example, or stop your turnips rotting. You might visit a witch to share your problems and in return you might get a healing charm and some hope to get you through.

Pendle Hill, in Lancashire, England. To the right is the east end of Longridge Fell. Mist lies in the Ribble valley between them. Photographed from Beacon Fell. @WikiCommons

King James I

King James (1566-1625) was the son of Mary Queen of Scots. Already James VI of Scotland, he was crowned James I of England on 25 July 1603, making him the first monarch of Great Britain. In some ways, this Stuart king was wiser than his years; in others, he was very much a man of his times.

In 1597, six years before he ascended to the English throne, King James produced a book about witchcraft.  Entitled Daemonologie, it spread the belief that such dark and magical powers existed, but were always (in his old-fashioned spelling) ‘vnlawfull artes’.  

Guy Fawkes’s Gunpowder Plot against the king in 1605 encouraged people to fear anything suspicious, anything that threatened law and order. Witch hunts, which were previously less common in England than elsewhere, increased. The king himself took part in some witch trials.

James I and his royal progeny after Willem de Passe. Charles Turner, published by Samuel Woodburn, after Willem de Passe, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

When kings speak, people listen!

William Shakespeare’s famous play Macbeth was performed in front of King James: the witches in it were probably created to please him. These ‘weird sisters’ circle round a cauldron chanting, ‘Double double, toil and trouble’, and inspire Macbeth to take the throne from the lawful king. Just the sort of thing that King James himself feared!

If Shakespeare invented witches because he wanted to win the king’s favour by echoing his ideas, he certainly was not alone. A magistrate in Lancashire, called Roger Nowell heard reports of strange goings-on in the area around Pendle Hill in the east of his county. He rounded up some people there, making it look as if he had uncovered exactly the kind of ‘witches’ coven’ that King James had described in his book.

Macbeth, Banquo and the witches on the heath – Henry Fuseli (1741–1825) @wikicommons

Dame Demdike

One of the women arrested was a grandmother of about 80 years old nicknamed Dame Demdike. She had been using her reputation for magic to support her widowed daughter and three grandchildren. She blessed the sick cattle of a local farmer, for example, for which she received some payment. Unwilling to deny her powers, or perhaps thinking that it might help to confess, she explained that she once made a bargain with her ‘familiar’, a devilish spirit called Tibb who took different forms – sometimes that of a black cat. In exchange for giving him her soul, she said, Tibb had helped her do whatever she wanted.

All sorts of rumours spread, but the worst one centred on the time Dame Demdike’s granddaughter, Alison, argued with a pedlar over some pins. The old man fell down soon afterwards and lost the strength on one side of his body. We know now what causes this kind of sudden weakness. It is likely that the man suffered a stroke. At that time, however, everyone thought it was the result of witchcraft. Even Alison herself begged the pedlar’s forgiveness.

Widow Chattox

Not far from this family lived another woman, known as Widow Chattox. She too had a daughter, and they too claimed special powers. The families were rivals. Nowell took the four women to Lancaster Castle for questioning, and chained them to a ring in the bottom of the damp, pitch-dark Well Tower. Worse followed. When relatives and neighbours gathered to see how they could help, several of them were caught and imprisoned alongside their loved ones.

Conditions in the tower were so awful that Dame Demdike died before the witch trial could start. Most of the rest, including her daughter, her grandchildren Alison and James (one of two men among them), as well as Widow Chattox and her daughter, were found guilty of witchcraft and hanged on 20 August 1612. 

They were not the only people to suffer from such accusations. Witch trials went on right up into the 18th century. The last people to be put to death for witchcraft in England were a mother and her daughter, in 1716. But gradually, as people learned more about the way nature works, this kind of persecution tailed off. In 1735, it became a crime to pretend to practise witchcraft, or accuse someone else of doing so. The worst punishment was a year in prison.

An illustration of Ann Redferne and Chattox, two of the Pendle witches, from Ainsworth's novel The Lancashire Witches, published in 1849. William Harrison Ainsworth, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

FIND OUT MORE:

Find out more about the Pendle witches at pendlewitches.co.uk
or take a look at dayoutwiththekids.co.uk/family-fun/Pendle_Witches_Mystery_Treasure_Trail/4708

Lancaster Castle is a great place to visit too!
visitlancashire.com/things-to-do/lancaster-castle-p1787

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Words: John Davis