Your sister, brother, mother and grandmother have confessed to witchcraft - and you must give evidence against them! That's what happened to nine-year-old Jennet Device in 1612.
Jennet was the star witness in one of three cases being tried known collectively as the Lancashire Witch Trials - that took place at the summer assize at Lancaster Castle.
Lancaster Castle (photo by Susan Brownrigg)
Those accused of witchcraft included a group of twelve people who lived around Pendle Hill, three women from Samlesbury, near Preston, a woman from Padiham. near Burnley and another from Windle, near St Helens.
The accused were kept together in a pitch black dungeon in horrendous conditions without access to lawyers. Coercion and torture were used to extract confessions that could be used as evidence against them - and neighbours and family members were made to testify against them.
PENDLE WITCHES
Jennet's sister, was 19-year-old Alizon Device - she was walking across a field when she came across a peddlar (someone who sells items for a living) called John Law. She asked him for some metal pins - it's unclear if she was begging or wanted to buy them - but he refused her. She was so cross that she cursed him, and soon after he had an attack that caused some kind of paralysis - probably a stroke.
Things quickly snowballed - when Roger Nowell the justice was brought in to investigate, Alizon not only confessed but incriminated other members of her own family and the rival Chattox family.
Nowell quizzed more members of both families.
Alizon's grandmother - known as Old Demdike - admitted she had a familiar or devil spirit called Tib. She also confessed to killing a man and a child - saying that making clay figures was the speediest way to take a man's life away.
Depiction of Old Demdike with familiars
on display at Pendle Heritage Centre
The head of the other family - Anne Whittle, known as Old Chattox also confessed to having a familiar or devil spirit - this one called Fancie. She also said she had killed men and children, making clay images for hurting life and limb - and to bewitching milk and ale and bewitching and killing two cows.
Anne Whittle's daughter Ann Redfearn denied being a witch - but she was sent to face trial alongside the other three women.
Not a week later, on Good Friday, 20 or more supporters of the women gathered for a special meeting at Malkin Tower. It is said they fed on stolen mutton. Nowell heard about it and resumed his investigation - believing it was an example of a witches' sabbath - a Midnight meeting for witchcraft.
Nowell questioned the Device family and Jennet and her brother James incriminated their mother, who confessed to being a witch, having a familiar, making clay figures and killing two men.
James himself confessed to crumbling a clay image of a woman and causing her 'lingering' death after she had accused him of stealing peat for his fire. He also said he had a familiar - Dandie who appeared as a brown dog or hare.
He also said the meeting had been arranged to discuss blowing up Lancaster Castle, murdering the gaoler and freeing the four women imprisoned there.
Statue of Alice Nutter in Roughlee
(photo by Susan Brownrigg)
Jennet named a number of people at the meeting including Alice Nutter, a gentlewoman (and a Catholic) from nearby Roughlee.
Now Jennet's brother, James, her mother, Elizabeth, Alice Nutter and four others from the meeting were sent to the dungeons at Lancaster Castle to face trial for witchcraft too.
Old Demdike died in the dungeon and her grandson, James was so traumatised that it was said he could neither speak, hear no stand at his trial.
The court proceedings were recorded by the court clerk, Thomas Potts, who later published his account as The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster.
The accused had no defence lawyer. Jennet was called as a witness - even though she was too young to normally be admissable.
She again incriminated her sister, brother and mother - and identified Alice Nutter as a witch by taking her hand. She described witches mounting ponies and flying into the air.
Jennet's mother was dragged out of court screaming at her daughter and shouting curses at Nowell.
Why did Jennet condemn her family? Historians think having no family to care for her, she was trained so that she would give evidence against those accused.
Some of those accused likely considered themselves witches, the two families may have competed for business. Claiming to have magical powers was a way of bringing in extra money.
King James I, who was on the throne at the time, definitely believed in witches. He was convinced that a coven of Scottish witches had tried to murder him and his wife by causing terrible storms as they travelled by ship from Denmark. He was so convinced by the power of witchcraft that he wrote a book on the subject called Daemonologie.
GUILTY
The judge found all but one of the group guilty. They were sentenced to hang by the neck until they died. The execution took place on Gallows Hill.
No-one knows what became of Jennet Device. 20 years later a Jennet Device was found guilty of witchcraft. Could it have been the same person?
Susan Brownrigg is a Lancashire lass. She is the author of Kintana and the Captain's Curse, and the Gracie Fairshaw mystery series. (Uclan Publishing)
Find out more at susanbrownrigg.com
