Witch Book?
Created | Updated Oct 29, 2003
The Lancashire Witches by Harrison Ainsworth
Ainsworth was born in Manchester in 1805 and attended Manchester Free Grammar School where he started writing melodramatic, gothic plays. These were produced in a theatre which he had set up at his family home and led to him offering various poems, plays, and short stories to popular literary magazines of the day. Despite these early leanings to the creative arts he obeyed the wishes of his lawyer
father and trained first as an articled clerk in Manchester and, on moving to London, entered the Inns of Court there.
However, he soon found that he couldn't resist writing and managed to find time to encompass both careers, publishing a romantic novel, Sir John Chiverton which was admired by Sir Walter Scott. With the death of his father in 1824 he was tempted by his father-in-law to run a publishing firm but soon tired of the work and returned to the law.
A turning point in his life came with the publication of Rookwood in 1834. This gothic romance had all the ingredients neccessary to make it required reading at the time; a gloomy manor house, disputed inheritance, the highwayman Dick Turpin, gypsies, murder and revenge, and attracted the admiration of many of the notable writers of the day including Charles Lamb, John Forster, Edward
Bulwer-Lytton, and Charles Dickens - whose illustrator Phiz1 provided many of the pictures and etchings in his series and books.
The Lancashire Witches was originally written as a serial and appeared over the course of a few months in 1848. In 1849 it was collated into a book comprising four sections: Introduction, Book I: Alizon Device, Book II: Pendle Forest and Book III: Hoghton Tower and stretches to over 700 pages. I first struggled through it in my early teens, 'struggle' being the operative word. Obviously for a
novel well over 150 years old the language and narrative style belong to another era. In addition, Ainsworth delights in using the Lancashire dialect for all characters not of the upper class2. Although the story progresses at a reasonable speed, the use of flashbacks - and flash-forwards3, the need to constantly slow down to decipher the dialect and the overuse of descriptive narrative - in one section 10 pages describing an otter hunt balanced by one page relevant to the plot, for example - would possibly, these days, deter the most arduous adherents of this genre.
The characters in this book veer from the 'larger than life' to the mundane and can, frankly, be confusing. The swings by the main characters (within a few lines) from total non-belief in withcraft to absolute faith in its existence can be off-putting and some of them are never fully developed within the context of the book. If one makes allowances for the uncertainty of the times being described, however, you can reasonably justify this as the modern-day trait of sheep mentality.
Despite these misgivings, I would still recommend this book. It not only provides an insight into the infamous witch hunts and superstitions of the early 16th/17th centuries - including the power of curses, the distrust of old 'hags', the manifestations of familiars and, yes, some spell-casting to pad out the plot - but also allows us to see how educated folks in the mid-19th century enjoying reading a romanticised version of these historical events.
Fact or Fiction?
Nearly all the main characters have their basis in fact but this recounting of the tale varies quite dramatically from those recorded at the time. John Paslew was, infact, hanged not in Whalley but at Lancaster Castle and no documented reports of him manifesting as a ghost have been reported. The Assheton family certainly occupied an impressive estate at Middleton, but the only recorded connection between them and the Lancashire Witches comes in the person of their distant relative Alice Nutter. They definitely purchased Whalley Abbey from the Crown after the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII and built Assheton House on the foundations of the Abbott's House. Around 1600 Richard Assheton, who was born at Middleton Hall, married a widow, Mary Holt and, in 1605, their son Ralph was born. Ralph went on to be MP for Cheshire and Mary's son from the earlier marriage became James, Earl of Derby. No evidence of a curse either during or after these times has come to light.
Alizon Device, far from being a sainted innocent, was the one accused of being a witch first when she 'gave the evil eye' to pedlar John Law for refusing to give her a few pins. When he was struck down, probably by a stroke, he complained to the local guard and she was arrested. It was she who implemented her blind grandmother, Old Chattox and Anne (Nan or Nance) Redfearn(e). They were all detained and sent to Lancaster pending their trial.
It was shortly after this, on Good Friday, 10th April 1612 and not the day after May Day, that the well-documented meeting at Malkin Tower took place. It was called by concerned relatives of the accused who probably only met to innocently discuss what could be done to help those now encarcerated in Lancaster. Somehow Roger Nowell, the local magistrate, learnt of this meeting and, after searching the place and finding teeth and a clay figure, turned his attention to Elizabeth Device, her half-wit son, Jem and her daughter, Jennet - then only 9 years old. Jennet, possibly flattered by the attention, proceeded to sing like a bird and produced for posterity the only documented description of a witches' sabbath ever presented in a court of law. This led to the arrest of a further seven persons on suspicion of practising witchcraft, amongst them Alice Nutter. She was living as a well-respected lady of some substance, known for her charitable deeds but she, too, eventually confessed and was brought to trial alongside all the others.
Two further detainees joined these poor unfortunates in late summer and the trials took place over three days in early August. Despite ascertions that no torture was involved, it is well-documented that they were kept for 5 months 30 feet below ground in a small dungeon and fed only bread and gruel. On appearing for trial they could hardly speak and Jem Device certainly appeared to have suffered greatly. Absent was Mother Demdike who had died, not by burning, but in the Well Tower of Lancaster Castle sometime earlier. All bar Alice Gray were found guilty and sentenced to die - nine women and two men, including Jem Demdike and Katherine Hewitt (Mouldheels) - although some sources claim that Jane Bulcock and/or John Bulcock were spared. None were destined to burn, a practice only used in Scotland at this time, but were to suffer at the end of a rope. The executions were not pleasant as there was no drop involved. Instead they all suffered slow strangulation. Jennet was spared at this time but was herself taken to Lancaster on charges of witchcraft some 21 years later. There is no record of her having been sentenced or executed.
The chief prosecutor and questioner was, as indicated in the book, Roger Nowell, although he handed the cases over to judges at Lancaster for final sentencing. It is more than certain that he 'schooled' his victims to repeat, almost word for word, descriptions of devil worship covered by King James' book on the subject Daemonology. He had previously been in a dispute with Alice Nutter over land boundaries and must have been greatly pleased with her removal. The outcome was not to his advantage, however, as the beautiful house and lands of Roughlee Hall remained untouched and owned by her family for centuries to come.
Finally, what of Thomas Potts who features heavily throughout the book? There is no evidence to suggest that he was anything more than the Clerk of the Assizes Court, employed to record the examinations and trials of the alleged witches. That he took his responsibilities seriously is not in question. Barely a year after the executions he published a book called The Wonderful Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster in which he described Old Mother Demdike as
... a very old woman, about the age of fours score yeares and had been a witch for 50 years.
and Old Mother Chattox, as
'...a very old, withered, spent and decrepit creature, her sight almost gone.'
Whether he made his fortune from this book is not known, but he now finds himself inextricably linked to the Lancashire Witches both in his own right and also through the creative mind of Harrison Ainsworth.
