The Pendle Witches - A Story of Witchcraft and Revenge

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The Pendle Witches

A true story of murder witchcraft and revenge

The Pendle Witches or Lancashire Witches were the most famous witches in English legal history. They were accused of selling their souls to familiar spirits or devils that appeared to them in human and animal form. In return for their souls, it was believed that the witches received the power to kill or lame who they pleased. The legend of the Pendle Witches is one of the many dark tales of imprisonment and execution at Lancaster Castle. The usual method of murder, described in Demdike’s confession, was to make an ethigy (the representation of a person in some sort of sculpture in 3D form) known as a ‘picture of clay’. The image was then crumbled and burned over a period of time, causing the victim to fall ill and die.

Just over three centuries saw witch trials held in England but fewer than 500 people were executed for this crime. This one series of crimes in 1612 therefore counts for only 2% of all witches executed.

The arrest and trial of the Pendle witches is probably the most well known of the witch trials that took place in the UK in the 16th and 17th centuries. This being because the tale was well documented and the tale was made a book, The Wonderful Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster. 

England wasn't a country that devoted a lot of resources to persecuting accused witches through the courts compared with most. England was reasonably safe for those who were either thought to practice magical arts, or who allowed people to think they did.  All over mainland Europe, widespread torture and execution of witches was underway at this time, while in England many cases never even made it to the courts, apparently since a lot of magistrates simply didn't believe in witchcraft or black magic.  Most claims that did make it to court were for offences such as harming animals or crops using spells, rather than the worse claims of night-flying or demons that were increasing over the continent. However even for these less outrageous claims, any given trial was not the end of it. Torture was not generally used to extract confessions, and it was not unusual for cases to be dismissed from court due to fabricated evidence .At the same trials where the Pendle Witches were convicted, other so-called witches were declared not guilty

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In 1612, James I had been on the throne for nine years. James was a strong believer in witchcraft, and while the instances of witchcraft trials were not especially high during his reign, there was certainly the opportunity for young magistrates to try and make their name by taking accusations of witchcraft seriously and prosecuting them publically.

In Pendle at that time were two families - the Demdikes and the Chattoxes - each of which were ruled by old matriarchs who both had reputations locally for being witches.  It seems that they did nothing to contradict these

reputations and in fact ...

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