Pendle Witch Trial Research Paper

The Pendle Witch Trials are part of the most famous witch trials in English history and are also some of the best recorded of the 17th Century. The first twelve witched accused all lived in the area around Pendle Hill in Lancashire, England. A man called Roger Nowell was the the local Justice of the Peace. In 1612, he was required to compile a list of the recusants in the area (people who refused to attend the English Church and to take communion, at this time it was a criminal offence). At the same time, a claim was brought by John Law, a Halifax peddler, against Alizon Device of Pendle, accusing her of causing a stroke by witchcraft. Alizon freely confessed that she had sold her soul to the Devil and also appeared to be convinced of her own powers to injure.

In the end, twelve people from Pendle were accused: Alizon Device, Elizabeth Device, James Device, Elizabeth Southerns, Alice Gray, Jennet Preston, Anne Whittle, Anne Redferne, Alice Nutter, Katherine Hewitt, John Bulcock and Jane Bulcock. They were all charged with the murders of ten people by the use of witchcraft, and ten of the twelve were tried at Lancaster Assizes in August 1612. This was because Jennet Preston was tried at York, and Elizabeth Southerns died in prison. Of the eleven individuals who went to trial (nine women and two men) ten were found guilty and executed by hanging, and Alice Gray was the only one found not guilty. Nine-year-old Jennet Device was a key witness for the prosecution (she gave evidence against members of her own family), this would not have been permitted in many other 17th Century criminal trials, but King James had made a case for suspending the normal rules of evidence for witchcraft trials in his “Daemonologie”. Several years later, Jennet Device found herself accused of witchcraft as