He was further terrified, he testified, by the arrival of a great black dog and then of Alizon herself. He managed to drag himself to the nearest alehouse, where he lay in great pain and unable to move. It was clear to him she had no intention of paying, so he refused.Īlizon grew very angry, and shortly afterwards John had a seizure and fell down. The trial was recorded in detail by the clerk of the court, Thomas Potts, in his Wonderfull Discoverie Of Witches, first published in 1613.Īccording to Potts, the seeds of suspicion that the area was teeming with witches were sown when a woman called Alizon Device stopped pedlar John Law as he passed her on the road to ask for some pins. Their arraignment in the Lancaster assizes remains England's most notorious witch-trial and today provides a thriving tourist attraction in the villages around Pendle Hill. Though their crimes ranged from theft to murder, what they all had in common was being found guilty of using witchcraft to commit them. Almost exactly 400 years ago, on Thursday August 20, 1612, ten people - eight women and two men - were hanged at Gallows Hill, on bleak moorland just outside Lancaster.
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