Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Inside the Witch Trials: Pendle | The Child Who Condemned Her Family

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

People in the 17th century were at spiritual war with the devil. It was a time of huge upheaval. What became known as the witch trials soon followed.In this first episode of a limited series, Inside the Witch Trials, we go back to the English village of Pendle in 1612, to find out how and why a nine year old girl was able to condemn her family to death, as witches.How was magic viewed and used before the witch trials? What influence did the Reformation play in stoking fears and paranoia? And what became of the girl who stood up in court to accuse her family of witchcraft?Kate is joined by historians Eleanor Janega, co-host of Gone Medieval, and Ronald Hutton.This episode was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign here for up to 50% for 3 months using code BETWIXTYou can take part in our listener survey here.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. How are you doing? Well, I'm doing just fine. Thank you very much for asking. I'm glad that we're all fine and here together.

But to make sure that you stay fine and I stay fine and everyone else stays fine, I have to give you the fair do's warning, so here it is. This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way covering a range of adults subjects and you should be an adult too. And actually in all seriousness, we are getting quite tasty today. We are discussing the witch trials. And if that is not your cup of tea, then this is your opportunity to get out now while you still can. For the rest of you, on with the show.

The early modern period was a time of huge upheaval. Radical ideas were spreading like wildfire. People were led to believe they were at spiritual war with the devil. The stakes couldn't have been higher. As fear and paranoia grew, a violent breaking point was inevitable. What became known as the witch trials soon followed. Over the course of this limited series, I'll be taking you directly into the isolated communities

where this fear was felt the most. Further still, we'll enter into the courtrooms at the heart of three significant witch trials to find out what it was like to be caught up in the middle of all this mayhem. From Pendle in Lancashire where a nine-year-old sent her whole family to their deaths after accusing them of being witches. It's Janet who really signs the death warrant for her own people. To the West Fords of Iceland, where it was mostly men, not women, who were burnt at the stake.

All of a sudden, the devil was all around and this caused the hysterical fear. And to Salem, Massachusetts, where colonialism, racism, and fear in an unknown life, created a perfect storm that is still felt today. The sailing witch trials, they have this really long legacy, and it's a legacy of persecution and mistrust. Join me, Kate Lister, as we go inside the witch trials. Part 1, Pendle, England. In what is usually a sleepy village in a remote part of Lancashire,

a place where some of the last wild wolves in England died out just a couple of centuries before. Here, in 1612, a moral panic is reaching boiling point. Outside, it's a hot summer's day. Yet nearby inside Lancaster Castle, nine-year-old beggar, Janet Device, is a star witness. A hush descends to hear her testimony, a testimony which she is given against her own family.

My mother is a witch, and that I know if to do. be true. Her word sends shockwaves through the courtroom. Just two days later, her whole family are hanged. What unique circumstances allowed for this to happen? Joining me are historians Eleanor Yarniger and Ronald Hutton to take us back into this world. Firstly, what was Pendle like in 1612? So this is quite an interesting one because it's very, very rural. And you know, you say, yeah, okay, Lancashire is still somewhat rural. But we've got to understand that we are still pre-industrialization. And this is kind of like the ass end of England, right?

It is not particularly cosmopolitan. And another thing that's going on in Lancashire very particularly as a result of how removed it is for the rest of England is it's seen as kind of a holdover for Catholicism, which is an important part of this. because the witchcraft accusations tend to crop up in places where there are religious anxieties. This is one of those places. So there is some concern that up in Lancashire, because who knows what they're doing, one of the things that they are doing is Catholicism.

So that's kind of how you get the trials kind of looked into at all whatsoever because there's a sort of desire to crack down on what might be going on in the wilds. Like who knows what these dastardly peasants are up to, right? Before we delve into the influence of religion and conspiracy theories, let's explore how magic was thought of in the 17th century and even earlier. This was something that was part of everyday life for people. It had been for centuries. And witches or cunning folk, as they were sometimes known, were a part of this everyday life. There is an underlying belief in magic behind all of this. Back to Eleanor.

Dr. Sophie Page has a really interesting definition of magic, which is that it is a practical way of ordering the universe. So ideas about magic are usually that you can impact what is going on around you by whatever means. And they're varying levels to this. So for example, there are ideas of natural magic. And this is stuff like electric eels. For example, they're like, I don't know, man, that fish be electrifying people. Magic. Because sometimes magic, it could just be about how there's an observable phenomena here, and I cannot explain it. Then there are these kind of other ideas of magic that are sort of inextricably bound with concepts of the supernatural, right?

So there's rather a lot in the medieval period. Like the magic you tend to see doesn't tend to be necessarily witchcraft. There's a lot of monks doing naughty things, which is brilliant, right? Because they're hanging out with books all day, and they're like, yeah, buddy, if you draw this magic circle on the floor and you chant. these things, then a demon will show up and he'll give you a horse and you can bride the horse to India and you can pick up sexy chicks. There is definitely folk magic going on like, you know, people believing in fairies. Certainly that's around the shop. You see things like, for example,

in the early medieval penitential of Bouchard of Virmes, he talks a lot about magic and women doing magic. And it's usually kind of what we would consider harmless. It's usually like trying to get your husband to love you or try to get some guy to love you. And the math, and the matter of magic in question can either be kneading bread down your naked body and then feeding it to him. In that case, they're basically like, this is very naughty, you should knock that off and you're on penance for a year. But so even when they are believing that there might be something magic happening there, you don't kill a woman over this. Writing in the 11th century, Bouchard of Worms was a bishop who had a significant influence

on medieval witchcraft beliefs. During the early modern period, religious thinking continued to be central to the views on witches, but it took a much darker turn with what was to come. Huge change within the church was happening, and the impact of the Reformation would be felt across Europe. Remote villages like Pendle were no exception, Ronald Hutton. You're right to think the reformation's important. It's important all over Europe. Although the idea of a conspiracy of satanic witches comes in in the 1420s and trials begin immediately, They don't really take over Europe. There's the trickle of them through for about 150 years with people having doubts about the basic idea.

And they probably claim no more than a few thousand victims. But things really take off when Christianity tears itself apart in the Reformation. When the familiar Western church splits in half between Protestant and Catholic. they fail to make it up and they start trying to kill each other. So wars of religion, religious hatred, breaks out all over Europe. And this makes the idea of the satanic witch conspiracy much more credible to much more people. And so 80% of the people who die in the late medieval early modern witch trials are killed in one long lifetime, which is 1560 to 1640. And the Kendall trials are clump in the middle of that.

What we begin to see is a weaponization of witches in a war between the newly split church, Eleanor Yaniga. So one of the things that we tend to see with the witch panics is that we tend to see that people who are suspective of doing things that look kind of Catholic end up being killed in Protestant lands. And in the Catholic lands, people who are doing things that look kind of Protestant end up getting killed, but on witchcraft charges. So if you still seem to be venerating the host

or something like that in a Protestant country, then people will say, oh, I think that he or she is doing witchcraft. And there is a real social contigent here. It's a moral panic. With religious ideas fueling a conspiracy of witchcraft, ideas were spreading faster due to the impact of the printed word. The first major work on witch hunting to counter.

capitalized on this new technology was the Malias Malificarum or Hammer of Witches. It's an extremely misogynistic book published in 1486 by a German inquisitor called Heinrich Kramer. When it came out in the 15th century, everyone was like, cool, cool Heinrich. Well, it seems like you have strange psychosexual problems with women. And this is not real or realistic and maybe you should calm down. But then 200 years later, everyone starts going, oh, yeah, that's real. Uh-huh. Definitely the like real stuff here.

So it's interesting because you have this real differentiation between like the late medieval mindset, which is like witchcraft isn't real. And also it's kind of like borderline heretical that you would think that it is. And the early modern one, which is like, oh, yeah, I saw Goody Proctor dancing with the devil and is completely willing to take this on. So that's interesting in and of itself because we see with a move into modernity a willingness to absolutely believe the most bugged out stupid things, you know, in the name of God. It's so true. Because obviously you've read the Malius Malifacarum and I've had a fair old skim of it.

And it is bonkers. Like it is, there is not one page in that thing that you're not there going, well, this seems normal. it's all like balls to the wall mad stuff which is stealing penises to put them in trees spells being cat like just bonkers stuff so much penis stealing just like an unreasonable amount of penis stealing and like that's quite funny right and I also do find the reasoning for why according to the good brother crommer women are more likely to be doing something sorcery than men, which is new. This is a new ideal that did not catch on.

Oh, is that a new idea that is... Yeah, they're like, well, women, women be sexy. And so, you know, you know how the girlies be. The girls are just out here and they're so horny that they're doing magic about it. Right. So, like, it's just an incredibly funny way of looking at the world. He's not even subtle about it, is it? He's got like several pages to that of just why they're more women witches than men witches.

It's because women are hornier. They, they are more. more lusty in their flesh. Exactly. Hashtag science, right? But over 100 years passed before the fear really took hold and gripped Europe. One person who really capitalised on this was King James I of England, who took a personal interest in witches since his time as the King of Scotland and wrote a book about them. I know Prince Harry wrote Spare and that was quite controversial,

but this has got to be one of the most controversial royal texts of all time, Ronald Hutton. It's actually not controversial in its time because a king who fancies himself as an intellectual and in many ways actually is. He's probably along with Alfred the Great, one of the two great academics who have been English kings. And he's writing in the mainstream of European intellectual culture. Most educated and intelligent people believe firmly in satanic witches at this time. but they're writing books across Europe to work out what these evil characters are doing, how they're doing it, where they come from, and how best to deal with the enormous public menace they're supposed to represent. So James is flexing his muscles, both as an intellectual and as a king, by doing this. But his relation with witchcraft is really quite complicated because he starts by having no interest.

And then he's almost shipwrecked and drowned on a journey to bring a wife back, his queen, back from Denmark. And it's blamed on witches. So he suddenly gets very interested in them, launches some notorious witch trials, reads the confessions, and becomes an avid believer and witch hunter and writes his book on how to hunt witches and why. And that has a big influence on the pendle trials. So according to James, how do we spot a witch? If you are suspicious of a witch, if your cow has got sick or your dog's gone lame or you've lost a piece of your jigsaw, whatever it is, how do you find a witch? Well, you arrest them and get them to confess.

That's easy, you know. You look at the circumstantial evidence around how many people have suffered atrocious misfortune after falling out with the person. And if there's enough neighbourhood certainty about this person's identity which stacks up, and you can then, get them to admit to it, then you're on a high road to completion. Which brings us to Pendle, Lancashire. All of the ingredients are in place. The fear and suspicion, the religious belief that the threat of the devil was real and imminent. It was a tinderbox waiting to blow. All it needed was an incident to spark the fire. Enter local teenager, Alison Device, and a chance meeting with a man on a woodland path.

The whole process of trials kicks off with a totally fortuitous incident when a young woman from one of the families stops a peddler who's crossing the pendle area and begs some pins from him and he refuses her and she curses him. And a short while down the track he has a stroke and falls down has to be carried. And the horrific irony of the trials is everything begins because a young woman actually has a conscience. She's convinced that it's her fault that he's been blighted like this. And she goes along with the people who've been involved in bringing him in and confesses that she cursed him. And this must mean she's made a pact with the devil.

If she'd watched him drop and said nothing to do with me, God must have cursed him. The trials are almost certainly never have kicked off. So in many ways, all this happens because of the essential goodness of a young woman and not evil at all. Elena Janaga. Allison is from this family that are sort of seen as kind of like medicine women. You might say cunning women. And there are who you go to if you've got a cold. And then they'll be like, oh yeah, here you go.

Here's several herbs, right? Because let's keep in mind that, again, you're in a really rural context. If you get a cold, no doctor is coming around. That's not going to be what happens. These kind of people are a group that are also seen as troublemakers. To make matters worse for the people of Pendle, as soon as the questioning of Allison device began, panic set in. And they implicated a second family who they'd been feuding with. So the devices are the big ones there, but you also have the Prestons.

This is kind of like an old blood feud that's going back and forth in between the various families. They don't get on. And now what has kind of happened in the meantime is Allison is like, oh word, I'm a witch. This is crazy. You know, and she tries to apologize to the family of the guy that she cursed. But then also everyone is like, things are getting too crazy here. And we're just going to have a meeting. Like hold up family meeting.

And we need to talk about these things. So they all kind of get together and they have a big confab at. Malkin Tower. Okay. So the matriarch of the devices, Elizabeth Device, calls them all in. And then this is where one of the other families they don't get on with, the Demdikes lives, right? And things get bad because James Device, brother in the family is like, oh, gosh, we're all here. We're going to need to eat something and he steals a sheep. So now a definite law has been broken. And what happens then is that word of a sheep getting stolen gets out. And everyone is like, what's all of this that's happening? And they're like, oh, yeah, we were having a confab about how maybe Allison is a witch. And they're like, well, who else was out here? And you get a whole bunch of people who are named as having attended said barbecue. So you've got Elizabeth Device, James Device, Alice Nutter, Catherine Hewitt, John Bullcock, Jane Bullcock, Alice Grayne, and Jeddit Preston.

All of a sudden, the circle of suspicion now included all of these people who were at the meeting. leading the charge of the witch trials in Pendle was the ambitious local magistrate, Roger Noel. This is something we see reoccurring across all three witch trials in our limited series, a man with an agenda driven by ambition and a religious fervor. He's been going around getting statements from the accused, and he is poking around in the Devices family business, and he finds another Janet. So this Janet is a nine-year-old, and she has been a nine-year-old, and she has, ends up becoming the prosecution's key witness.

All right, so there's a red flag going up right there. Yeah. And 100% a red flag was going up at the time. They were like, you cannot have nine-year-olds as key witnesses. But you know who says that you can? King James. He in demonology was like, actually, when it's about witchcraft, you can do whatever you want.

As the summer wears on in Pendle, attention moves from the initial arrests in spring to the upcoming witch trials. On the 18th of August 1612, Janet's mother Elizabeth and brother James were amongst those standing trial, charged with murder by witchcraft. As the records read, Elizabeth, late wife of John Device of the Forest of Pendle in the county of Lancaster, is being indicted for that she feloniously practised, used and exercised devilish arts, called Witchcraft. Enchantments, charms and sorceries. Elizabeth pleaded not guilty, and for the trial of her life put herself upon God and her country. Evidence is now being gathered against Elizabeth Device before those present. Among them are Jurian judges Roger Nol and Nicholas Bannister, two of His Majesty's Justices of the Peace.

They put it to the court that upon last Good Friday, there are about 12,000. 20 people gathered at her grandmother's house, Malkin Tower, holding a witch's Sabbath. They say that Elizabeth Device, Janet's mother, had told her daughter that it was a meeting of grand witches and referred to it as the Great Assembly of Witches, where she says they also conspired murder and to blow up Lancaster Castle. The courtroom is in shock. Elizabeth sits listening, looking at the ground, stunned. In time, records will describe her as this over as this overreact. odious witch, branded with a preposterous mark in nature, even from her birth, which was her left eye standing lower than the other, the one looking down, the other looking up, so it was strangely

deformed. Eventually, heads turn as the small nine-year-old Janet is brought into the courtroom. Her mother, Elizabeth, erupts into a violent outburst. Did she know what was to come? She curses and threatens Janet, whose moment before the judge and jury is here. I'll be back after this short break. With Elizabeth's emotional cries towards her daughter filling the courtroom, Janet wiped tears from her eyes, crying out that she's not able to speak in the presence of her mother, asking that she be removed.

With her mother removed, silence descends on the courtroom once more. Nine-year-old Janet device of the forest of Pendle stands upon a table addressing the gentleman of the jury with what she's seen. My mother is a witch, and that I know. knoweth to be true. I've seen her spirit in the likeness of a brown dog, which she called ball. The dog did ask her what she would have him do, and she answered that she would have him help her to kill. Time passes, and Elizabeth is called back into the court. She's broken, and her confession soon follows. She says that on Good Friday at Malkin Tower, she dined with witches, one of them being

her son, James. As fate would have it, Janet provides testimony against him too. Towards her brother James, she says that he has been a witch for three years. About the beginning at which time, there appeared unto him a black dog, which he called Dandy. Dandy did ask him what he would have him to do, and he answered that he would have him kill, John Hargreaves. Whereunto, Dandy answered that he would do it. Since which time, John is dead. James confesses to this, and in a closing statement, he says that his spirit animal, Dandy, was above Jesus Christ,

and therefore he must absolutely give his soul to him. The court has heard enough, and soon a verdict must be reached. Ronald Hutton. We know really very little about Janet, except that she is from this family, and she is a child. we have an impression that she's about nine years old. We know that she's little. She has to stand on a table at the court for everybody to see her.

And she blabs. She testifies so strongly and vividly against her own family that she obtains the death of most of them. It's easy to feel quite hostile towards Janet and see her as this little monster who's clearly got some really bad grudges. against her siblings and her parents. But we just don't know enough to draw that kind of verdict.

It could be we're looking at a child with mental health problems who's easily manipulated by authority figures. We actually don't know it to make of her. She's the illegitimate daughter of Elizabeth Device. What strikes me is that it's, I mean, the whole trial is ride or die on this kid's evidence. It's like she is the star witness. But even at the time, Ronald, was that usual for a nine-year-old child to be giving evidence in court like this?

No, it's very unusual. And normally children's testimony would not be admitted in a court. Because it's not. I'm not sure that she's the star witness for the whole trial. She's really a new witness against her own family. And I think the court would have nailed those. accused anyway, but it's Janet who really signs the death warrant for her own people. And indeed, her mother, Elizabeth, knows this and actually screams out at her child to shut up

and has to be, well, she's taken out of the court and sent back to herself. It's one of the most piteous moments in the whole trial. James the King himself has said that evidence is so hard to. in witchcraft cases that most unusually you need to trust the children. No. But child witnesses are not common in English witch trials. And to do him justice, when more of them have come forward after James' book comes out in the 1600s, James himself actually interrogates them.

and his most effective way of dampening down witch hunting is breaking down the claims of child witnesses. Oh, God. Wow. So there's a couple of things that are red flags to me. Even for the time, I'm surprised. No one went, hang on a minute. So there's four months in between when this family is arrested and when the trial happens.

And nobody seems to know where Janet is during those four months. who's looking after her. And I've heard it suggested that it might have been Noel himself, the guy who was trying to get this trial off the ground. So what is, did he have access to Janet for four months to prime her for this? He wouldn't have had her for four months because some of that time is taken up developing the case against the half of the family who weren't arrested at the beginning. But certainly he takes Janet in because otherwise she would might.

have made her confession initially. Did nobody flag that up at the time? Nobody said, hang on a minute. I don't think it would have occurred to people to bother, because the whole thing about Noah is that he's a respective figure. He's a father figure to the neighbourhood. And so the very person to adopt and care for an abused child with a satanic family.

That's the logic. Right. And my other red flag is, is you have to remember that Janet is a nine-year-old child of a beggar family. She is very articulate in that courtroom. She is very loquacious. And it sounds to me like she's reading lines. It does sound as, well, I think we can be absolutely certain

that she was properly coached and prepared. And Noel and his collaborators are the perfect people to have done that. And the description of her mother in the courtroom is pretty horrendous, that she has one eye that's lower than the other. And the narrator of the report is saying that she's the most hideous thing that he's ever seen. And just, I was reading it. And it was like, wow, this is really out there. There's a common tendency, which is very humor and also very repulsive. to regard physical ugliness and infirmity as related to moral ugliness and infirmity.

So if somebody looks unpleasant, they're much more likely to be demonic. I guess I can see the logic there. So what happens then in these trials? And you can go and read them yourself online. Anyone who's listening, you can go and read the whole thing. What's really interesting is that everything King James points out in his demonology seems to crop up in this trial. Like he says that you need little, is it clay figures, that witches will get, and suddenly they're there as well.

Yes, it's pretty clear that in a way it's really very unusual in any witch trial anywhere. The people holding this trial are using one text, which is the king's own book, as their primer for what witchcraft is and how you should conduct a witch trial. Wow. So, I mean, they're trying to impress the king, aren't they? They've gone through his book and they're going to find the kind of witches that James has written about? They're trying to impress the king because the king appoints judges and the judges want to have royal favour. But they are also uneasily aware that witchcraft trials

are always controversial because of the problem of evidence. And they're going to catch quite a lot of flack for this one or else they're doing so already. And so they want to show literally they're doing it by the book. One thing that became apparent with the Pendle witch trials, and indeed with many of the witch trials of this period, is the demographic of those typically accused. It strikes me as strange to say the least that if Satan, the Prince of Darkness himself, were to recruit followers on earth, why on earth would he come to a village in Lancashire and start with a beggar woman born with a facial deformity and her family? Why not lords and kings who hold more influence? Ellen Arnaga. I will say that you do have instances where you do see wealthy people who are accused of witchcraft.

But also, this is a thing that is very important to kind of keep in mind with the witch panics is there is really no rhyme or reason to this. Some people want to say that it's obviously all misogynistic and that doesn't hold up across everywhere that witches are killed. And indeed, in many places we see more men killed than women. I think on the whole, as a result of all of it, we see more women killed, but it's everybody. And there's no real way to say that anyone would be marked out as a witch because it's not if you're rich, it's not if you're poor. It's not if you're a woman. It's not if you're a man. It does tend to look like if you're a troublemaker or you're seen to be rocking the boat.

That's the major thing. It's just kind of this thing about social continuity more than anything else. That's the biggest common denominator. For all of the undeniable drama at Pendle, how much of an open-shut case was this witch trial? Ronald Hutton. In the regular yearly cases of witch trials, which in some areas, especially the home counties, especially Kent and Essex, are pretty frequent. The acquittal rate is around 75, 80%.

Wow. So you really need to be senile, demented, terrified, enough to confess or have an entire community against you in order to get convicted. But at Pendle, the entire community is against them. And the people managing the evidence are very practiced at doing it. They're very skilled. But also, they turn on each other, spectacularly. And that's really what brings them all crashing down.

If they'd shown any solidarity between and within the... families, then the conviction rate would have been far less. While judges Roger Null and Nicholas Bannister settled back into their chairs to deliver the verdict, a hush descend over the courtroom. After due consideration of which said several examinations, confessions and voluntary declarations, as well of themselves as of their children, friends and confederates, the gentleman delivered. The gentleman delivered. their verdict against the prisoners as follows. The verdict of life and death.

Who found Anne Whittle, alias Chattuck's, Elizabeth Device, and James Device, guilty of the several murders by witchcraft contained in the indictments against them and every one of them. Under the terms of the 1604 Witchcraft Act, these crimes are punishable by death. On August the 20th, 10 condemned prisoners were taken to Gallo's Hill on the Moors above Lancaster and hanged until dead. Their names were Alison Device, Elizabeth Device, James Device, Anne Whittle, Anne Redfern, Alice Nutter, Catherine Hewitt, John Bullcock, Jane Bullcock, and Isabel Roby. Elizabeth Southernd died while awaiting trial. I'll be back after this short break.

With the dust settling on the Pendle Witch trials, the question remains. What happened to Janet, the child who condemned her family? I just can't help thinking that Janet must have been just this haunted spectre of a human being after this. Like, how do you reckon with that as you're growing up? That's one scenario, but there are also two others. One is that she went away chuckling and rubbing her hands and thinking at last I've got rid of a lot of you, whom I've hated all my life. And the other is this mentally confused child who goes away thinking what happened. The truth is a lot more airy and, well, ironic.

She lives for two more decades till the early 1630s. And then she's arrested and accused of witchcraft herself, with a bunch of other women from the same area of Lancashire. There actually isn't a trial that results because the Royal Courts got a lot more sceptical about witchcraft by the 1630s. So the cases are referred to London. And Jinnett has never executed, but there isn't a record of her being released either, so she could have died in prison. The prison where her mother and relatives have been confined. In the second part of Inside the Witch Trials, we head to even more remote lands,

the West Fords of Iceland, in the second half of the 17th century. The arch type of the female witch hidden from other people alone in the woods, that does not apply for the conditions in Iceland. Thank you for listening, and thank you both to Ronald Hutton and Eleanor Janaga for joining me.

And if you like what you heard, Please don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject or maybe you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at betwixtat history hit.com. This podcast was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith, the senior producer was Charlotte Long.

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