1612: The Disturbing Witch Trial That Shook Britain | The Pendle Witch Child | Chronicle

[Music] it's 1612 and a woman is in a courtroom she's accused of killing three men through witchcraft she's presented with a confession that she denies but then a girl is brought to testify against her the girl bursts into tears as the woman screams at her desperately and the woman is removed back to the dungeon once the girl has her audience she jumps up onto a table and calmly denounces the woman as a witch she's the woman's own daughter and she's nine years old janet devis was a key witness in a trial that would lead to the execution of 10 people including all members of her own family but 20 years later jennifer self would come to be standing in the dock charged with the same offence [Music] janet a nine-year-old beggar was part of a bigger story of justices clerics and physicians even the king himself someone who would normally have been lost to history has lived on because of a chilling role in one of the most disturbing witch trials on record this is a story about fear politics and religion science and magic but to me as a poet it's also about words and stories and just how powerful they can be the two trials that shape the life of this little girl are emblematic of a much bigger story the transition between a pre-modern world and our supposed age of reason and yet our fear of evil has never really gone away neither some say as evil itself [Music] fear of evil was endemic in england 400 years ago when king james the first was on the throne james was living in fear of catholic rebellion in the aftermath of the gunpowder plot recently arrived from scotland he was on the throne in a strange land and some parts of his new kingdom were particularly troubling lancashire was a long way from london in many ways described by somebody at the time as a dark corner of the land it had a reputation for disobedience full of trouble makers and subversives and this area not far from where i live dominated by the strange brooding presence of pendle hill was almost beyond the back of beyond today it's established an old niche by trading on its dark past in 1612 the nine-year-old janet devis lived in obscurity at her grandmother's house malkin tower [Music] malkin tower it sounds grand but it really wasn't mulkin was actually a 17th century word meaning slatin or [ __ ] and it was still being used in these parts in the 20th century the house was also and even less grandly referred to as mocking tower and according to some people and not to put too fine a point on it mocking is a local word for [ __ ] nobody knows for sure where the house would have stood but recent research suggests it may have been on this site jenna and her family survived mainly by begging and by doing odd jobs for neighbours but the family did have one other source of income and i suppose a kind of power janet's grandmother was well known locally as a cunning woman and everyone knew her as old dem dyke the role of the cunning woman is an incredibly valuable one especially for poor people who don't have recourse say to doctors and there's all sorts of modern roles rolled up into one as a social worker and a policewoman and doctor all those things that give people a kind of security about their otherwise anxious lives but it's uh it's a rather an ambiguous role because to be a cunning woman the authorities would call it witchcraft really so cunning women can get into trouble with the law if they fall out with their clients to janet and the family it was a fact of life that a person might have the power to heal or harm through the use of charms or spells to them it wasn't mumbo jumbo it was real it happened which is the people who do bad things cunning women are people who do good things calling women cure you and find your lost stuff which is steal stuff from you and make you sick or kill you [Music] at malkin tower janet lived with her grandmother her mother elizabeth and her elder sister and brother alison and james there were no adult men elizabeth's husband had died eleven years earlier and nine-year-old jenna wasn't his child she grew up knowing that she was the runt of the litter and the bastard daughter of the house i think that would have made her feel isolated and different even cursed in the later investigations it became clear that janet's world was populated by demons janet's grandmother was not the only cunning woman in the neighborhood old chattix the head of a nearby household was a rival for her business and the devices believed her to be a witch for some years elizabeth's husband had been making payments of oatmeal to chatox the year the payment was not made he died at most times in history such family squabbles would have passed by unnoticed but these weren't usual times england around 1600 is a country in the group of conversion experience officially to turn protestants about 40 years before but it had taken two generations for that really to sink in so around about 1600 a lot of the english are in the grip of enthusiastic protestantism for the first time and now that england was protestant catholics were increasingly feared as seditious and evil the idea that there are people out in lancashire who are adhering to old religious ways can be transferred quite easily to the idea that these people are actually dangerous dissenters who need to be suppressed to devout english protestants the bible brackets idolaters heathen sorcerers together and so catholicism which is itself to protestants a demonic religion can come to look very closely related to witchcraft [Music] these were nervy apprehensive times at court and throughout the country and in that climate of fear it didn't take much to arouse suspicion on march 18th 1612 janet's sister alison devis was out and about walking down a lane along the way she met a peddler and being a beggar she asked the peddler for some pins but he wouldn't open his pack and he walked on for alison this would have been an everyday experience probably several times a week people would brush past her or ignore her and she probably responded to their rudeness by cursing on march 18th she cursed the peddler and the curse seemed to work because he fell to the floor and unable to speak or move he was eventually carried to a local inn and alison was terrified because she knew she'd bewitched him she rushed to his bedside and begged for his forgiveness from the legal records we have a very detailed description of the pedaller's condition following his collapse his head is drawn awry his eyes and face deformed his speech not well to be understood his arms lame especially the left side what would you say that that was a description of i think there's very little doubt that those symptoms reflect the fact that he has had a stroke the face being awry the left arm not working i mean something coming on that suddenly really can only be a stroke alison seemed convinced that she had caused this stroke through bewitching him and blamed herself and agonized over it is there any logic in that from the description it does sound as though the two events were significantly linked looking at as a scientist yes the curse causing him to become very upset and to put the blood pressure up and to cause him to then have a stroke in exactly the same situation these days could happen as a result of road rage or an argument or some devastating piece of medical information being given to somebody can result in people having a stroke what's so striking for me is that alison was in no doubt that she'd nearly killed a man perhaps she really had it was her fear and her own contrition that would lead directly to a downfall and that of all a family as well the consequences of alison's curse spiraled out of control when the peddler's outraged son reported the incident to an ambitious local magistrate roger nowell england has justice of the piece dotted all over the place and they are the men who dispense the law some of them are not very good some of them are very lazy some of them are extremely zealous indeed roger now is one of those zealous types he's ambitious he's a protestant and he sees that actually that his root success in his career is to go out there identify non-conformists that could be witches or it could be catholics and bring them to justice roger noll began investigating he interviewed alison devis who in a need to unburden herself confessed to everything but she also accused her neighbor chadox of bewitching and killing four people and of making clay figures [Music] alison seems to have been seriously spooked by what she'd done to the peddler i think it's likely that a little sister janet would have been pretty freaked out by it too alison's statement escalated the investigation chattix and her daughter were very ready to point the finger back at the device family and accused granny demdike of witchcraft too nowell realized that he was no longer investigating a single incident but was now heading up a major witch hunt rooting the evil out of pendle on april the second null made his first arrests jenna's sister and granny as well as her neighbors chattix and anne were all shipped off to distant lancaster castle to await trial roger now was confident that these arrests would please the king just a year before the arrests in pendle the king james bible was published and laid out in stark words thou shalt not suffer a witch to live i've come here to oxford in search of a book not the king james bible but a book james wrote himself james the first has a reputation as an avid witch hunter and participates personally in trials up in north berwick and he believes that witchers are trying to kill him in fact that the witches tried to sink the boat that he was bringing his wife and of denmark back on their honeymoon he writes a slim exciting book called demonology which is unique among heads of state in being a sole authored work upon the nature of hell and what to do about it and it's pretty popular it's readable it's concise it's learned it's actually a rather clever piece of work and it's a mandate to the british to hunt witches this is an original 1597 edition of james's demonology written says here at the beginning because of the fearful abounding at this time in this country of these detestable slaves of the devil the witchers or enchanters james is very much a product of the presbyterian kirk in scotland presbyterian ministers who brought james up as presbyterian in a bid to counteract the influence of his catholic mother tell him stories all day about the power of the devil they deliberately scare him and it works you can scare a child very easily they talk him into feeling that he's surrounded by witches the dominology might seem a bit like the ramblings of a paranoid man but as the saying goes just because you're paranoid it doesn't mean that they're not out to get you [Music] the religious tensions in england had reached boiling point just seven years earlier when the king and his entire parliament had very nearly been blown up by guy fawkes and his team of catholic terrorists in the failed gunpowder plot and although fawkes had been captured some of the conspirators were still at large it's perfectly reasonable if you're an early modern monarch to be paranoid about people trying to kill you and james is one of those monarchs there's no shortage of potential conspiracies out there he's got a dad who's been strangled after an attempt to blow him up a mother whose head has been hacked off in english prison and there have been at least two attempts to kidnap him maybe one to murder him no wonder he's scared and shortly after he arrives in england some of his catholic subjects try to blow him to smithereens along with the rest of parliament he's a king who is exceptionally nervous of conspiracy the plotters who were caught were trying to flee to safety and the place where they expected to find it was lancashire in march 1612 local jps had received an order from london that they were to compile a report of all those who refused to take communion in church in an effort to root out the lancashire catholics it was a crude but hopefully effective loyalty test all those that do not come to the church and their communicate must be presented and further proceeded against fail not hearing at your peril and here look one of the oldest signatories was roger knowl there's no question about it on good friday 1612 every loyal subject should have been in church instead at malkin tower janet's mother threw a party and to feed the guests a brother stole a sheep of course there would be friends absent from the gathering alison and granny demdyke along with the neighbors were now awaiting trial in lancaster castle what happened in that house on that day will become the subject of intense scrutiny over the following months there were guests at malkin tower was it an easter party just friends route for lunch was it a solidarity meeting of those relatives of the prisoners held in lancaster castle or was it a gathering of witches the local constable hears a whisper that there is a meeting of witches at malking tower and arrives suddenly at the door with his men afterwards with echoes of the recent gunpowder plot they will be accused of conspiring to blow up lancaster castle and to murder its jailer [Music] everyone present was arrested but the family at malkin tower did not come quietly they told the constable that there'd be more people at the party who left already you'll never guess who you just missed and so the others implicated were also arrested [Music] they were all accused of plotting to kill a man by witchcraft by the time he'd finished noel had sent another eight people to join the original four in lancaster castle it was all going so much better than he could have hoped unlike some of the people detained janet devis was definitely a malkin tower on good friday 1612 but she wasn't taken away with the others the people rounded up at the party were from the lowest possible walks of life but the others arrested were different alice nutter was from a respectable land-owning family and was arrested along with her sister-in-law a nephew and a friend the nutters are still in the area colin nutta lives here and many other relatives live nearby and always have collins the yorkshireman i think i'm writing saying that there aren't many nutters in yorkshire but there are quite a few over here right there oh yes oh yeah sure quite a lot of them here so how did somebody like alice nutter come to be caught up in the witch trials i think she was in the wrong place at the wrong time really with alice nutter what would roger knowles motivation have been the nutters at that point were a strong catholic family and i think he would he would curry favor with the king and the powers that be if he catching catholics as well you see she had two relatives who were priests who were home drawn and quartered and one of them in tiber and one in lancaster so as far as noah was concerned she was just another one of these troublemaking catholics then exactly and she would have been using a pawn for his own ends really it seems pretty unlikely to me that alice nutter and a friend spent good friday eating stolen mutton at [ __ ] towers with the local beggars but whatever the truth they were rounded up arrested and taken to lancaster castle [Music] lancaster castle has remained a work in prison right up until spring of 2011. this is still known as the witches tower the castle is huge but the cell that they were held in wasn't inside it we're all of janet's family a grand a mother a brother a sister plus all the neighbours chatting and isabel roby margaret pearson alice nutter john and jane balcock and catherine hewitt plus eight other prisoners in a space 20 feet by 12 feet 20 people in all as for janet we don't know where she spent the four months that her family were imprisoned it's possible that she lived under the protection of roger noel as she was about to become crucial to the case he was building [Music] the magistrate would have been well aware of the king's thoughts on witch hunting right at the end of his demonology king james wrote something that became especially relevant for the case of the pendle witches and here it is here's what the king says in my opinion barns or wives are never so defamed persons that's children women and liars all lumped in together may of our law serve for sufficient witnesses and proofs in matters of high treason against god that's telling noel and other magistrates in the country two really important things that witchcraft is treason not just against the king but by extension also against god himself and secondly he's saying the law should allow children to testify in court and it wasn't just noel who was influenced by king james's demonology it would also influence the professional justice system [Music] everything we know about this whole story comes from one book the wonderful discovery of witches in the county of lancaster it was written by one thomas potts while serving as clark to the court when the prisoners went on trial in 1612. he kept his notes of the trial and wrote them all up to demonstrate the rigour of the trial proceedings he also dedicated the book to his patron thomas nivit nivette was the man who arrested guy fawkes potts was making a clear connection for the reader between witchers and catholics as traitors or terrorists the whole book is an exercise in political brown-nosing nonetheless it represents an extraordinarily detailed account of a 17th century witch [Music] trial in the courtroom of lancaster castle on the 18th of august 1612 the trial of the pendle witches began the room is still a working court in 1612 it wouldn't have looked much like this nonetheless there was a judge in fact two judges in this case a jury witnesses and the defendants and all the while thomas potts was scribbling the verbatim notes which would become his best-selling book the outcome of the trial was far from being a foregone conclusion probably less than half of accused witches actually are convicted and executed and the set of records which you have which are very reliable for this suggests that is probably more like a 75 percent acquittal rate whatever the odds for jenna's sister whose curse had started the whole affair things didn't look good poor alison devis she didn't even want to defend herself she was completely convinced of her own guilt her words had caused the peddler to collapse and that terrified her she was asked in court if through her magic power she could restore the peddler to his health and strength but regretfully she said that she couldn't she did say though and others agreed with her that her grandmother would have been able to help him but in the four months of waiting for the trial to begin granny demdi could died in the tiny filthy cell thomas potts had some sympathy for alison he liked his witches desperate and contrite her mother was neither and potts was vile about her he wrote that this odious witch was branded with a preposterous mark in nature which was her left eye standing lower than the other the one looking down the other looking up so strangely deformed as the best that were present did affirm that they had not often seen the like 400 years ago it wasn't common for a witness to be brought to testify in the courtroom itself but on the 18th of august 1612 a star witness was being prepared to take the stand elizabeth devis was furious and protested her innocence but then a nine-year-old daughter janet was brought to testify against her elizabeth was distraught she yelled at her desperately janet burst into tears she was only a little girl after all before turning to the judge and asking that her mother be taken away before she would speak once elizabeth had been silenced and janet had her audience she jumped up onto a table and calmly denounced her own mother as a witch when i was a probation officer many moons ago i spent a lot of time sitting in the crown courts of lancashire a lot of them old and intimidating cockpits like this and some of the cases involved evidence from children because the legal system these days is very sensitive in its handling of young people we'll never know why janet devis said what she said but standing on the table center stage in the middle of this moral and political and legal drama i can't help think that she was reciting her lines my mother is a witch and that i know to be true i have seen her spirit in the likeness of a brown dog which she called ball [Music] the dog did ask what she would have him do and she answered that she would have him help her to kill john robinson of barley james robinson henry mitten jennett went on to describe the meeting at malking tower on good friday at 12 noon about 20 people came to our house my mother told me that they were all witches she described the food they ate and named six people she'd seen there whose name she knew as well as a mother and brother there's a kind of a paradox surrounding the evidence of children in the courtroom on the one hand they're seen as unreliable because they're so young but on the other hand they're seen as pure witnesses of the truth and so the insomnia like janet devis is something horrific about exploiting a child who is so young and i think people may have felt that at the time too but at the same time she could well be the means to cracking open this secret ring of witchcraft it wasn't just jenna who testified against elizabeth her son james denounced her too he said that three skulls had been robbed from graves at the new church in pendle and four of the teeth then kept at malkin tower four teeth were then presented in court which had been found at malkin tower by the constable alongside a clay figure all buried together in the ground but giving evidence against his mother wouldn't help him because janet turned on her own brother too [Music] [Applause] jenna said that james had been a witch for three years she had seen his spirit kill three people she then went on to recite charms she said she'd heard her brother use upon good friday i will fast while i may across a blue and another of red as good lord was to the rude gabriel laid him down to sleep upon the ground what we've got here is a series of half understood maybe quarter understood recollections of prayers practices rights of popular catholicism and a bit of a play text that i can neither sleep no way rise up swirl together into something that would sound impressive to a listener as a healing charm sweet jesus our lord amen potts was impressed by janet's testimony in fact he seemed to relish a calm clear and chilling account although she were but very young yet it was wonderful to the court with what modesty government and understanding she delivered this evidence against the prisoner at the bar being her own natural brother and i would know that what they were saying was likely to lead to mum and grandma being hanged and i don't think janet did really know in the way an adult would know i think she only knew it intellectually and not emotionally and that's why i think her mother screams at her in the way she does i think her mother is desperately trying at least to make her realize what she's done she's clearly a rather odd child she's extremely articulate she clearly doesn't like her family she's a bit different from the others we don't know who her father was she's the only legitimate child and clearly either she's really terrified of the magistrates and determined to save herself at all costs or more probably it gives a chance for all sorts of concealed resentments and animosities against her family to explode lethally i think we need to imagine that she believes in the reality of witchcraft and that these people really are witches and that she seeks to distance herself from them of course she's also been put under a great deal of pressure it may be direct pressure it may just be the atmospheric pressure of the courtroom the tension of all these men around her are telling her that in fact the witchcraft has taken place and that she's the linchpin in punishing it it wasn't just her own family janet was prepared to denounce as witches alice nutter and her friends were more well to do and the judge was more demanding of evidence against them he arranged identity parades mixing them in with other prisoners from the castle one by one janet picked them out you were there on good friday you had on the prettiest dress you ate the mutton you were sitting right by me in an attempt to catch her out the judge then asked did you see joanna's style a made-up name no sir i never heard of her most of the early modern witch hunters rely on the bible and or the text by the great continental demonologists as their texts the lancashire witch trials are really unusual in that they ignore these pretty well completely and fasten on the king's own book king james demonology and in a way that's extremely rare they're plainly ticking boxes king james says witches use body parts for evil magic body parts are found the lecture which is property they make clay images whoops is what language which is supposed to be doing children are extremely useful as witnesses wow we suddenly have janet so what these people are doing is looking upwards to the monarch as their fountain of wisdom the evidence against the prisoners had stacked up perfectly we tend to assume that witchcraft was just one big delusion and therefore that the witches who were convicted were in fact innocent but accused witches believed in witchcraft too and i think it's improbable that to think that which has never tried to use magic in order to kill somebody well today we prosecute people and punish them if they attempt a crime but are unsuccessful so the witches of 1612 by that measure were they innocent by the end of the two-day trial the jury had decided that all of janet's family and most of her neighbors were guilty of causing death or harm by witchcraft ten people were sentenced to hang elizabeth devis alison devis james devis ann whittle and redfearn isabel roby alice nutter jane bullcock john bulcock catherine hewitt the day after the trial the ten convicted prisoners were brought to a place still known as gallows hill this was a piece of state theater this was the moment when the majesty of god and the majesty of the law were very much focused on this one event and everybody could see the power of it in the critical moment the witch was led out forced to climb the ladder the noose put over her neck and then at that moment the crowd went rather quiet they didn't die from having a neck broken but from slow strangulation that might take as long as 20 minutes in fact there are accounts of friends and family coming forward pulling on the legs of the poor person being executed in order to hasten their end condemned prisoners were expected to make one final confession it was a last chance to save their souls though not of course their lives we're told that elizabeth and alice nutter never confessed not even with their dying words i think it's probably very likely based on the standards of the day that janet would have been encouraged to be there too a lot of history's most ghastly locations are completely transformed now this is a park where kids come to play football and do whatever kids do in parks these days for me the most chilling thought about what happened here was the idea that jenna might well have been watching the hangings and the last thing that elizabeth might have seen as she looked out from the gallows might have been the face of her daughter the child who put her there we don't know anything about what happened to the orphaned janet devis in the years that followed the execution of her entire family and most of her neighbors it's difficult to imagine anybody wanting to take her in but it could be argued that they weren't her last victims thanks to potzer's published account janet's influence would travel far beyond lancashire although there had been earlier cases of children being heard as witnesses in witch trials the law stated that children under the age of 14 were not credible witnesses as they could not be sworn under oath but that was set to change imagine you're a 17th century jp or magistrate you're not trained in the law like the judges are but you need to investigate question witnesses and compile a case for their size what you need is one handy book that gives you all the basics something that you can just pull off the shelf whenever you need it the country justice is that book it's by a man called dalton and was first published in 1618 this handbook was used by all magistrates both here and in the colonies in america you've got some people accused of witchcraft so you look up advice on witnesses see page 541 and here it is for children i find in the book of the discovery of witches at lancaster sizes that's thomas potts's book that the son and daughter that's jennet and james of elizabeth devis a witch here we go the one about nine years of age the other of fourteen did upon their oaths give open evidence against their mother then prisoner at the bar so what jenna did in 1612 ended up giving a precedent to magistra it's not just here but across the atlantic to seek the testimony of children in trials of witchcraft and before we say that this is outrageous let's remember that today there are still trials which rely on child testimony due to lack of alternative witnesses today the testimony of children as young as three has been used in criminal trials the law says that they have to understand the questions put to them and to give answers which are understandable and the most extraordinary thing was that jenna herself would come to fall victim to the very president she set [Music] in november 1633 22 years after the nine-year-old janet testified against a family a ten-year-old boy from pendle came home late one evening and told his parents a very strange story edmund robinson explained that the reason he was late was that he'd been picking berries and while gathering berries he said he'd seen two greyhounds i tried to get them to chase her hair but they didn't run so i beat them with a stick one of the dogs turned into a witch and the other into a boy and she then turned him into a horse the witch took me away on the horse to that house horse stones and their barn was full of witches maybe 60 of them and from the ceiling there were all these ropes hanging down and they were pulling on the ropes and amazing food came falling down i was so frightened so i ran away and they chased me for ages and before i got home i met a boy with cloven hooves so i fought him that's why i'm so scruffy it's not my fault all of which seems to have been accepted as a genuine reason for lightness somewhat surprisingly [Music] after hearing this story the boy's father took him from village to village to stand in the churches and point out the witches he had seen for three months curator of a local church described seeing edmund at work the boy was brought into the church of kildweek and was set upon a stall to look about him which moved some little disturbance in the congregation for a while and after prayers the people told me that it was the boy that discovered witches [Music] on the evidence of edmund's bizarre story about 20 people were imprisoned and put on trial in february 1634 one of them was called janet devis accused of killing isabel wife of william nutter i can see absolutely no reason to think that it's not the same janet devis from the earlier lancashire trial that's accused by edmund robinson the fact that someone of the same name appears as a suspect in the second trial with some of the same families involved in the same place i think he's very suggestive i think really there's no reason to suspect that it's not her again it's the stories the children tell that have such an incredible power not only edmund's story in 1633 but the words jenna used back in 1612 have returned to haunter she'd been a witness for the crown as a nine-year-old and had been spared the news but this time surely she'd hang yet these were different times and england had changed since 1612. when we look back into the 17th century we think of what happened before the 17th century we think of a world where witches were persecuted where people relied on what other people said everybody was suspicious everybody was very uncertain it was a time of great political and religious uncertainty and then when you look forward to the 18th century you've got a sense of order and stability so the 17th century was a period of transition when thomas potts wrote his book he thought he'd be pleasing the king with his account but james's continued interest in witch trials led him to become more skeptical something very important happens at leicester in 1616 a boy maybe 12 13 years old claims that he's bewitched the case goes to trial and nine women are hanged well the following month james the first goes to lester he interviews the boy and discovers that he's lying and then as a consequence the judges are very soundly rebuked and this goes out as a message to other judges to be very very cautious in witchcraft cases particularly if your style witness happens to be a child and by the time edmund told his story in 1633 a new king was on the throne charles the first was even more doubtful about witch hunting than his father had become and his attitude towards religion was so different from his fathers that many suspected him of being a catholic his wife certainly was crudely it's true that the most radical protestants the people we call puritans are the most concerned about the devil and demons and as charles the first is a king who is deeply suspicious of puritanism he's pretty suspicious of accounts of demons so here we are 22 years later back in the courtroom just as before a jury listened to a child telling stories of witches but this time janet was in the dark and just as before the jury believed the child to be honest and the prisoners evil on edmonds testimony 17 people were found guilty and should have been sentenced to death but in this new kind of england this changed england the judges weren't happy with these verdicts and the matter was referred to london to the king and the privy council four were sent from lancashire to london but not janet she was one of those who waited behind in the castle where several prisoners had already died of jail fever during the 15 months they'd spent there [Music] london in 1634 would have been another world for the women of lancashire when they arrived the four were held in the fleet jail while they were there a pair of playwrights immediately produced a play called the witches of lancashire featuring the story told by little edmund they got the play on stage so quickly that while the women were behind bars on show to the public for a penny or two the piece was already being performed londoners could go to the jail in the morning to go up at a witch or a northerner and then go and see a play about them in the afternoon it was the complete entertainment package a hair a hair there the devil take these cars will they not stir i'll see if i can put spirits into you and put you in remembrance what hulu hallu means now bless me heaven one of the greyhounds turned into a woman and the other into a boy you have served me well to swing me thus you young rogue you have used me like a dog oh not you a witch power stories never ceases to amaze me young lad in rural lancashire tells his tall tale next minute it's a play in london [Music] how [Applause] it's interesting that although in 1634 most people still believed in witches they were able to laugh at them that would never have happened in 1612. [Music] this new way of looking at the world was also apparent in the advances being made by scientists which would over the century transform our understanding of nature [Music] scientific research and experimentation did not banish a belief in witchcraft and superstition overnight far from it but it did provide serious tools for trying to tell the innocent from the guilty these were applied in 1634 to those women from lancashire accused of witchcraft and this was one of the earliest ever cases of what came to be known as forensic science science relating to the law courts the 1612 trial represents an older way of thinking where everything was based on credulity superstition uh everybody willing to believe everything nasty that was said by the time you get to 1634 although it's by absolutely by no means a scientific era it seems as though people are behaving in a more rational way and they're demanding what we would think of as scientific forensic objective evidence what is shifting in the 17th century slowly and by fits and starts is a belief that you have to demonstrate something physically but if you can't demonstrate it in medicine you cannot use it as evidence in other words that there may be an invisible world of spirits around you but you have to prove physical effect in order to bring them into a law court king james had written in his demonology that one good way to identify a witch is to look for witches marks a place on the body where you could see a teat that had been used by the devil to suckle all the accused people from lancashire were examined for these marks including janet here it says they found janet devis two paps are marks in her secrets i think secrets means probably exactly what you think it means the other four people brought to london also had their marks listed for example margaret johnson one mark or pap betwixt her seat and her secrets now king charles wanted his own trusted physician william harvey to re-examine the women william harvey is one of the great medical brits of all time he is most known for discovering how the blood circulates through the body he takes his place up there with people like isaac newton and christopher wren as one of the new forward-looking people the 17th century who are plugging into a european will to do things better than ever before harvey was sent on more than one occasion to examine witches on the king's orders there was a village witch who had a toad as her familiar not an unfamiliar situation and william harvey caught the toad and dissected the toad and then showed the dissection to the witch to prove to her that it was just a normal toad that there was nothing supernatural about it and the woman flew at him and tried to virtually tear his skin off with her nails you killed my toad she wasn't in the slightest bit grateful that he'd brought science and rationality to her aid from her point of view he'd killed her pet and probably removed the foundation stone of her business here in london harvey recruited five physicians and ten female midwives to conduct the examination this time almost all of the previously suspicious marks were deemed to be nothing unnatural and this is actually the way in which witch hunting becomes undone it's not so much people going in straight for the core and saying we don't believe in witchcraft it's people saying we need to be much more careful about how we prosecute because standards of evidence need to be raised and if you raise a standard of proof high enough in which trials they come to an end altogether according to william harvey and his scientific team there was no physical evidence against any of the prisoners everything now rested solely on the evidence of the child in 1612 janet devis had been unflappable in court cool and consistent but in 1634 under examination from the privy council and the secretary of state ten-year-old edmund robinson cracked he said that the story he told was inspired by stories he'd heard about the devis family he had heard the neighbor's talk of a witch feast that was kept at mocking tower in pendle forest about 20 years since and cross questioning established that edmund's father had been blackmailing the women getting his son to accuse any who refused to pay the robinson family had some fine new cows janet and the other prisoners were acquitted of witchcraft for me the story is remarkable because the tale told by janet in 1612 had such resonance it took on a life of its own in pendle and refused to go away edmund accused janet of witchcraft precisely because her story had been so convincing and so compelling her own words were almost the death of her since the time of janet devis we've become less credulous of magic the more rigorous in our demand for empirical evidence in our modern technological age we pride ourselves on our rationality and scientific understanding of the world some things don't change many people still believe in evil although of course where that evil occurs tends to change from year to year and community to community child killers drug dealers pedophiles terrorists [Music] many still consider such evil to be the work of the devil believe it or not the church of england continues to perform exorcisms now as then we have fear and at times of crisis fear still leads to miscarriages of justice when we hear a story like the lancashirewithtrials from the first half of the 17th century it's easy to feel distance from this strange alien world where people believe things that we don't believe and acted in ways that we might consider to be barbaric but of course in the post-9 11 world in the era of the war on terror it's still quite easy to build policy on paranoia and therefore to overreact in certain situations and to infringe civil liberties in the name of security so that in situations where we do feel threatened by the enemy within the people all around us who might be trying to undermine western civilization we can easily find ourselves behaving in ways which are frighteningly similar to the ways in which some of those people behaved in pendle in 1612 or 1633 so what about janet devis the lancashire child at the heart of this story did she walk away from two witch trials unscathed perhaps in the prison records of 1636 and some of the others acquitted of witchcraft were still imprisoned lancaster castle inmates had to pay for their board and stay until the debt was cleared which for someone like janet might have been impossible [Music] there are no more records of janet devis after 1636 but we do know that her legacy lived on three thousand miles from lancaster 19 people were hanged in 1692 these witch trials in salem massachusetts were perhaps the most infamous in history most of the evidence was given by children on the salem magistrates table was dalton's country justice suggesting children were suitable witnesses in trials of witches and citing janet devis 16 12. [Music] 400 years ago the idea of witches in one's midst must have been terrifying but for us today i think it's the enigma of janet devis herself which we find so disturbing we'll never know why she said what she said but that desire to believe her was born out of the kind of wild and irrational fear that can turn neighbor against neighbor and relative against relative and can make well demons out of all of us maybe it's because our protective instincts are so strong and our imagination's so powerful but we still struggle to control that fear during times of crisis times when the truth can be the hardest thing of all to divine

Channel: Chronicle - Medieval History Documentaries

Views: 1,005,074

Keywords: BBC history series, Britain history, Chronicle - Medieval History Documentaries, Hastings, Lancashire, Pendle Witch Child, Renaissance beginnings, dark ages history, historical court cases drama, historical horror stories, medieval crime stories, medieval cultural practices, mysterious witch lore, tragic historical events, witch hunt, witch hunting horrors, witch persecution facts, witch trial drama, witchcraft beliefs, women accused of witchcraft, young witness testimonies

Id: eQrva6RAkak

Length: 58min 50sec (3530 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 16 2022